Achieving Competencies in Public Service: The Professional Edge

The Professional Edge

James S. Bowman, Jonathan P. West, Marcia A. Beck

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317477792
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Macroeconomics
• Index: Economics

The new context and character of public service - shifting values, entrepreneurship, information technology, and multi-sector careers - require a 'skills triangle' of technical, ethical, and leadership abilities. This concise and readable work focuses on these three essential skills, and describes what it means to be a consummate professional public servant. Essential reading for both professionals and students, "Achieving Competencies in Public Service: The Professional Edge" sets standards for anyone who conducts the public's business, and links them with performance management, human resource administration, and information technology skills. Filled with original illustrative examples, case studies, and exemplar profiles, the book is an ideal supplement for any introductory course in Public Administration.

Chapter 1

Public Service Today

Complex, Contradictory, Competitive

There is no higher religion than human service.

To work for the common good is the greatest creed.

—Woodrow Wilson

Joshua Bennett was excited to start work as a management analyst in his southeastern state government office’s human resources department immediately upon graduation with a Masters of Public Administration degree. During his six-month probationary period, he was given varied assignments of increasing difficulty. While he had to struggle with some of them, he gained confidence. At the end of the probation period he received a good performance evaluation. Joshua is now ending his first full year of employment. He likes his job, but he is concerned that he lacks the skills to successfully complete the complex assignments he is now receiving as the state adapts to E-Government. At the time of his hiring he was promised job-related training and resources that would equip him with the information technology skills necessary to meet performance expectations. Such hardware, software, and technical training was not provided. Joshua’s inability to satisfactorily complete recent assignments has resulted in job stress and frustration.

Maria Rodriguez has worked for twenty years as a clinical psychologist in a nonprofit hospital on the West Coast. She derives substantial satisfaction from her work and feels that she is making a difference in the lives of her patients. Her accomplishments have been recognized with awards, promotions, and certificates of appreciation. Two years ago the chief of staff appointed her to the hospital’s ethics committee and last month she was made chair of the committee. The thorny problems brought to this committee, often involving new medical technologies and changing managerial philosophies or fiscal policies, have occupied an increasing amount of Maria’s time and attention. She is perplexed by one case in particular. The case involves a conflict between protecting the privacy of patient records and meeting the reimbursement requirements of third-party payers. Maria is concerned that the hospital’s administrative and fiscal requirements are compromising patient care, with specific ethical implications for particular patients and legal issues for the hospital. Maria is uncertain how to proceed.

Regina Blackstone is a research specialist in a large corporation located in a midwestern state. She has training as a researcher and over the years has produced several reports that have contributed to her growing reputation as a knowledgeable expert on technical issues. As a staff person she has operated mainly in a support or advisory role, often in relative isolation from others. Recently her firm bid for and received a government contract to deliver a city service. Regina ‘s boss asked her to lead this effort. She quickly accepted the position, flattered to be tapped for this responsibility. A few weeks later, however, Regina is apprehensive about her ability to spearhead the new initiative. She fears that she may personify the Peter Principle, previously having reached her highest level of competence and now promoted to a level at which she will prove incompetent. Neither her academic training in data analysis nor her corporate research background provided the leadership skills she must master in order to excel in service to the public. She is reluctant to relinquish her new job, but is nervous and unsure about what to do next.

Joshua, Maria, and Regina are all dedicated professionals who face unique performance challenges. These challenges result, in part, from a shift from the old public service to a new public service that requires a different set of professional competencies. Joshua works for state government, Maria performs a public service in the nonprofit arena, and Regina’s new assignment with her private contracting firm requires bridge building with the public sector. All three feel poorly prepared for their current assignments: Joshua lacks the technical skills required to complete routine tasks necessitated by recent developments in information technology; Maria needs help resolving dilemmas linked to changes in the legal and ethical environment; and Regina has a skills deficit that may compromise her ability to lead a private-public partnership.

