Public service ethics,values and spirituality in developing and transitional countries: Challenges and opportunities

Concerns over the unethical conduct of leaders and public officials have led to the renaissance of interest in public service ethics and values. Although national and organizational systems and structures have been instituted to either eradicate or ameliorate unethical behaviours in the public service of countries, the practice still persists with devastating consequences. As one way forward, spirituality has been touted as having the potential of stimulating the moral thoughts of individuals who are dealing with ethical issues, thereby reducing unethical behaviour and generating positive organizational behaviour. Drawing from the perspectives of developing and transitional countries, this special issue empirically examines the extent to which ethics, values and spirituality can reduce unethical behaviours.     

中国呼唤公共人力资源管理

公共人力资源管理是公共部门对工商业界人力资源管理技术的借鉴性引入.中国也要进行公共人力资源管理的实践,因为它是服务竞争时代社会对公共部门提出的客观要求,也是中国公共部门人事管理发展的必然趋势与走向.     

Paradoxes of public-sector managerialism,old public management and public service bargains

This chapter considers three paradoxes or apparent contradictions in contemporary public management reform–paradoxes of globalization or internationalization, malade imaginaire (or successful failure) paradoxes, and paradoxes of half-hearted managerialism. It suggests that these three paradoxes can be explained by a comparative historical institutionalism linked to a motive-and-opportunity analysis of what makes some public service systems more susceptible to reform than others. It further argues that such explanations can be usefully linked together by exploring public service reform from the perspective of ‘public service bargains’ or PSBs (that is, explicit or implicit bargains between public servants and other actors in the society). Accordingly, it seeks to account for the three paradoxes of public management reform by looking at the effect of different PSB starting-points on reform experience, and at the way politician calculations over institutional arrangements could account for PSB shifts in some circumstances but not others.     

Managerial perceptions of leadership and management in an African public service organization

This article describes and analyses data on perceptions of leadership and management, generated by a study of managerial behaviour, organizational functioning and performance in the Ministry of Local Government, Lands and Housing (MLGLH) in Botswana. The study was commissioned by the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida). The findings indicate that the managers in the investigation did not generally recognize the distinction between organizational leadership and management that is postulated in the predominant current western view. The perceived ideal leader who emerges from the investigation is kindly and supportive and provides clear directions; the western ideal of the ‘corporate hero’ did not emerge from the findings. Further, the Tswana managers emphasize the reaction of the boss as a major factor in judging their own performance. This finding of the acceptance of hierarchical authority and accompanying dependency supports evidence from the few empirical studies undertaken previously in Africa, and has implications for the current plan to implant elements of the ‘Singaporean model’ in Botswana.     

The relationship management function of public affairs officers in Chile: Identifying opportunities and challenges in an emergent market

Research on the public affairs profession in both South and Latin America is one of the leading limitations today in international public relations research. This study helps to lessen such a gap by offering more realistic insight into the ideologies and pressures that govern public affairs practice in Chile. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 15 experts who are current senior‐level public affairs practitioners in the Chilean capital of Santiago. Results offer three key insights: First, the core function of public affairs in Chile surrounds behaviors of lobbying and governmental relations. Second, leveraging cohesion between organizational private interest and the public interest is a key to leveraging pressure on elected officials and governmental agencies. Lastly, there is significant concern regarding public trust in the lack of transparency in the Chilean public affairs field, facilitated by insufficient governmental regulation. Such research offers practical and grounded insights for public affairs and public relations scholarship.     

Do Australian public sector employees have the type of culture they want in the era of new public management?

New public management theory proposes that public sector organisations should be managed more like private sector organisations. It is therefore expected that public sector managers will have preferences for an organisational culture that will reflect the culture of private sector organisations, with an external rather than internal orientation. The current research investigated the idea that managers' perceptions of ideal organisational culture would be different to the bureaucratic model of culture (internally oriented), which has traditionally been associated with public sector organisations. Responses to a competing values culture inventory were received from 925 public sector employees. Results indicated that the bureaucratic model is still pervasive; however, managers prefer a culture that is more external, and less control focussed, as expected. Lower level employees expressed a desire for a culture that emphasised human relations values.     

Intergovernmental councils in Spain: Challenges and opportunities in a changing political context

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the most important characteristics and of the Spanish Intergovernmental Councils (IGCs) and theorizes about the effect of the increasing fragmentation of the party system on the nature and dynamics of multilateral bargaining in IGCs. The essential argument is that party system fragmentation may have an impact on IGCs through its effect on the formation of minority and coalition governments. These types of governments may put an end to the two-bloc confrontation, bring to the system higher levels of party congruence between levels of government and lower the costs of compromise, three factors that may help to grease the bargaining process and, in turn, enhance the achievement of intergovernmental cooperation agreements. The positive effect will be conditional on several factors, namely the ideological coherence of inter-party alliances, the predominant type of government in the system (coalition or single-party minority) and the duration of governments.     

