Review of Public Personnel Administration recent issues

Bureaucracy and Public Employee Behavior: A Case of Local Government

Feeney, M. K., DeHart-Davis, L. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:53:59 PST

Government reinvention advocates assert that less bureaucratic work environments will spark higher creativity, more risk taking, and greater productivity in public employees. Although government reinvention remains a topic of interest to scholars and practitioners alike, these particular arguments lack empirical support. In response, this article tests the relationship between different forms of bureaucratic control (formalization, red tape, and centralization) and reported employee perceptions and behavior in local governments. Analyzing mail survey data from a study of the employees of four cities in a Midwestern state, this article finds that employee responses to bureaucratic control are not as straightforward as reinventionists expect. Different types of bureaucratic control are related to distinct employee responses, and sometimes these responses are the very behaviors that reinventionists seek to trigger by reducing bureaucracy.

Job Satisfaction of Public Managers in Special Districts

West, J. P., Berman, E. M. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:53:59 PST

Little is known about special districts and their personnel. This study examines the job satisfaction and professional backgrounds of senior managers in large special districts. Senior managers in these districts report very high levels of job satisfaction, possibly among the highest of all such managers in public administration. Senior managers are satisfied or very satisfied with four of the most important determinants of job satisfaction: pay, the opportunity to use one’s talents at work, job security, and the ability to make a meaningful impact on one’s region or community. About one fourth of administrators on management teams in large special districts have their highest degree in public affairs, and among those with an MPA degree, three fourths have experience in business. This study concludes that it is time to take special districts more seriously both in research and as a locus of activity and career development for public managers.

Revisiting Affirmative Action in Leveling the Playing Field: Who Have Been the True Beneficiaries Anyway?

Harris, G.L.A. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:53:59 PST

Affirmative action is an amalgam of federal, state, and local ordinances and other legislative mandates to remedy inequities in employment for traditionally marginalized groups. The need for such programs continues to be debated given varying evidence that affirmative action has not been as even handed as proponents have touted. This article explores the extent to which affirmative action, after more than 40 years, has leveled the playing field in the workplace for women and minorities. In essence, who have been the true beneficiaries of affirmative action?

A Renewed Emphasis on Hiring: A Closer Look at the Federal Government's End-to-End Hiring Roadmap

Llorens, J. J. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:53:59 PST

This article overviews the federal government’s most recent initiative to improve its hiring processes, the End-to-End Hiring Roadmap. The Roadmap was developed through a joint partnership with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the federal Chief Human Capital Officers Council, and it is intended to provide a detailed improvement plan for federal agencies to follow in the areas of workforce planning, recruitment, hiring, security and suitability, and orientation. This article overviews the specific components of the Roadmap and addresses its place within the context of existing strategic human capital management initiatives. Last, prospects for a successful adoption of the Roadmap are discussed.

Civil Service Reform in Action: The Case of the Personnel Board of Jefferson County, Alabama

Sims, R. R. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:53:59 PST

Civil service reform interventions are designed to address institutional weaknesses associated with human resource management (HRM) and processes. This article discusses the case of a federal court order reform of a HRM system. More specifically, the article offers a firsthand look at efforts to reform the Personnel Board of Jefferson County, Alabama, following the imposition of a receivership.

Title VII and Disparate-Treatment Discrimination Versus Disparate-Impact Discrimination: The Supreme Court's Decision in Ricci v. DeStefano

Peffer, S. L. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:53:59 PST

In June 2009, the Supreme Court decided the employment discrimination case of Ricci v. DeStefano . In a 5-4 decision, the Court held that the City of New Haven, Connecticut, discriminated against White and Hispanic firefighters based on their race in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when it refused to certify exam results that could have resulted in promotions for the firefighters. The case attempted to clarify what the Court saw as a conflict between two provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act— disparate-treatment discrimination and disparate-impact discrimination. Unfortunately, the Court’s decision and reasoning may cause even more confusion and questions in the area of employment discrimination leaving both public and private employers to ask themselves difficult questions regarding their employment practices and procedure.

Privatization and Its Challenges for Human Resource Management in the Public Sector: Symposium Introduction

Battaglio, R. P. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:45:03 PDT

During the past three decades, extensive reforms have challenged public management by advocating private sector innovation as a more efficient alternative. New public management, the National Performance Review, and other market-based reforms champion private sector innovation as a means for improving accountability and quality of service in the public sector. Privatization is a key component of these reforms that takes advantage of private sector economy in the delivery of public services. Drawing from case studies and current research, the articles in this symposium issue offer new and valuable insights into the dynamics and details of outsourcing the human resource function in the public sector. This introduction provides readers with a synopsis of the contributions to this symposium and urges further research avenues in the wake of findings presented here.

