Chapter 2: Public Personnel Administration: An Historical Overview
The organizational functions now associated with public personnel administration have been around for many thousands of years.
The Era of Political Responsiveness: Patronage and Spoils
The initial public service on all levels of government in the United States was political or partisan – public employees were expected to actively work for and in many cases financially support candidates for elective office on all levels of government. There was no separation between partisan politics and administration in practice.
“Fitness of Character” as described by President Washington meant that the person was of good character, was able to do the work involved, and was in conformity with the political views and policy objectives of the chief executive and his associates.
Civil Service Reform I: Neutral Competence in Government
By advancing “neutral competence” as the core value of public service, the civil service reformers sought to undermine a critical element of the machine’s base of electoral power and administrative control – the patronage.
Implementing Neutral Competence with Merit Systems
The merit principle dictates that appointments, promotions, and other personnel actions should be made exclusively on the basis of relative ability and job performance. This idea has usually meant the administration of competitive examinations to measure qualifications. Scores on these “objective” tests are then used to rank applicants. For other personnel actions such as pay raises, reduction-in-force, and dismissals, the assumption has also been that the employee’s “merit” could be determined through performance appraisals and that he or she should be treated accordingly. Government personnel systems based on these values and assumptions are called merit systems.
The law called for a merit system based on three interrelated concepts:
o Open competitive examinations as the basis for selection
o Political neutrality by employees
o Relative security of tenure – employees would be removed only for reasons having to do with malfeasance in office
o They were not to be removed for political reasons
For the most part, administrators of merit systems concentrated on “keeping the rascals out” by severely constraining line management’s role in personnel matters.
Positive Personnel Administration
Insights of human relations could be applied to the personnel function in the following ways:
o Attending to social and psychological factors in productivity such as supervisory leadership, incentives, and the design of jobs and work settings
o Focusing attention on the behavioral as well as technical skills and conditions people need to develop their potential and to function effectively in the workplace.
o Recognizing the importance of effective supervision on the social and psychological levels.
o Increasing the knowledge base of personnel administration.
o Requiring personnel workers themselves to have sufficiently broad backgrounds of training and experience to understand human behavior.
Collective Bargaining in Government
Is a process by which employer and employee representatives negotiate a contract governing specified terms and conditions of employment. For many personnel administrators, public employee unionization and collective bargaining were in the same category as spoils: something to be vigorously resisted on the legal, legislative, and organizational levels.
Expanding the Constitutional Rights of Public Employees
Historically, the courts had ruled that employees did not have any rights in the job that were based on the Constitution. Thus, I fixing the terms of employment, the public employer could and often did deny workers civil and political rights universally enjoyed by those in the private sector.
From Exclusive to Inclusive Personnel Policies and Practices
There has been a long and well-known history of discrimination directied against minorities and women both the private and the public sectors. Social norms, unequal educational opportunities, the exclusion of minorities from the political process, and intentional discrimination by personnel administrators played major roles in the exclusion of minorities and women from all but the lowest levels of the public service.
Civil Service Reform II: Effective and Responsive Government Administration
Management possessed the capacity to reward good performers and to discipline and remove poor performers who did not improve the quality of their work. Merit plans were instilled and were very helpful in getting legislative approval of civil service reform packages on the federal and state levels, but they proved to be very difficult to implement and evaluations of their effects on performance were discouraging.
The Higher Civil Service
Responsible for the administration of federal agencies and for the coordinated policy direction of the federal agencies and for the coordinated policy direction of the federal establishment. The higher civil service provides much of the day-to-day expertise and leadership necessary for successful governance.
Recruitment and Retention of Qualified Personnel
Recruiting talented people with needed technical and professional skills had become difficult in an increasingly competitive labor market. Similarly, turnover and early retirements were undermining the foundation of experiencing and skill federal agencies needed to function effectively.
Performance and Productivity
Ability of the federal personnel management system to promote and sustain a “culture of performance.”
