Minorities and the public service: a future perspective

This paper analyzes the future prospects of blacks and other minorities in the public service. It examines studies on race/role expectations of minority administrators, tokenism and marginality to discern trends in interethnic relations. It also discusses future demographic projections and their implications for majority/minority relations. Finally, the essay explains why public service careers are particularly significant for blacks and other minorities.     

The new public personnel and the new public service

The New Public Administration sought a public service whose legitimacy would be based, in part, on its promotion of “social equity.” Since 1968, several personnel changes congruent with the New Public Administration have occurred: traditional managerial authority over public employees has been reduced through collective bargaining and changes in constitutional doctrines; the public service has become more socially representative; establishing a representative bureaucracy has become an important policy goal; more emphasis is now placed on employee participation in the work place; and legal changes regarding public administrators’ liability have promoted an “inner check” on their behavior. At the same time, however, broad systemic changes involving decentralization and the relationship between political officials and career civil servants have tended to undercut the impact of those changes in personnel. The theories of Minnowbrook I, therefore, have proven insufficient as a foundation for a new public service. Grounding the public service's legitimacy in the U.S. Constitution is a more promising alternative and is strongly recommended.

The New Public Administration, like other historical calls for drastic administrative change in the United States, sought to develop a new basis for public administrative legitimacy. Earlier successful movements grounded the legitimacy of the public service in high social standing and leadership, representativeness and close relationship to political parties, or in putative political neutrality and scientific managerial and technical expertise. To these bases, the New Public Administration sought to add “social equity.” As George Frederickson explained, “Administrators are not neutral. They should be committed to both good management and social equity as values, things to be achieved, or rationales. “⁽¹⁾ Social equity was defined as “includ[ing] activities designed to enhance the political power and economic well being of … [disadvantaged] minorities.” It was necessary because “the procedures of representative democracy presently operate in a way that either fails or only very gradually attempts to reverse systematic discrimination against” these groups.⁽²⁾

Like the Federalists, the Jacksonians, and the civil service reformers and progressives before it, the New Public Administration focused upon administrative reform as a means of redistributing political power.⁽³⁾ Also, like these earlier movements, the New Public Administration included a model of a new type of public servant. This article sets forth that new model and considers the extent to which the major changes that have actually taken place in public personnel administration since 1968 are congruent with it. We find that while contemporary public personnel reflects many of the values and concerns advanced by the New Public Administration, substantial changes in the political environment of public administration have frustrated the development of a new public service that would encompass the larger goals and ideals expressed at Minnowbrook I. Building on the trends of the past two decades, this article also speculates about the future. Our conclusion is that ultimately the public service's legitimacy must be grounded in the Constitution. Although its focus is on macro-level political and administrative developments, the broad changes it discusses provide the framework from which many contemporary personnel work-life issues, such as pay equity and flexitime, have emerged.     

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.     

Information technology and education for the public service

Nation-wide surveys of graduate programs in public administration/affairs support assertions by critics that most programs do not provide students with adequate preparation for coping with information technology. This paper identifies the computer-related knowledge and skills demanded by the contemporary administrative workplace and, after analyzing the sufficiency of current curricula offerings, proposes three goals for education in the use and management of information technology and suggests curriculum revisions necessary to reach these goals. Finally, implementation problems associated with curricula revisions are identified and discussed.     

What is public service improvement?

Five conceptual models of public service improvement are derived from the large literature on organizational effectiveness. These are the goal, systems-resource, internal process, competing values and multiple constituency models. The strengths and weaknesses of each of these models is evaluated and a working definition of improvement is proposed. This emphasizes that concepts and measures of public service improvement are political rather than technical, and contingent rather than universal. Conclusions are drawn on the implications for academic research and policy development.     