American Exceptionalism, Human Resource Management, and the Contract State

Durant, R. F., Girth, A. M., Johnston, J. M. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:45:03 PDT

With the nature, scope, and pace of public sector contracting accelerating significantly during the Bush administration, and with the Obama administration promising to curb the contracting excesses of its predecessors, it is useful to take stock and ponder the consequences of this movement to date for human resource management. This article puts public sector contracting and its effects in a larger historical, political, and democratic context by (a) reviewing the American propensity for market-based solutions (including contracting) to government problems, a disposition rooted in American exceptionalist values; (b) chronicling how that predisposition has manifested itself in four successive and now overlapping expansions of contracting (from products, to services, to core governmental functions, to human resource management functions); and (c) showing how these developments have had significant consequences not only for the future of the public service but also for the values associated with democratic constitutionalism in the United States.

Extreme Outsourcing in Local Government: At the Top and All But the Top

Bradbury, M. D., Waechter, G. D. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:45:03 PDT

The prevailing paradigm of outsourcing in local government assumes high-level professional administrators make systematic assessments of program areas to determine whether a selected number could be delivered for a reduced cost and at a higher quality by an external provider. This article examines two fundamental deviations from this model occurring in local governments. First, a handful of newly incorporated cities have adopted a wholesale approach to contracting out, relying almost exclusively on private firms and other governmental jurisdictions for the production of core programs while employing only a handful of in-house staff. Conversely, several small towns and cities across North Carolina deliver most services and programs in house by permanent staff but contract out the highest-level administrative position, that of town or city manager. These strategies represent outsourcing at its most extreme and present important practical and paradigmatic challenges to public human resource management in contemporary subnational governance.

Harnessing Private Incentives in Public Education

Ritter, G. W., Maranto, R., Buck, S. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:45:03 PDT

The authors examine how personnel managers in the educational public sector might employ variants of privatization to achieve public goals. Privatization supporters see it as a magic bullet to improve failing public schools, whereas opponents view it as a threat to public education. The authors argue for a more complex understanding of privatization in public education. Analysts typically overlook the potential for privatization to change traditional personnel practices and the incentives of public servants. Accordingly, the authors define privatization as including the incentives employed within organizations. By this definition, many public bureaucracies may currently serve private interests. The authors then discuss various means of privatization in public education, including vouchers, public charter schools, subcontracting public school management to private providers, and merit pay for teachers. After describing the extant literature and case studies of various forms of privatization, the authors conclude that privatization, broadly defined, can align the private interests of employees with public values.

The Impact of Relational Factors on Contracting Management in Public Organizations

Lee, S., Kingsley, G. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:45:03 PDT

This study examines how public managers perceive the value of contractors who hire former agency employees. We find that contractors strategically hire former agency employees to ensure the accomplishment of contract work, potential renewal, and extension of the current project. Although it is unclear whether agency managers prefer contractors who are the agency’s former employees to contractors who have no prior connection with the agency, it is clear that they tend to hire contractors who are more familiar with the agency rules, policies, and inside practices rather than those who are not. However, frequency of interaction with current contractors and contract management experience in the private sector do not have any significant effect on the favorable perception of the agency managers toward increasing contracting out. The findings have important implications for human resource managers, particularly when agencies expand and diversify sources of human resources to increase the overall capacity of agencies.

Privatizing Human Resources in the Public Sector: Legal Challenges to Outsourcing the Human Resource Function

Battaglio, R. P., Ledvinka, C. B. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:45:03 PDT

The inclination to privatize public services has raised a number of challenges for practitioners and researchers alike. Although proponents of market reform continue to champion the promises of efficiency, a growing body of research would suggest that there is still much we do not know about privatization’s limitations. This article examines the legal challenges public managers may encounter when faced with the "make-or-buy" decision in human resource—related services. The analysis suggests that public managers have the potential both to reduce liability and to reinforce merit and equity by recognizing the need for expertise in constitutional, statutory, regulatory, and contract law and by working to use the outsourcing contract as a mechanism to integrate public values into private sector human resources production.

