Human Resource
Management
Lecture 10 –
Administrative
Processes in
Government
Keynote: The Adventures of a Young
Man as a Personnel Technician
 Read Jay Shafritz’s story.
– Librarian.
– Personnel technician.
– Recruitment and examination technician.
– Graduate assistant.
– Assistant professor of public administration.
The Personnel Function
 The function of a personnel staff, or even an
entire personnel agency, is service to line
management.
 Typical services include recruiting, selection,
training, evaluation, compensation, discipline,
and termination.
 Personnel is a collective term for all of the
employees in an organization. Word is of
military origin.
The Personnel Function
 Personnel is also commonly used to refer to the
personnel management function or the
organizational unit responsible for administering
personnel programs.
 Personnel administration – technical aspects of
maintaining a full complement of employees
within an organization.
 Personnel management – also concerns itself
with how motivated and productive the personnel
are.
The Personnel Function
 The personnel function is currently evolving
from a clerical function into an in-house
consultant to management on labor relations, job
redesign, EEO provisions, organization
development, productivity measurement, and
other pressing concerns.
 In the majority of U.S. jurisdictions this
transformation is only just underway.
The Personnel Function
 The key problem for personnel management is
the balancing of several contradictory values.
– Merit or neutral competence, executive leadership,
political accountability, managerial flexibility,
representativeness.
 Maximizing some of these values requires
arrangements poorly suited for other values.
 These matters are further complicated by the rise
of public-sector collective bargaining, which
emphasizes employer-employee codetermination
of personnel policy.
Recruitment.
 Recruitment is the process of advertising job
openings and encouraging candidates to apply.
 Designed to provide organizations with an
adequate number of viable candidates to make a
selection.
 The main objective: the generation of an
adequate number of qualified candidates.
 Not all positions are open to entry-level
applicants.
Merit selection.
 Selection is the oldest function of public
personnel administration.
 Pendleton Act mandated that all examinations for
merit be practical in character.
 Primacy of practicality often breached in practice
but reaffirmed in Griggs v. Duke Power
Company (1971). “Test must measure the person
for the job, not the job for the person.”
 Extended to public sector in Equal Employment
Opportunity Act of 1972.
Merit selection (contd.).
 Job relatedness is now the paramount
consideration in developing a selection device.
 The legality of any test hinges on its capability in
predicting job success.
 Validation is the process of demonstrating how
well the testing device actually can predict
success on the job.
 In the United States, every important public issue
becomes a legal problem.
Position Classification and Pay
 Example: A large municipal hospital on the East
Cost of the United States once employed a janitor
to perform brain surgery. Moral: position
classification systems can create much
dysfunctional and sometimes silly activity.
 Position classifications are formal job
descriptions that organize all jobs in a civil
service merit system into classes on the basis of
duties and responsibilities, for the purposes of
delineating authority, establishing chains of
command, and providing equitable salary scales.
Position Classification and Pay
 Position classification principles.
– Positions and not individuals should be classified.
– The duties and responsibilities pertaining to a position
constitute the outstanding characteristics that
distinguish it from, or mark its similarity to, other
positions.
– Qualifications with respect to education, experience,
knowledge, and skill necessary for the performance of
certain duties are determined by the nature of those
duties.
Position Classification and Pay
 Position classification principles.
– The individual characteristics of an employee
occupying a position should have no bearing
on the classification of the position.
– Persons holding positions in the same class
should be considered equally qualified for any
other position in that class.
Position Classification and Pay
 Principles and practices of position classification
go back to the scientific management movement
before World War I. They have not been adapted
since.
 A classification plan is nothing more than a time
and motion study for the governmental function.
 Duties divided into positions to prevent
duplication and promote efficiency.
 Position is simply a set of duties and
responsibilities, not a person.
Position Classification and Pay
 Basic doctrines established before World War II.
Current management science and theory ignored.
 Workforce no longer the same.
 Most of labor force are highly skilled technical
and professional personnel whose duties do not
fit in a classification.
 Even people at the bottom of the organizational
hierarchy now have enough education and
training to resist being treated like
interchangeable parts.
Performance Appraisal
 Performance appraisal is the title usually
given to the formal method by which an
organization documents the work
performance of its employees.
 Most performance evaluation systems fail
because of inherent subjectivity.
Performance Appraisal
 Five functions.
– Changing or modifying dysfunctional work behavior;
– Communicating to employees managerial perceptions
of the quality and quantity of their work;
– Assessing the future potential of an employee to
recommend appropriate training or developmental
assignments;
– Assessing whether the present duties of an employee’s
position have an appropriate compensation level; and
– Providing a documented record for disciplinary and
separation actions.
Performance Appraisal
 Five basic types of appraisal.
– Supervisory ratings: most common, supervisor
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evaluates performance of subordinates.
Self-ratings: individuals rate themselves using a
standard form, narrative report, or work product.
Peer ratings: each individual rates every employee in
his or her division or office at a parallel level in the
organization.
Subordinate ratings: subordinates rate the performance
of a supervisor.
Group ratings: an independent rater, usually an expert,
rates the performance of the entire work unit based on
selected interviews or on-the-job visitations.