Modernizing the public service in latin america: faradoxes of latin american public administration

This article presents impediments to the moderization of the public bureacracy in the Latin American region. These impediments are presented as paradoxes in order to emphasize both the contradications found in, and the America. The article presents examples from various cases it central and South America in order to show the lack of a public service tradition, the obstacles of patronage and corruption, the Opportunity costs of bureacratic development, the difficulty of reform, and the drawbacks of professionalization. It concludes with some suggestions, groped under the general strategies of insulation and fortification, about how to evercome these impeciments.     

Preparing public service agencies for strategic planning

This paper examines the reasons why public sector organizations may not be ready for traditional private sector strategic planning techniques and suggests a typology for diagnosing the CBO's position in relation to planning efforts. It identifies the need for interventions appropriate to the organization climate and begins to explore mechanisms which can be used to facilitate the strategic planning process in public service agencies.     

Intermunicipal cooperation,public spending and service levels

ABSTRACT

Local governments can increase size in particular policy fields through cooperation with other local governments. This is often thought to improve efficiency, but there is little empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis. We study the case of the Netherlands, which has been a veritable laboratory of intermunicipal cooperation (IMC), using panel data for 2005–2013. We find no evidence that IMC reduces total spending of the average municipality. Indeed, IMC seems to increase spending in small and large municipalities, leaving spending in mid-sized municipalities unaffected. In one specific field, tax collection, spending may be reduced through IMC. Spending in this field is low, which may explain why total spending is unaffected. Instead of lowering spending, municipalities may have used possible cost savings as a result of IMC to improve public service levels. We do not find evidence substantiating this hypothesis, however.     

Public service: present problems,future prospects

The concept of public service, which is too often approached simplistically, is worthy of both support and serioui reexamination. Contributors to this symposium provide four distinct perspectives which, taken as a whole, provide an optimistic view of possibilities for solving problems associated with this necessary and productive link in our social fabric.     

Measuring public service productivity: case study from thailand

This case study, measuring the productivity of garbage collection and disposal in Thailand, is an example of public service productivity assessment. It suggests that variations in the productivity of garbage services in the localities studied are explained by such factors as local politics and administration, popular participation, service production volume, central control measures, local fiscal stress, local physical conditions and program management. Amongst these factors local politics and administration are the most significant.     

Representative bureaucracy,international organizations and public service bargains

Academic interest in the administrative aspects of international organizations is on the rise. Yet, an issue that has received little attention is bureaucratic representation—the extent to which international bureaucracies are representative of the polity that they serve. The article theorizes the rationales for and forms of representative bureaucracy in international organizations by combining insights from the representative bureaucracy literature with the ‘public service bargains’ framework. It argues that bureaucratic representation is highly relevant in international organizations, given the diverse polity these organizations serve and their precarious legitimacy. It distinguishes three types of representational ‘bargains’ between international organizations and those they serve, centred on power, equal opportunities and diversity, and discusses under which conditions each type of bargain is likely to be struck. The argument contributes to discussions about representative bureaucracy in international organizations and to broader theoretical debates about international public administration.     

Yours emotionally: How emotional intelligence infuses public service motivation and affects the job outcomes of public personnel

We investigate the role of emotions in the public sector and their relation with work outcomes typical of public arenas. We focus on the emotional intelligence of public healthcare staff and its potential impact on public service motivation, job satisfaction, affective commitment and the quality of service to citizens. Using data from 200 nurses in a large Israeli public hospital, we examine a mixed model of direct and indirect relationships. The findings support direct positive relationships between emotional intelligence, public service motivation and job outcomes, and several indirect relationships: (1) the mediating effect of public service motivation in the relationship between emotional intelligence and affective commitment, and (2) the moderating role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between public service motivation and service quality. The impact of public service motivation on self‐reported service quality is stronger for public employees with more emotional intelligence.     