Working Across the Divide: Job Involvement in the Public and Nonprofit Sectors

Word, J., Sung Min Park, — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:11:44 PDT

Job involvement is a principal factor in the lives of most people; employees in the workplace are mentally and emotionally influenced by their degree of involvement in work. Using the data from the National Administrative Studies Project III, this study empirically compares the level of job involvement between managers in the public and nonprofit sectors and explores different aspects including demographic, managerial, and institutional factors that contribute to the apparent differences. The results of the study indicate that the mean level of nonprofit managers' job involvement is significantly greater than for public managers. Each sector had specific variables that significantly and uniquely contributed to job involvement. Overall, the results suggest a need to more fully investigate the various mechanisms and functions of situational and organizational contexts, organizational norms, and culture that were associated with job involvement regardless of sector. Implications and limitations of this research are also discussed.

Public Management Mentoring: A Three-Tier Model

Bozeman, B., Feeney, M. K. — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:11:44 PDT

Despite the abundance of literature discussing the individual and organizational outcomes of mentoring, this general literature remains virtually silent on the role of mentoring in the public sector. The authors review and critique the mentoring literature, indicating its limitations for understanding mentoring in a public management context. In particular, the authors highlight the interdependence of organizations, the opportunity structures of the public sector, and public service motivation that mediate the outcomes of mentoring in the public sector. The authors then present a three-tier model that focuses on public management mentoring outcomes. The three-tier model marries the unique context of public sector work to the extensive mentoring literature and lays the groundwork for a theory of public management mentoring. The authors employ the model to generate propositions about public management mentoring outcomes. These propositions should prove useful for theory development but also for application in public sector mentoring relationships and programs.

Can Performance Appraisal Systems Inspire Intrinsically Motivated Employees?

Seong Soo Oh, , Lewis, G. B. — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:11:44 PDT

Can a performance appraisal system (PAS) elicit better performance from an intrinsically motivated workforce? By explicitly linking extrinsic rewards to performance, a PAS might actually discourage the work effort of the primarily intrinsically motivated federal workforce. Data from the 2000 Merit Principles Survey show that few federal employees believe that the PAS increases their productivity. Logit analysis confirms that intrinsically motivated employees are more skeptical of the effectiveness of PAS than are extrinsically motivated employees who are demographically similar, work in similar positions, and have similar beliefs about the fairness of the system and the probability of being rewarded for superior performance.

Decentralization of HR Functions: Lessons From the Singapore Civil Service

Tessema, M. T., Soeters, J. L., Ngoma, A. — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:11:44 PDT

In the past two decades, nearly every country in the world has felt the urge to decentralize some of its human resource (HR) functions. This article uses Singapore as a case study to illustrate how this urge has been addressed in civil service reforms during the past two decades. In so doing, the article also highlights the necessity as well as the theoretical and practical implications of the decentralization process to the organizational arrangement of HR functions in the civil service of Singapore. The article concludes that, as countries seek to decentralize HR functions in the civil service, understanding how this process works is cardinal to enhancing coordination and the efficient delivery of public services. For without this understanding, it is not possible to determine which functions must be decentralized and which ones must not be. Some popular myths and misconceptions about decentralization are also explored.

The New Mental Health Parity Law: Issues and Concerns for Public and Private Sector Employers

French, P. E., Goodman, D. — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:11:44 PDT

On October 3, 2008, Congress passed the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Act (MHPAA) as part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. The MHPAA does not require insurance providers to offer insurance coverage for mental illness and addictions, but if they are covered, there must be parity with other health coverage. This article summarizes the MHPAA and discusses the possible consequences to public sector employers. The authors also explore the possible court challenges to the MHPAA under the Eleventh Amendment.

Book Review: Maranto, R. (2005). Beyond a Government of Strangers: How Career Executives and Political Appointees Can Turn Conflict to Cooperation. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books

Mann, S. — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:11:44 PDT

The Supreme Court and the Continuing Deconstitutionalization of Public Personnel Management

Roberts, R. — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:18:14 PST

In Engquist v. Oregon Department of Agriculture, the Supreme Court held that public employees may not use the so-called equal protection clause of class-of-one doctrine to challenge the constitutionality of arguably arbitrary adverse personnel actions. In the 2000 case of Village of Willowbrook v. Olech, the high court had authorized citizens to bring class-of-one equal protection lawsuits to challenge arguably arbitrary discretionary decisions by government officials. The decision provides further evidence of the ongoing effort by a majority of the Roberts Court to limit the constitutional rights of public employees. The article argues that the ongoing deconstitutionalization of public personnel management has significant implications for the management of public organizations. If the trend continues, public employees, much like their private sector counterparts, will become much more dependent on statutory protections and collective bargaining agreements to protect them from arbitrary personnel decisions.