The organizational functions now associated with public personnel administration have been around for many thousands of years.
The Era of Political Responsiveness: Patronage and Spoils
The initial public service on all levels of government in the United States was political or partisan – public employees were expected to actively work for and in many cases financially support candidates for elective office on all levels of government. There was no separation between partisan politics and administration in practice.
“Fitness of Character” as described by President Washington meant that the person was of good character, was able to do the work involved, and was in conformity with the political views and policy objectives of the chief executive and his associates.
Civil Service Reform I: Neutral Competence in Government
By advancing “neutral competence” as the core value of public service, the civil service reformers sought to undermine a critical element of the machine’s base of electoral power and administrative control – the patronage.
Implementing Neutral Competence with Merit Systems
The merit principle dictates that appointments, promotions, and other personnel actions should be made exclusively on the basis of relative ability and job performance. This idea has usually meant the administration of competitive examinations to measure qualifications. Scores on these “objective” tests are then used to rank applicants. For other personnel actions such as pay raises, reduction-in-force, and dismissals, the assumption has also been that the employee’s “merit” could be determined through performance appraisals and that he or she should be treated accordingly. Government personnel systems based on these values and assumptions are called merit systems.
The law called for a merit system based on three interrelated concepts:
o Open competitive examinations as the basis for selection
o Political neutrality by employees
o Relative security of tenure – employees would be removed only for reasons having to do with malfeasance in office
o They were not to be removed for political reasons
For the most part, administrators of merit systems concentrated on “keeping the rascals out” by severely constraining line management’s role in personnel matters.
Positive Personnel Administration
Insights of human relations could be applied to the personnel function in the following ways:
o Attending to social and psychological factors in productivity such as supervisory leadership, incentives, and the design of jobs and work settings
o Focusing attention on the behavioral as well as technical skills and conditions people need to develop their potential and to function effectively in the workplace.
o Recognizing the importance of effective supervision on the social and psychological levels.
o Increasing the knowledge base of personnel administration.
o Requiring personnel workers themselves to have sufficiently broad backgrounds of training and experience to understand human behavior.
Collective Bargaining in Government
Is a process by which employer and employee representatives negotiate a contract governing specified terms and conditions of employment. For many personnel administrators, public employee unionization and collective bargaining were in the same category as spoils: something to be vigorously resisted on the legal, legislative, and organizational levels.
Expanding the Constitutional Rights of Public Employees
Historically, the courts had ruled that employees did not have any rights in the job that were based on the Constitution. Thus, I fixing the terms of employment, the public employer could and often did deny workers civil and political rights universally enjoyed by those in the private sector.
From Exclusive to Inclusive Personnel Policies and Practices
There has been a long and well-known history of discrimination directied against minorities and women both the private and the public sectors. Social norms, unequal educational opportunities, the exclusion of minorities from the political process, and intentional discrimination by personnel administrators played major roles in the exclusion of minorities and women from all but the lowest levels of the public service.
Civil Service Reform II: Effective and Responsive Government Administration
Management possessed the capacity to reward good performers and to discipline and remove poor performers who did not improve the quality of their work. Merit plans were instilled and were very helpful in getting legislative approval of civil service reform packages on the federal and state levels, but they proved to be very difficult to implement and evaluations of their effects on performance were discouraging.
The Higher Civil Service
Responsible for the administration of federal agencies and for the coordinated policy direction of the federal agencies and for the coordinated policy direction of the federal establishment. The higher civil service provides much of the day-to-day expertise and leadership necessary for successful governance.
Recruitment and Retention of Qualified Personnel
Recruiting talented people with needed technical and professional skills had become difficult in an increasingly competitive labor market. Similarly, turnover and early retirements were undermining the foundation of experiencing and skill federal agencies needed to function effectively.
Performance and Productivity
Ability of the federal personnel management system to promote and sustain a “culture of performance.”
No comments:
Post a Comment