Personnel management and productivity reform: Taming the civil service in Great Britain and the United States

This paper examines recent efforts to improve public sector productivity through reform of personnel systems and processes in Great Britain and the United States. Productivity efforts in both countries have been stimulated by and implemented in highly politicized environments. They have been attempts to secure the values of not only economy and efficiency, but also executive leadership and political responsiveness. The implications of these productivity reforms for the performance and character of the public service have been only dimly understood.     

Personnel management and productivity reform: Taming the civil service in Great Britain and the United States

This paper examines recent efforts to improve public sector productivity through reform of personnel systems and processes in Great Britain and the United States. Productivity efforts in both countries have been stimulated by and implemented in highly politicized environments. They have been attempts to secure the values of not only economy and efficiency but also executive leadership and political responsiveness. The implica-tions of these productivity reforms for the performance and character of the public service have been only dimly understood.     

Ad-hocracy and the future of the civil service

Negative attitudes of citizes toward bureaucrats, the growing attention to contracting out and privatization, and the increasing sense of professionalism among public sector employees will shape the future of the civil service. The need to employ technocrats in order to carry out mission that are growing in complexity requires new organizational arrangements. For some agencies Alvin Toffler's idea of ad-hocracy may be the basis for such new arrangements.     

Legal reform need not come first: Merit‐based civil service management in law and practice

Introducing merit recruitment of public servants is a central good governance reform. To move towards merit in practice, legislation which mandates merit recruitment is considered a necessary but insufficient first step by many scholars and practitioners. Merit‐based civil service legislation should thus be sought before reform in practice. This article challenges this reasoning. It argues that merit laws are neither sufficient nor necessary: they leave the incumbent's possibility frontier for patronage and meritocracy in practice unaffected. Large‐ and small‐n evidence supports this assertion. Analyses of an original dataset of coded civil service legislation in 117 countries from 1975 to 2015 suggest that countries can attain meritocratic recruitment with and without legal merit requirements. Subsequently, a comparison of Paraguay and the Dominican Republic provides micro‐evidence for the underlying mechanism. Conventional wisdom about the sequencing of governance reforms in developing countries may thus be misleading: legal reform need not come first.     

From retrenchment to performance: civil service reform in Africa

Whether or not an unfettered market is the best solution to Africa's problems, the public service is both the subject and the object of reform. It is an arena of policy change and adjustment in economic management, as well as the locus of struggle over principles and patterns of administrative practice. Below we take empirical stock of the patterns and progress made in public service reform in Africa, a process characterized by cost containment and retrenchment. Then we examine what is entailed in a qualitatively different public service that well serves a liberal economy, concluding with observations on whether and how that might happen in Africa.     

Designing China's civil service system: general principles and realities

In examining how Chinese policy makers and law drafters defined problems and formulated solutions, this article seeks to address two questions. First, the authors consider the extent to which China's civil service system has embraced principles and features of Western civil service systems. Second, the authors illustrate the political nature of the attempt to establish a civil service system, which severely limits a rational policy design in China. As a result of the political regression since June 1989, the present civil service system has experienced little change.     

Towards pluralism and partnership in management development in local government

'Joined-up government' has been a policy thrust characterising much of the first term of the Labour government. The last four years have seen a flourish of area-based and local partnership initiatives. Information and IT are seen as crucial to facilitate joined-up government and improved service delivery at both central and local level. Ambitious targets are thus set to make all dealings with government deliverable electronically by 2005. This article examines data sharing in a local partnership, using as an example the preparation of the Children's Service Plan 2000-2003 in the city of Sheffield, setting out the national policy background, with particular reference to children's services plans; introducing the project; discussing the results obtained in the data collection exercise, and concluding that the organisational and cultural change necessary to share information effectively require time, and above all a period of relative stability to mature and take hold.     

Adoption of comprehensive risk management in local government

In the aftermath of large company failures in the early 2000s, there emerged a new wave of efforts to enhance risk management (RM) and control in enterprises. The normative RM model has been promoted widely to all organisations, including public sector organisations. Using survey data, this article describes and explains the diffusion and adoption of RM innovation in local government in Finland. Our survey results support the argument that if comprehensive RM is not obligatory, it is not widely used in local government. Our analysis reveals that financial constraints explain to some extent the existence of comprehensive RM in municipalities, while structural factors such as the size of municipalities do not, even though RM is slightly more advanced in larger rather than smaller local governments. Slow adoption indicates that comprehensive RM as a managerial innovation lacks immediate benefit when assessed against the efforts and costs of its introduction and maintenance.     

Crisis management shoring up america's economy and government

Credit crunches, loss of competitiveness, and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, in both business and government, are the most serious crisis problems now confronting a growing number of modern nations and this irrespetive of political persuasion. Further, the ultimate practical way these traumatic experiences can be alleviated and in future avoided is by an increase of governing capacity.