Poland,Germany and the EU: Reimagining Central Europe

Abstract

In this article, we look at the fissures in United Europe from both sides of the region where a post-Cold War ‘Middle/Central Europe’ should have been forged. How do leading German and Polish newspapers treat the categories of ‘Central’ or ‘Middle’ Europe relative to the concept of the Eastern–Western European divide and what are the discourses associated with these perspectives? At the time of a looming redefinition of the entire European project, what can media reports from Germany and Poland tell us about its future? We conclude that the media narratives in these two countries portend further tensions for European unity, since the new divisions now overlap the old ones. Our findings have implications for the future of democracy in the newly democratic countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland.     

Perspectives on rebuilding the public service: Critique of an inadequate managerial orientation

The National Commission on the Public Service recently reported its recommendations for revitalizing the federal service, and this significant effort deserves and requires searching analysis. This critique highlights several inadequacies of scope and approach, all falling under the rubric of the Commission's “managerial orientation,” viewed from both narrow and broad perspectives. In the present view, these inadequacies raise serious doubts about the actions which the Commission associates with the basic recommendations about increasing federal compensation. Some observers will insist that the Commission recommendations are political documents with a narrow focus on necessary increases in federal compensation, and that this worthwhile goal places critical commentary in the class of niggling or whining.     

Credentialism,meritocracy, and merit: educational requirements and the public service

The American myth of mobility suggests that educational attainment, as evidenced by some credential, is the road to achievement for everyone. This has never been entirely true, but recent trends suggest that the educational credential may increasingly limit as well as offer opportunity. Additional educational requirements have often been equated with increasing the “professionalism” of the public service, but they may also serve as a reason to keep out minorities or women now that non-meritorious discriminatory barriers have been eliminated by the courts. Examples from Mississippi and New York are cited. Although the courts have been vigilant in insisting that tests and other selection devices be validated, they have been much more tolerant of educational requirements, often failing to subject them to the stringent tests of job relatedness and validity. Even when a particular government unit is willing to lower credential barriers that cannot clearly be justified, it may be subject to pressures from other government units or associations, focusing on “improving” professional qualifications.     

Exploring the foundational origins of public service motivation through the lens of behavioral genetics

Despite the proliferation of research on public service motivation (PSM), fundamental questions about its origins continue to evade scholars: Is PSM driven by genetics, socialized through experiences, or both? If PSM is socialized, when does socialization occur? Answering these questions is critical for reconciling the state versus trait debate, and for assessing the validity of practical implications prescribed by PSM studies. Utilizing “nature's own experiment,” we adopt a classical twin design with 1035 twin pairs to identify how genetic heritability, a common environment, or unique environment and experiences can explain variation in PSM. Results show that PSM is heavily influenced by individuals' unique environments and experiences; not by genetics. This lends strong evidence to PSM's uniqueness as a motivational construct as related “other-regarding” concepts show sizeable genetic components. Finally, our results corroborate that PSM is a human resource with dynamic properties organizations can cultivate to enhance productivity in public service workforces.     

Towards a public service blend of human resource management and TQM

The objective of this paper is to contemplate changes in personnel system infrastructure required to implement Total Quality Management (TQM) in public organizations (perhaps formal organization in general). By infrastructure we mean systems such as those for the design of work and positions, rewards, performance appraisal, selection, etc. We introduced the subject by summarizing many of the concepts from the quality literature which express philosophy, structural aspects and practices. Even the industrial context in which TQM has flowered has not adapted significantly to implications of TQM philosophy and structure. Instead, traditional personnel management systems prevail with some concern for needed specia1 training, and anguish about negative effects of performance appraisal, some reward systems, and work standards.

Because the government context is bound to present difficulties and pitfalls we summarized another body of literature, that of the reasons why the idea probably won't work in government.

Ultimately, we get to the point of the essay: a discussion of contemplated types of personnel system changes that ought to support organizations operating in a quality mode. Changes are considered under the subjects of: work design, recruitment and selection, performance appraisal, training, compensation and labor-management relations. We conclude with a. brief case study on the Pacer Share Project.