The situations confronting these three individuals illustrate the thesis of this chapter: Increasingly dynamic internal and external environments create the need for professional managers who possess technical, ethical, and leadership competencies to meet the complex governance challenges of the twenty-first century. This chapter explains the importance of the term competencies, summarizes the changing context of public service, contrasts the old and new characteristics of its operation, and clarifies its contemporary role. It then analyzes three competencies—technical, ethical, and leadership—that can provide employees with the “professional edge.” Here the focus is on why these skills are so important in today’s turbulent environment. Subsequent chapters show how these competencies may be achieved.

Competencies and Competency Modeling

The concept of “competencies” has been in use since the 1970s, when D.C. McClelland (1973) developed the idea that particular sets of skills and/or personal qualities would be better indicators of job performance than standard intelligence tests. This idea was first tested in the U.S. State Department. Since then there has been an explosion of interest in the concept, as analysts and employers set out to determine which competencies are applicable to specific positions. Dozens of companies now offer “competency modeling,” whereby they work with employers to develop sets of competencies as a guide for hiring and training employees in order to give organizations a competitive edge in performance and productivity.

The term competency is used in a variety of ways in the literature. Some understand it to mean specific skills—abilities to perform concrete tasks that result in specific outcomes—that an individual has already learned or can attain. Others add personal traits—individual attributes that are either inherent or deeply ingrained, such as personality characteristics—to the skill set. This distinction is similar to that between “hard” and “soft” management skills: hard skills involve the ability to reach organizational goals that involve technical, financial, or other systems-related outcomes; soft skills involve processes of interpersonal interaction that motivate and compel employees to perform their jobs well. The difference has implications for how employers can make the best decisions as to which applicants or employees should be assigned to which tasks.

If competency is understood to be limited to specific skills, then current employees with the necessary background can be trained to perform the skill. If, however, competency includes personal traits, then only individuals with those specific traits will be suited for specific tasks or positions; if current employees do not have the desired personal qualities—such as motivation, self-confidence, or the ability to foster interpersonal communication—employers will have to seek new applicants for the position. This results in the “train versus hire,” or what one study calls the “growing versus buying,” dilemma (Ingraham and Getha-Taylor 2004). Of course, people can be trained to develop or alter individual traits (to have more motivation, to be more self-confident, to learn communication techniques), but employers may decide that it is easier to hire an individual who appears to exhibit these traits “naturally” rather than attempt to train employees to change their personal attributes.

In recent years, analysts have examined components of competencies that may affect how employers assess their use in recruiting, training, or evaluating employees. Studies have examined gender differences in the perception of competencies (Daley and Naff 1998), generational characteristics of certain competency attributes (Jurkiewicz and Brown 1998), and those competencies necessary for cross-organizational collaboration (Getha-Taylor 2008), mediation efforts (Mareschal 1998), and leadership transitions (Lynn 2001). Research suggests that sets of competencies used to define certain jobs must evolve over time, with dated competencies phased out, so that they correspond to the changing nature of the task at hand (Nelson 2004). Competency studies and recommendations also differ as to the projected level of job performance a set of competencies is designed to attain. Some target competencies to achieve adequate job performance, some strive for excellence in the outcomes of competency modeling, and some look for “differentiating competencies” that distinguish adequate from superior performance (Getha-Taylor 2008, 105). Underlying the differences in usage and approach is the fact that most employers in all sectors of the contemporary American workforce use a specific set of competencies to define each position in order to improve overall job performance and organizational productivity.

The U.S. government is no exception: every government agency has developed a set of competencies to guide hiring, training, and employee evaluation efforts. Although each position involves a distinct set of skills, and perhaps individual traits, this book argues that an overarching set of competencies is applicable to all public servants: technical expertise, ethical behavior, and leadership characteristics. The target of applying these competencies is excellence: public servants who strive for excellence in these competencies will gain the professional edge necessary to excel in their jobs and produce the most “public value”—or work in the interest of the common good. The term competency as used here includes both skills and individual traits and involves the use of both “hard” and “soft” management skills. Although it is true that most individuals can be trained to perform specific technical tasks, in the realms of ethical behavior and leadership qualities, individual traits appear to make a difference in a person’s ability to excel.