More people in top positions need the qualities of the old-fashioned businessman, more legislators and policy makers need the long view; a perspective which includes survival knowledge as well as how to find balance in social change.

Administrators who devote their whole lives to seeking the public good need more freedom and opportunity to experiment and innovate. The worst aspects of bureaucracy are found in all systems, and the nations that are courageous and resourceful enough to face them head-on and overcome them are the ones most likely to survive.

Survival today appears in many guises. Can the nation-state survive? How, short of a restored internal citizen control, can you make democracy have real content? How can you possibly avoid stalemate and social disorder until responsibility for results is nailed down to the extent of assuring structural cooperation when survival of life or a way of life is at stake? It is even possible that the role of citizenship is more important than the role of the market system as now practiced.

For all these survival problems of business and government there are known, viable, managerial solutions. The sooner a nation analyzes its range of solutions and eventually forms a consensus, the more secure everyone will be and the sooner social upheaval and violence will be dealt with effectively. Crises are but the inevitable spinoffs of public lethargy, muddled goals and thinking.

What America in particular needs at this juncture, is nothing short of compelling, workable, goals. Goals that will unify and inspire as they overcome the reckless expenditure of money and resources over a relatively short period in the past.

The impersonal business cycle does not control nations’ destinies. Only improved governance, combining policy and results, can do that job.

We Americans need a New Federalism for Third Century goals.     

Policy punctuations in the UK: fluctuations and equilibria in central government expenditure since 1951

Jones and Baumgartner's punctuated equilibrium model of agenda change has reinvigorated decision-making theory; moreover their US budget project offers a set of techniques to apply to UK data. We replicate the method by plotting percentage budget changes in central government budgets to see whether the distribution is normally distributed as predicted by the incrementalist account or leptokurtic as hypothesized by the punctuated equilibrium model. Taking the period 1951–96, we create 405 data points from budget changes from the National Income Accounts ('Blue Book') on agriculture, defence, social security, education, health, housing, industry, law and order and transport, all adjusted using the GDP deflator at factor cost. We find that the budget changes form a leptokurtic distribution. Such a pattern appears in most policy sectors.     

Constitutional values and civil servant recruitment: The principles for filling revenue service positions in Poland

The functioning of public administration should be consistent with the general interest, common to all citizens, and independent from the particularized interests of changing political forces. A condition for the proper functioning of administration is the selection of appropriate personnel to perform the duties defined by the state. According to the premises of this paper, the recruitment of personnel based upon objective criteria is of fundamental importance for the effective realization of the administration's mission. This article analyzes the weaknesses of personnel policy in fiscal administration in Poland after 1989 against the background of the broader process of creating a Polish civil service. The study aims at determining the extent to which the actual relations between politics and administration reflect legal regulations. The article focuses on personnel policy with regard to senior positions in fiscal administration, whose occupants have leverage over decision-making processes and human resources policy in various agencies. It turns out that after every parliamentary election there is major turnover in the personnel occupying senior positions in the fiscal administration offices, that is, the persons associated with the previous governing team are replaced with individuals enjoying the confidence of those who have just come to power. In light of these findings one can infer that, contrary to the constitutional principles guiding the functioning of the government administration in Poland, its politicians have deliberately designed legal regulations in such a manner as to enable them to assume control over fiscal administration.     

Symposium: Professionalization and professionalism in public administration

The Symposium on Professionalization and Professionalism in Public Administration, contained in this volume of The International Journal of Public Administration, presents some of the most recent outlooks of prominent scholars and practitioners in the field. They have offered their research and insights into a subject of perennial importance. They have charted the significant progress being made in public administration toward its professional development. This collection of refereed articles is a survey updating the evolution of the field in this regard. Several features are noteworthy. First, the articles are arrayed from general to specific--that is, from theoretical presentations and overviews to case studies. Second, the case studies have been arranged from the federal level to sub-national jurisdictions. Third, the Symposium examines not only professional developments in public administration but also the mechanisms engendering and supporting such changes--namely, associations and formal higher education.

In addition to their other relationships, the articles also bear epistimological links to one another. A precis of these contributions makes this point evident. The first article, “Specifying Elements of Professionalism and the Process of Professionalization” by John J. Gargan, offers an interdisciplinary perspective on these two concepts. His coverage suggests that characteristics of a profession are no different for public administration than they are for other disciplines in the social sciences or in the natural sciences as well, although the seventh essay in this symposium challenges this perspective. Gargan posits that all professions, developed as well as evolving, concern themselves with three broad issues: (1) theory generation (the creation of basic knowledge and the formation, alteration, or replacement of paradigms); (2) theory translation and advocacy (the establishment of education processes); and (3) theory implementation and routinization (the applications of knowledge to human affairs through standardized practice). All three processes are concomitants of one another, and public administration has been no exception.