Performance appraisal in the Maldives public service: challenges and issues

A structured method of evaluating and rewarding the performance of employees in the Maldives public service did not exist before 1996. Personnel decisions, such as employee promotions, were subjective and based merely on the recommendation of the heads of departments. Hence, in 1996, the Government of Maldives introduced a performance appraisal system, based on rewarding employees through the assessment of several factors such as quality of work, job knowledge and performance. The reward came in the form of annual salary increments. In reviewing this system, the article finds that human resource units or divisions within departments now need to be strengthened for the effective implementation of the system; more training has to be provided to public service employees in terms of raising their awareness as to the objectives of the performance appraisal exercise; and the performance appraisal framework needs to be more flexible in differentiating very high performers, at the same time devising a strategy for the improvement of employees who slack in performance. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public affairs,issues management,and political strategy: opportunities,opportunities, and more opportunities

This paper begins where Professor Windsor left off and enumerates some other areas in which academic research could be profitably pursued for both intellectual and practical gain. The tone of Professor Windsor's paper is pessimistic, and lays out in detail some of the obstacles to research; but these are not insurmountable. Some key areas that can be explored to the benefit of researchers and practitioners are in self‐regulation, the initiative process, term limits (a relatively recent phenomenon and not particularly well known outside of the USA), and in alliance building, constituency statutes, and links to stakeholder theory and action. Each of these additional areas is addressed in this presentation. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Quality in public management: the customer perspective

This article presents reflections on the transposition of the private-sector concept of Total Quality Management (TQM) to the public sector. We search for answers to the following questions:· At what levels of the public sector is the concept of TQM operative?· How must the concept of TQM be interpreted for its transposition to the public sector?· What are the connections between the conventional quality-assurance control principles of public management and TQM?TQM intends to exercise influence on organizational action. Action by the state and, in this specific case, by public management requires legitimization. For this reason, the notion of legitimization must be analyzed more closely, and the operative levels of TQM must be placed in their respective contexts. Legitimization may be considered to have three layers: basic legitimization is a product of the social contract and refers to the state and its structures in general terms; institutional legitimization relates to public management as an institution, and to its outward manifestations; and individual legitimization is the product of specific contacts between management and its customers. It is on this individual level that most changes are sought by New Public Management.     

Politics and public service reform in small states: Malta

Administrative reform is inseparable from political reform, just as administration and politics share overlapping boundaries. This article reviews the goals for reform established in 1989 for the Maltese public service, against the political culture and administrative history of Malta. It argues that a small state's size encourages certain dysfunctional characteristics of the political culture, and aggravates the difficulties inherent in administrative reform. (© 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)     

Women in the Zambian civil service: A case of equal opportunities?

There is a paucity of empirical microlevel studies of women in the formal sector in developing countries. This article attempts to redress this deficit and focuses on the position of women in the Zambian civil service using information from a sample of personnel records. Although women are disproportionately represented in the civil service compared with other areas of the formal economy, the current positions of males and females are significantly different. However, the results of the survey are not easily encompassed in prevailing theoretical frameworks and, rather surprisingly, it appears that it is age rather than gender that is the crucial explanatory variable. Finally, a number of possible explanations are advanced to account for our findings.     

The public service ethos and the role of the British civil service

The last Conservative administration invested much time and effort in reforming the structure and organisation of the Civil Service. Yet it left untouched the core principles which underpinned Whitehall, often referred to as the public service ethos. In this article, we argue that this ethos has been defended by both conservative and liberal opinion as something fundamentally good. Yet, in reality, the public service ethos is a power/knowledge system which legitimises the rule of a particular elite by presenting public service as a worthy occupation and, thereby, authorising a system of power which is relatively closed and secretive. This accounts for why it has been in the interests of both the last Conservative administration and the present Labour government to ensure the ethos remains intact.     

Demand for masters of public policy in public service

This piece was written to assist those who lead schools of public policy and administration in evaluating their pedagogies and examining their curricula. The perspectives contained in this piece reflect those of the author, who has spent the last 35 years practicing and leading public policy research and analysis in the Congressional Research Service (CRS)—the public policy agency created by the U.S. Congress for its exclusive use. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of CRS or the Congress.