The state of talent management in Canada's public sector

For more than a decade, senior officials from across Canada's public sector have identified the capacity to “recruit and retain highly‐trained, qualified staff” as central to public service renewal and success in the 21^st century. And yet, despite the consensus behind this priority, students of Canadian public administration know little about the strategies and programs that are in place to attract, recruit, retain and transition key public servants in this country. This article tries to address this gap by describing talent management, one approach to getting “the right people in the right place at the right time” currently in use in British Columbia, Canada, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Saskatchewan. The article concludes with some observations about the present and future of talent management in Canada's public sector.     

Federal contracts to perform analysis and management services: Can not-for-profits successfully compete?

This study uses a random sample of HUD contracts to determine if not-for-profit organisations have advantages or disadvantages in the competition for fedral procurement awards. Interest focuses on 228 competitors for awards selected in the sample. Differences between for-profit and not-for-profit groups are examined with respect to awareness of opportunity, willingness to compete, abiity to compete technically, and ability to be cost-competitive.

Generally, not-for-profit organizations compete well with for-profit ones in efforts to obtain awards to provide analysis and management services. Managers of not-for-profit organizations need not believe that their organizations are incapable of competting successfully against for-profit organizations.     

Personality and Job Satisfaction: Evidence from a Sample of Street-Level Bureaucrats

Job satisfaction is an important component of bureaucratic success. In this article, we build on the emerging literature on the five-factor model of personality and argue that basic personality characteristics can help us understand why certain employees are more satisfied with their jobs than others. Multivariate analysis of personality and job satisfaction data from over 1,000 public servants supports this argument. We conclude with a discussion about how personality can add to our theoretical understanding of public personnel management, and help public managers identify applicants who are likely to be satisfied with work in the public sector.     

Going Public as Political Strategy: The Bush Administration,an Echoing Press,and Passage of the Patriot Act

Research suggests that political elites excel at controlling political and media information environments, particularly in times of national crisis, such as the events and aftermath of September 11. This study examines the creation and passage of the Patriot Act, which was proposed by the Bush administration following the terrorist attacks and quickly passed with strong support by the U.S. Congress. We argue that (a) the public communications of the Bush administration, particularly those by George W. Bush and John Ashcroft, and (b) news coverage about the legislation were instrumental in this outcome. Public communications by Bush and Ashcroft and news coverage about the Act were content analyzed to identify the timing of the messages and the themes and perspectives emphasized, and congressional debates and activities were examined for insight into their relation with administration and press discourse. Findings suggest that Bush and Ashcroft's communications, in combination with a press that largely echoed the administration's messages, created an environment in which Congress faced significant pressure to pass the legislation with remarkable speed.     

Sex Trafficking and Moral Harm: Politicised Understandings and Depictions of the Trafficked Experience

This paper explores notions of harm in sex work discourse, highlighting the extent to which essentialist ideas of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ sex have pervaded trafficking policy. In a comparative examination of Australian Parliamentary Inquiries and United States congressional hearings leading to the establishment of anti-trafficking policy, we identify the stories that have influenced legislators, and established a narrative of trafficking heavily dependent upon assumptions of the inherent harm of sex work. This narrative constructs a hierarchy of victimisation, which denies alternative discourses of why women migrate for sex work. We argue that it is not sexual commerce that is harmful, but pathological, systemic inequalities and entrenched disadvantage that are harmful. A narrow narrative of trafficking fails to adequately depict this complexity of the trafficked experience.     

偏好与理性选择：保守主义人士也能接受的规制——行为经济学与“非对称父爱主义”的案例

非对称父爱主义的规制目的是帮助那些有限理性的人们避免犯成本过高的错误,同时仅对理性的人们加以很小的成本甚至不加以成本。结合了认知心理学与经济学的行为经济学表明,有时候即便有健康心智的人们在某些特定的、可预见的情形下也可能不会为他们长远的自身利益行事,很多非对称父爱主义的规制就是基于这种考虑而产生的。这些规制体现在缺省规则、对信息的提供或重组、冷却期、对消费者选择的限制等方面。非对称父爱主义并不必定是严厉的,它可能会引导产生比现有政策更温和的规则。而且新技术为将这种规制作为一种新的对规制选择的成本收益评估标准提供了新的可能性,因而值得被认真对待。