The second contribution, “Public Official Associations and Professionalism” by Jeremy F. Plant and David S. Arnold, develops the second and third issues presented in Gargan's essay. They focus on the roles of associations as illustrations of a genre of education processes and as vehicles for bringing a greater degree of homogeneity to the field of public administration. Furthermore, they postulate that, in seeking to fulfill these roles, associations have been moving toward convergence. Their typology stipulates the existence of two kinds of public administration associations: (1) professional-specialist and (2) political-generalist. The first type, made up of public servant careerists, including members of federal and state senior executive services, has been becoming more political whereas the second kind, consisting of elected political officials (especially governors, mayors, and legislators) has been proceeding in a managerial direction, regardless of party affiliation and ideology. Both types of organizations are melding since they have become increasingly symbiotic hybrids. The authors captured this trend when they commented: “As players in the policy arena, professional association and generalist, political associations are increasingly finding ways to work together.”

The third essay, “The Ideology of Professionalism in Public Administration: Implications for Education” by Curtis Ventriss, also extends Gargan's work but in a narrower way than the Plant-Arnold article. Ventriss focuses on theory translation and advocacy not from an associational standpoint but from the vista of higher education. He fears that the pedagogical regime for public administration is succeeding too well in professionalizing the field and in thus making it more valuable in serving the state. He argues that professionalism tends to constrain thought in the discipline so that it cannot readily conceive of purposes apart from such service. This alleged parochialism detracts from what Ventriss thinks the primary purpose of public administration ought to be: the inculcation of citizenship. Radically, he proposes an end to traditional public administration instructional programs but scattering their elements among other disciplines. He questions implicitly the distinction, going back to Woodrow Wilson, between techniques, which can be value neutral, and their applications, which can involve normative choices. Stated another way, he asks whether public administration can be made safe for democracy because he doubts but hopes, like Frederick Mosher, that universities can perform such a function.

The fourth article, “The Future of Professionalization and Professionalism in Public Administration: Advancements, Barriers, and Prospects” by the co-editors of this symposium, is the last presentation falling within the framework of Gargan's piece. Whereas Gargan sought to delineate the nature of professional status, Gazell and Pugh examine the extent to which the field has reached this long-sought goal. They explore six broad areas of advancement and an equal number of obstacles and conclude that, despite widespread popular animus toward governments at all levels, the prospects of the field are favorable, mainly because of an expanding public need for its services. The authors view professionalization (process) and professionalism (result) as fully compatible with the achievement of a genuinely democratic state. In fact, the authors see professional status for public administration as necessary for making representative governments effective enough either to survive or become more democratic. There is always a risk that professional development could eventually become an end in itself, threatening the achievement of a pervasive democratic order. Implicit in the article are the ideas that the nexus between effectiveness and democracy is curvilinear but that the quest for effectiveness through professionalism has not yet reached a point of diminishing returns--that is, threatening democratic evolution.

The fifth presentation, “Professionalizing the American States in the 1990s” by Beverly A. Cigler, is the first of a series of essays reporting on the progress of professionalism in government at various levels. The author furnishes an overview of professional developments in state governments throughout the nation. In particular, she meticulously catalogs efforts toward professionalism in the executive branches of such governments, although coverage of the judicial and legislative branches would be necessary for a complete picture. However, such an expansion would have taken her far beyond the scope of her article. Especially notable is her exploration of executive reorganizations, commissions on effectiveness, and multi-agency initiatives. She sums up a potpourri of efforts, often gubernatorially inspired and sustained, by remarking: “Collectively, the various activities pursued by the states have the potential to change what government does and how it operates.” She sees executive-branch professionalization and professionalism as steps toward revitalizing (or reinventing) government at the state level.

The sixth article, “Professionalization within a Traditional Political Culture: A Case Study of South Carolina” by Steven W. Hays and Bruce F. Duke, represents a specific example of what Cigler covers generally. Hays and Duke make at least three significant contributions. One is that they chronicle the earliest movements toward professionalism in a state, leading to the possibility that it has had similar origins in other jurisdictions at this level of government. A second contribution is that such change can take place despite a spate of systemic obstacles such as decentralized personnel systems, fragmented political authority, and an absence of gubernatorial support. A third feature is the presentation of an interstate model for measuring professional development, including such criteria as public management certification, graduate degrees, and formal ethical codes. Despite various structural problems the authors argue: “Considering the distance traveled and the obstacles overcome, there is no disputing the conclusion that tremendous progress has occurred over the past two decades [in South Carolina].”

