Search Results

There is a dearth of existing literature on cross-national variations in the organization, role, and boundaries of the personnel function. This chapter explores the evolving role and structure of the personnel function within the different national subsidiaries of US multinationals, and how these fit with the multinational company’s conception of the function’s role at an international level. It is argued that personnel departments in US multinationals face mounting pressures to reduce costs, leading to structural innovations such as shared service centres. Subsidiary personnel departments have pursued a more strategic role as ‘business partner’, and as contributor to the design of international HR policies. The management of tensions between the US approach and different host-country traditions of personnel management are examined, as well as the way in which subsidiary personnel managers ‘negotiate’ with higher levels of the international HR function, drawing on the institutional resources of their local environment.

This chapter covers a selection of Urwick's writings from the Second World War onwards. There are twelve subsections, some dealing with individual books, others topic areas, and in all covering a very wide range of areas within management. It starts with an edited book of Mary Parker Follett's writings, ‘Dynamic Administration’, moves to perhaps his best‐known book (jointly with Edward Brech) ‘The Making of Scientific Management’, then to his synthesis of theory, ‘Elements of Administration’. These are followed by a section on leadership, ‘The Pattern of Management’, his excellent work on management pioneers, ‘The Golden Book of Management’, ‘Notes on the Theory of Organization’, and ‘Staff in Organizations’. Finally, there are sections on management as a profession, management education, personnel management, and semantics, his participation in the debate about the meaning of the term ‘organization’.

Dutch society takes pride in its egalitarian character, and political and administrative officeholders are neither separated off nor placed on a pedestal. This general attitude originates in the predominantly middle‐class nature of Dutch society, in which the idea of formal incorporation of top civil servants in a separate class of administrative personnel is foreign; however, at the same time, there is a striving for unity in the national administration. The issue of tension between unity and fragmentation forces an assessment in this chapter of current developments in the higher civil service in comparison with the situation as it existed from the Second World War up to the early 1990s, with the emphasis on developments in the past two decades in which the most important event was the formation of a Senior Public Service (the Algemene Bestuursdienst, or ABD) after 1 July 1995. The first main section of the chapter (section II) examines what is meant by a ‘senior civil service’ in the Dutch context, where even the creation of the ABD does not provide a conclusive answer, since there are many senior civil servants outside it. In order to address this issue, the characteristics of the Dutch personnel management system are examined, and a brief outline given of the ABD and of the number of top civil servants working at central government level in the period 1976–1995. Section III turns to the political–administrative organization and the consultative structures at the top of the central government departments, and discusses the structure of the ABD, while section IV discusses the political affiliation (politicization) of top civil servants, and section V looks at functional mobility at the top, with special attention to the functional motives for creating the ABD. Finally, the social political structure of the civil service is reviewed, with sections on social (VI) and educational (VII) background.

This chapter argues that the normative and prescriptive models of both personnel management and human resource management have been too simplistic and have failed to address the diverse and complex roles that are required of the function. These models imply, amongst others, two things: first, that a progression from a bureaucratic form of personnel management to a strategically integrated human resource management function is desirable for all organizations if they are to manage people effectively; and second, that a best practice model of people management necessitates a strategic role for the personnel/HR function.

This chapter discusses the role of civil service in economic growth and development. It also describes how governments improve civil service through changes in personnel management practices, decronyfication, reducing corruption, and improving the quality of service. This chapter also examines civil service in China and Japan. In China, hierarchies ran from individual factories through their sponsoring ministries to the top of government. While the Japanese civil service was never in direct control of industries, it played an important part during the developmental state period. There have been changes in the way in which the civil service is managed in both countries. The two examples show some of the difficulties involved in moving civil service organizations towards a mode of rule that is rational and technocratic and away from one that is based on personal connections and favours.

This chapter examines the management of civil service personnel in India. It discusses the setting up of the Central Public Service Commission (CPSC) in 1924 and the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions (MPPGP) in 1985. It highlights the problems associated with cadre management and the appointment of civil servants to ex-cadre posts. It stresses the need to conduct a review of the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) cadres and suggests that individual state governments undertake a cadre review of their own state civil service (PCS) to stop its thoughtless proliferation.

The idea of performance management is alluring and potentially valuable, but whether it will work in a particular context is less clear. This chapter discusses how performance measures are used to manage the performance of employees in the public sector, where success is likely to require: (1) high-quality and low-cost measurement of outputs and outcomes, (2) a way to distinguish the net change in outcomes produced by a specific worker’s activities, and (3) sufficiently large rewards to outweigh the costs to workers of changing their routines. Two familiar concepts from program evaluation—the logic model and theory of action—can help public administrators articulate the basic rationale behind performance management and identify its vulnerabilities, particularly on the right-hand side of the logic model, where managing for outcomes poses the most difficult challenges.

This chapter examines how undercover investigation ushered in a “New Era” of postwar labor militancy and 1920s industrial psychology, personnel management, and romantic vagabondage. It considers social investigators, such as Fannie Hurst and Whiting Williams, who promised to reveal not only workers' daily experiences, but also “what's on the worker's mind” by focusing on the psychology of the working class, the persistence of poverty, and the specter of class conflict. It also discusses the motives underlying persistent progressives' decision to go undercover and goes on to analyze one important work, Nels Anderson's The Hobo, which led many to call him a pioneer of participant observation. Finally, it explores the rise of hobo discourse, most of it in the vein of romantic vagabondage.

Civil service can be managed based on one of the two types of administrative systems. The centralized system is built around central control over personnel matters such as recruitment, promotion, transfers, training, salary, grading, productivity, and performance evaluation. The decentralized system holds civil servants accountable for the outputs they produce as well as the outcomes they deliver. India uses the centralized system, which it inherited from the British. Focus on controlling the personnel usage is the key feature of such a system. This chapter proposes a system that combines the best of both the centralized and decentralized administrative systems but in which substantial management powers are vested in the line departments and executive agencies. It also discusses disciplinary proceedings for civil servants, personnel management in executive agencies and ministries/departments, and the Draft Civil Services Bill 2009 that calls for the creation of a Central Civil Services Authority.

This chapter examines the role of the Establishment Officer to the Government of India (EO) in personnel management in the civil service sector in India. The EO is a functionary unique to the Indian subcontinent and is one of the administrative creations of British colonial rule in India. It provides a vital institutional link in the recruitment and selection of managerial level personnel and is responsible for creating harmony between the two levels of government in the federal system.

This chapter explores the partial, and at times total, failure of mobilizations via mechanisms aiming to neutralize the political weight of identity within political parties. In Turkey, identity politics has become a means of claiming and proclaiming particularist rights since the 1980s, although such questions are often settled and regulated outside “legitimate” policies. Demands based on issues of identity—which are illegal—are quasi-taboo for the political parties, which are reluctant to become public relays for these sorts of demands, particularly on the national level. The parties consider the identity dimension as a central parameter in their relations with voters, however, and they incorporate it for this purpose, particularly in terms of personnel management of candidates and party officials. In order to face this double constraint, they use specific modes of communication that are characterized by connotation and ambiguity.