State Government "Little Hatch Acts" in an Era of Civil Service Reform: The State of the Nation

Bowman, J. S., West, J. P. — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:18:14 PST

The defining characteristic of modern public service—insulation of civil servants from political manipulation and protection of the public from partisan administration of the law—is undergoing change as a result of contemporary civil service reform. It is in this context that "little" state Hatch Acts, laws modeled after the 1939 federal statute, are examined. This exploratory analysis reports survey and interview data from officials charged with implementing their state's law to gauge its effectiveness in today's reform era. After a review of the literature and a description of the methodology, the findings are presented, followed by a discussion of their implications for the future.

Performance Outcomes: The Relationship Between Managing the "Heart" and Managing Client Satisfaction

Hsieh, C.-W., Guy, M. E. — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:18:14 PST

Recent appreciation for emotional labor draws attention to employees who work "with heart" to deliver public services. This article reports an investigation of the relationship between emotional labor and service outcomes. The survey sample is drawn from caseworkers of the Florida Network of Youth & Family Services. The Florida Network is the main youth service provider in Florida and has approximately 200 caseworkers who help troubled, runaway youth. To measure service outcome, workers' self-report of their emotion work skills is compared to client satisfaction scores. Findings indicate that clients rate higher levels of satisfaction when services are provided by caseworkers who feel capable and comfortable performing emotion work. This research moves us a step further in understanding the linkage between individual performance, emotion work, and public service delivery. It is argued that emotion work skills should be included in job descriptions and performance appraisals for human service jobs.

Paradoxes of Collaboration: Managerial Decision Styles

Cunningham, R., Olshfski, D., Abdelrazek, R. — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:18:14 PST

Collaboration is a warm, friendly word currently used to describe a cooperative manager—subordinate relationship. In this study, the authors first specify a meaning for collaboration and then, from stories told by competent cabinet members at the state level, extract evidence of collaborative and directive managerial relationships in problem solving. Based on these stories, collaboration is usefully seen as one tool among several (directive, devolution, collaboration) rather than as a consistent manager style. Therefore, from the perspective of style, managerial behavior is more paradoxical than consistent. As a sidebar, devolution emerges as closer to directive behavior than to collaborative behavior as a way of relating to subordinates.

Implications of the Family and Medical Leave Act for Local Governments: Helping Administrators Understand the Law

French, P. E. — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:18:14 PST

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was enacted in 1993 to help full-time employees balance the conflicting demands of their work and personal lives. Private employers with 50 or more employees (at a single work site) and all federal, state, and local government employers are required to comply with the act. Since its inception, many local governments have been sued for violations of its guidelines. This research provides case examples from across the United States to illustrate why many local governments have faced litigation under this act. Several cases filed against cities and counties over the past 7 years are discussed. The intent of this analysis is to highlight many of the legal rights and protections that the FMLA affords to local government employees, to provide a practical understanding and guide for compliance with the requirements of this employment legislation.

Retaliation Lawsuits Held Applicable for Federal Employees Under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act: A Victory for Older Federal Workers: The Supreme Court's Decision in Gomez-Perez v. Potter, Postmaster General

Mitchell, C. E. — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:18:14 PST

In a decision having much to do with what is implied in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) but not explicitly stated, the Supreme Court ruled that federal sector employees are not precluded from filing retaliation lawsuits under the ADEA. Relying on precedent decisions as well as established legislative intent, the Supreme Court rejected several arguments of the government in what the Court considered a narrow interpretation of the federal sector provision of the ADEA statute at §633a. The ruling affirmed that federal sector employees have the same protection as do private sector employees in all aspects of the ADEA statute.

Book Review: Human Resource Management and Public Sector Leadership: Van Wart, M. (with Suino, P.). (2008). Leadership in Public Organizations: An Introduction. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Van Wart, M., & Dicke, L. (Eds.). (2008). Administrative Leadership in the Public Sector. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Morse, R., Buss, T., & Kinghorn, C. (Eds.). (2007). Transforming Public Leadership for the 21st Century. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe

Spice, S. — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:18:14 PST