Chapter 11: Civil Service Reform: A Closer Look

Chapter 11: Civil Service Reform: A Closer Look

Public employers across the United States have frequently turned to “civil service” reform” when confronted with challenging political and fiscal circumstances. Such reforms have ranged form relatively minor or incremental adjustments to comprehensive, fundamental, changes. Typically they reflect intellectual and ideological trends in the environment of government and its administrative agencies. “Bureaucrats” and the systems they work in and administer matter greatly on all levels of society, and they profoundly influence the way we are governed. Among other things, it is through the personnel or human resource function that public agencies recruit and select, train and develop, and manage the performance of public workers.

The causes of civil service reform and the contexts within which it takes place are widely varied, but there are at least three kinds of reasons for such initiatives. The first reason is ideology, or a belief by policy makers that a particular approach to human resources policy and management will lead to better outcomes of all sorts. A second set of reasons for civil service reform is political. Reforms are designed to re-align or cement the relative power positions of the actors and stakeholders that depend on government bureaucracies for a wide variety of resources. Reforms are vehicles used to establish and advance political interests’ ability to influence public policy and the resulting allocations of resources. Reforms may also serve as political symbols designed to convince the public that elected officials are indeed responsive to public opinion and really are working hard to improve government performance. The third set of reasons for civil service reform is technical. It encompasses a wide range of efforts to design and implement human resource management system changes that executives, managers, and personnel specialists believe will improve performance on one or more levels of government bureaucracy.

The basic challenge of reform has not changed: civil service institutions are still asked to provide public employees who are highly competent and ethical, bureaucracies that are efficient and effective, and civil servants who are responsive to public policies and executive leadership. The ongoing challenge has been and continues to be the “invention” of civil service and human resource management systems that promote responsiveness in its broadest sense, foster the accountability to electorates and other segments of society required of a strong democracy, and support the achievement of desired performance outcomes.