Suchergebnisse

This article develops a strategic research agenda for public human resource management. The agenda originates from the perception that research about public human resources has matured during the Review of Public Personnel Administration's 30 years of publication and now is an appropriate juncture to initiate an intentional and strategic agenda. The author identifies criteria for developing a strategic research agenda that seeks to advance useable knowledge about public human resource management, build theory, and mark out content distinctive to public institutions. The article inventories research as reported by the Review of Public Personnel Administration and two other leading human resource management journals. These inventories help to anchor the agenda in timely issues and to triangulate on distinctively public issues. The article concludes with five priority research agenda based on the criteria the author developed and the inventory of research: direct compensation, motivation, culture and political context, efficacy and effectiveness, and training and development.

President Jimmy Carter initiated the most sweeping reforms of the U.S. federal civil service in 95 years when he signed the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) on October 13, 1978. This introduction reviews the substantive reforms whose implementation began with creation of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), on January 1, 1979. CSRA's provisions were wide-ranging. They included reorganization of the agencies tasked with civil service management and regulation, establishment of a Senior Executive Service, creation of performance appraisal and merit pay programs, and clarification and simplification of appeal procedures for personnel actions. The introduction concludes with summaries of the five articles that appear in the symposium and their significance in the context of CSRA and developments of the past 30 years.

In 1968, Frederick Mosher published his influential book Democracy and the Public Service. This article revisits themes Mosher developed in the book to assess the status of our democracy in the context of a new public service. The author argues that the new public service poses significant challenges for democracy. One is that new public service is simultaneously more heterogeneous and more loosely tied to traditions of public service. Another attribute is that the rules embedded in new governance structures, which are tied to market forces, are likely the most compelling influences on behavior in the new public service. A third attribute is that the flexibilities of the new public service create a work world in which attachments are temporary and their temporariness may break down bonds among citizens and public servants. The author offers four proposals for reconciling democracy and the new public service.

Civic service is well established in North America, where the United States and Canada are among the world leaders. The evolution of civic service has not been a story of continuous growth but rather one of episodic and cyclical development. The past decade's events indicate that civic service is in a new cycle of growth and innovation. Among the reasons for the health of civic service in North America are the institutional structures there that define it. Civic service institutions in Mexico, largely because of its status as a developing country, are less accessible and less supportive of the service role than institutions in the rest of North America, where civic service is widely accessible to all types of servers and all social sectors are legitimately perceived as civic service providers. Open access is complemented by incentives and support for servers and organizations providing service opportunities. Several priorities are identified for further research.

Books reviewed in this article:Jonathan G. S. Koppell, The Politics of Quasi‐Government: Hybrid Organizations and the Dynamics of Bureaucratic Control