Focusing on public managers, Virtanen (2000) distinguishes five competence areas: task competence, professional competence in subject area and administration, political competence, and ethical competence. He identifies permanent value competencies as “commitments.” In his framework, each competency is technical, instrumental, and value-based. In task competence the key criterion is performance; in value competence it is motivation, and in instrumental competence it is abilities. Professional competence requires both substantive field and specific task mastery, value competence emphasizes control of the policy object, and instrumental competence highlights know-how of the policy object. Administration competence centers on the execution of policy handed down by elected officials, value competence relates more to control of policy, and instrumental competence requires being adept at cooperation. The focus of political competence is values and power, for value competence it is on ideology and the interests of public managers, and for instrumental competence it centers on the possession of power. Finally, Virtanen identifies ethical competence as conforming to moral values, value competence as morality, and instrumental competence as ethical reasoning and argumentation. For the purposes of this book, Virtanen’s five competencies can be reduced to three: technical (all-encompassing “will do” and “can do” task competence), ethical (“right action” and moral reasoning), and leadership (professional subject matter and task mastery, as well as administration and political skills).

In addition to mastering competencies, a strong commitment to public service can provide an individual with the motivation and the ability to develop and refine personal attributes that can furnish them and their organizations with an important advantage. Individuals can learn to behave ethically and to promote ethical behavior in others, for example, in the context of a strong organizational code of conduct supported by a culture of ethics. People can also learn to manage and lead in various capacities by developing the negotiation and political skills necessary to solve complex and controversial problems in public life. A strong and unwavering commitment to serve the commonweal and uphold professional standards can go a long way toward attaining not only the skills but also the attributes necessary for excellence in public service (Perry, Brudney, Coursey, and Littlepage 2008). After examining the context and nature of a changing U.S. public service, this book analyzes the three overarching competencies—technical, ethical, and leadership—by identifying skills and traits within each and providing examples of how they can be used to attain a public service professional edge.

The Changing Context of Public Service

Public service has been greatly affected by the rapidly changing context within which it is organized and executed. Changes affect the (1) technical, (2) internal, (3) external, and (4) managerial environments that encompass the organization and delivery of public services.

In the technical realm, information technology (IT), new media, and cy-bersecurity concerns all affect the way public servants work. The explosion of IT capabilities alone, as Joshua and Maria’s experiences illustrate, raises new, and sometimes confounding, technical and ethical dilemmas. The rapid expansion of blogs and Internet discussion groups allows disaffected employees to publicly air their gripes about organizational and managerial changes that affect their rights and salaries. The ability of “hostile” cyberattacks or “friendly fire” computer glitches to delay or shut down government operations, such as a computer problem that forced the delay of air traffic across the United States for several hours in August 2008, has made cybersecurity a key concern of all those working in public service (Chapter 5).

Changes in the internal environment of public service—increased sector mobility, privatization, first-order devolution of decision making from federal to state and local governments, and second-order devolution from government to nonprofit and private organizations—require rethinking who provides public services and how those services are most effectively delivered. Regina’s task of directing her private firm’s contract with a local government to provide a city service, for example, is one facing managers in many private and nonprofit organizations in the United States as well as abroad.

The external environment that surrounds public service also profoundly affects professionals and the way they operate. Domestically, the political atmosphere, the role of the media, and demographic shifts can all have an impact on how public service professionals perform their jobs. If political loyalty instead of merit is used as the yardstick by which public servants are hired and promoted, for example, the provision of public services could be negatively affected, as some claimed was the case in Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In a charged and polarized political atmosphere, professional public servants may find it difficult to carry out technical tasks or provide legally mandated services unencumbered by politically motivated criticism and obstructionism. This is especially the case if a politically polarized media purposely inflates political controversies in order to sell papers or increase viewership. More concrete domestic changes, such as demographic shifts, also significantly affect public service. The need to offer services in the Spanish language or orient health care provisions to an ever-aging population, for example, are both examples of how changing demographics compel public services to rethink their responsibilities.

Changes in the foreign external environment are also profound. The rise ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Public Service Today: Complex, Contradictory, Competitive
• 2. The Technical Professional: Developing Expertise
• 3. The Ethical Professional: Cultivating Scruples
• 4. The Consummate Professional: Creating Leadership
• 5. The Future of Public Service: Cases and Commentary for the New Millennium
• Epilogue
• References
• About the Authors
• Index