Performance Appraisal
 The problem arises in the varying
standards of supervisors. The good ones
will do their subordinates a disservice by
being honest.
 Seldom an adequate incentive in a public
system for supervisor to be honest.
 Result: inflated ratings.
Training
 Training has frequently been the victim of
organizational neglect.
– In a budget squeeze, training funds are cut in favor of
mandated examination and training functions.
 Government Employees Training Act not passed
until 1958.
 Most training programs skimp on evaluation. To
properly evaluate, standards for performance
have to be set prior to training.
Training
 The essential question is whether or not a
training effort has met its objective.
 Training system.
– Training needs assessment.
– Training program design.
– Training program delivery.
– Training program evaluation.
Training
 Training formats.
– Skills training.
– Coaching.
– Formal or informal classroom instruction.
– Sensitivity or “T-group” training.
– Job rotation.
– Special conferences and seminars.
– Modeling, games, and seminars.
– Exchange and sabbatical programs.
Training
 All forms of training are limited by the
availability of funding.
 Remember, no statement of training
accomplishment in an annual report can
honestly be made unless it is supported by
a sophisticated measure of evaluation.
Management Development
 Management development is a hybrid of
training and selection.
 Any conscious effort on the part of an
organization to provide a manager with the
skills needed for future duties such as
rotational assignments or formal education
experiences constitute management
development.
Management Development
 The secondary focus of management
development is selection.
 The range of experiences, both on or off
the job, that managers are expose to over
the years leaves records in terms of
specific scores or subjective evaluations
upon which future advancements may be
based.
Management Development
 How does an organization establish criteria
for selected inexperienced managers for
development?
 Assessment centers. Management
simulations and stress situations.
The Bittersweet Heritage of
Civil Service Reform
 The perversion of most civil service merit
systems for private, administrative, and
partisan ends is one of the worst kept, yet
least written about, secrets in government.
 Oddly, the perversion of merit systems is a
normal, even healthy, condition. The
perversion may be essential if actual merit
is to be rewarded.
Netherworld of Public Personnel
Administration
 Public personnel merit systems operate at
three levels.
– Formal system where most employees enter,
perform, and advance on the basis of merit and
the design of the system.
– Political rewards system.
– Scrupulous abuse to increase managerial
flexibility.
From Spoils to Merit
 Civil service reform movement.
– Jefferson and philosophically hostile
bureaucracy. Generally refused to remove
appointees except for “malconduct”.
– Jackson and the spoils system.
– Advent of modern merit systems at once, a
political, economic, and moral development.
The Pendleton Act
 Passage of the Act aided by assassination of
Garfield and Republican losses in 1882 election.
 The Act created the Civil Service Commission as
the personnel management arm of the U.S.
government. Subject to the administrative
discretion of the president.
 Open competitive exams, probationary periods,
and protection from political pressures.
 Not a total victory for reformers. Initially only
covered 10 percent of positions. Gradual
incremental increase in coverage.
The Pendleton Act
State and Local Reform
 Influenced by Pendleton Act, state and local
governments began to institute merit systems.
 But, a very slow process. First two adoptions
(New York and Massachusetts occurred) within
two years, but it was 20 years before another
state did it.
 It was not until well after World War II that most
states installed merit systems.
State and Local Reform
 City adoption also gradual. Now covers 88
percent of cities, 90 percent of counties.
 But on the books does not necessarily
mean effective implementation.
Rise and Fall of the Civil
Service Commission
 Bipartisan commissions became common.
 At local level, commission became politically
and administratively independent of the
executive.
– Goal: defeating influence of partisan spoils.
 City manager movement challenged rationale for
the commission.
 But not all cities adopted city manager form of
government.
Rise and Fall of the Civil
Service Commission
 Merit system has taken hold in most jurisdictions
because:
– Complexity of modern local government increased
requirements for greater technical training.
– Federal government threw its weight behind the
development of forceful merit systems.
 Problem: Modern elected executives and public
managers need more flexibility than is provided
by an independent civil service commission.
Civil Service Reform Act of
1978
 Jimmy Carter.
– Office of Personnel Management.
– Merit Systems Protection Board.
– Senior Executive Service.
 Changes more cosmetic than real.
Civil Service Reform Act of
1978
Reinventing Public Personnel
Administration
 Reinventing government.
– Deregulated personnel policy by eliminating the
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Federal Personnel Manual.
Given all departments and agencies authority to
conduct their own recruiting and examinations.
Dramatically simplified classification system.
Allowed agencies to design own performance
management and reward systems.
Sought to reduce by half the time required to terminate
federal managers and employees for cause.
Patronage Appointments
 The Plum Book.
– Presidential appointments at his or her
discretion. 40,000 resumes every four years.
Most thrown out. Positions require “patron.”
Patronage Appointments
 Constitutionality of patronage.
– Patronage unconstitutional (Rutan v. the
Republican Party 1990). Reality: Still exists.
 Veteran’s preferences.
– First Act 1865, disability.
– Superceded in 1919, honorably discharged.
– 1944, five point bonus on exams.