The seventh study, “Professional Leadership in Local Government” by Ruth Hoogland DeHoog and Gordon P. Whitaker, presents an overview of professionalization and professionalism at the local level. What is novel here is the suggestion that professionalism at this level of government may be different than at other realms of government and than in the private sector. Broadly speaking, the primary difference is that professionalism in the public sector, especially in government, involves less autonomy because of greater accountability for appointed and elected officials. In particular, there are three salient distinctions: a respect for expertise on the part of elected officials, deference to their legitimacy and authority, and an additional acceptance of responsibility to the people at large (that is, the public interest). Also stressed is a greater role of ethics in professional development with a highlighting of the role of the International City Management Association's efforts to bring improvement in this area. For instance, the authors point out: “Managers must learn these values through professional education, professional association contacts, and work with other professionals in local government.”

The eighth article in this symposium, “The Possibility of Professionalism in County Management” by James H. Svara, complements the DeHoog-Whitaker essay by providing a case study focusing on local public management in one state: North Carolina. Svara interviewed a cross-section of county executives and concerned himself with the extent of their professionalization and professionalism. To illuminate these developments, he compared the positions of county and city managers, using the latter as a model towards whom the former aspire. Generally, he found, that county executives have less authority (that is, fewer administrators under their direct control) than their municipal counterparts. However, he also discerned a narrowing gap between these two kinds of officials because of similar pre-job and in-service training received by them and the elected officials to whom they report. In addition, he noted that almost all of the counties in this state now have professional executives and that their advancement has been substantial.

The ninth--and final--contribution, “Decentralization and Initiative: TVA Returns to its Roots” by John G. Stewart and Rena C. Tolbert, is significant in at least four respects. First, the essay presents another case study of professional development--but at the local headquarters of a federal agency: Knoxville, Tennessee. Second, this research centers on professionalization and professionalism in a third (or mixed) sector organization--namely, a public corporation rather than a governmental agency. Third, the professional development of the TVA is distinctive because it has been internally generated, especially due to the efforts of its early leaders (David E. Lilienthal and Gordon R. Clapp), rather than externally imposed, as in the previous case studies. This provenance is analogous to what often takes place in the corporate sector. Lilienthal was instrumental in promoting organizational decentralization and grass-roots democracy as approaches toward improving the viability of a controversial governmental innovation, one widely regarded as “socialistic” at and after its inception. Clapp fostered a managerial culture promoting employee initiative, easy access to top executives, organizational teamwork, labor-management collaboration, and partnerships with states and localities through councils and conferences. Fourth, the authors traced professional development in the TVA through what in this symposium is a unique pattern: strong early efforts, retrenchment through bureaucratization, and, recently, a return to the agency's roots.     

The impacts of the revolution of 1978-1979 on the iranian bureaucracy and civil service

This paper deals with the complex relationship between bureaucracy and revolution. It explains some of the major impacts of the Iranian revolution of 1978-79 on the civil service and the bureaucracy of the country. Three major phases of the revolution are identified: the Provisional Government (February-November 1979), the turbulent radicalization (November 1979-1982), and the institutionalization, stabilization, and Islamization (1983- ).

The revolution was not only against the Shah, but also aimed at altering Iran’ bureaucratic machinery which, as a power instrument, served system- (regime-) enhancement. During the first and second periods, a debureaucratization of society and a democratization of the administrative system was begun. While the bureaucracy increased as a result of nationalization, its functions declined as more and more activities of public administration were taken over by the non-bureaucratic, independent grass-roots organizations that sprang up during and after the revolution.

This trend has been reversed during the third phase by the policy of consolidation, centralization, control and system-maintenance pursued by the Mousavi administration. A rebureaucratization of society commenced and application of most of the old laws and regulations was resumed. Patronage and many patho-logical behaviors, includinf corruption, of the bureaucracy are becoming pervasive again, resulting in the dissatisfaction of the general public. In short, despite some initial revolutiohary attempts to change its structure and nature, the bureaucracy has prevailed as a well-entrenched, established institution of power and administration in Iran.

Finally, the author briefly describes the sources of public dissatisfaction and suggests conceivable remedies. These involve major reforms in the Iranian bureaucracy to achieve both administrative efficiency and popular responsiveness.     

Between a rock and a hard place: Balancing the duties of political responsiveness and legality in the civil service

Civil servants play a key role in upholding the core democratic principles of majority rule and legality in daily government operations. Yet we know little about how civil servants balance these principles in practice—or why. This study asks and answers these questions by qualitatively and quantitatively analyzing Danish civil servants' responses to survey questions on dilemmas that force them to choose between their duty to be responsive to government and their duty to uphold the law. To explain their choices, the analysis draws on rational and sociological institutional theories of bureaucratic behavior. The results suggest that factors related to both rational self-interest and socialization explain that as many as one in four civil servants choose responsiveness over legality. Formal organizational roles also predict their behavior.