Personnel Management in Government Agencies and Nonprofit Organizations

Dennis Dresang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781134816576
• Edition: 6
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Affairs & Administration
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The long-awaited new edition of this highly praised text includes full coverage of policy issues and professional practice in nonprofit organizations, as well as at federal, state, and local levels of government. Retaining its accessible writing style, this sixth edition:

• examines the latest management theories (such as employee engagement and motivation) and current issues including disability, privatization, merit systems, and family and medical leave;
• roots the discussion in public policy issues, providing students with a better understanding of the actors involved and the broader context of personnel administration;
• provides abundant pedagogical tools, including learning objectives, summaries, and discussion questions, to guide student understanding and foster critical thinking;
• includes exercises and case studies throughout the book for individual or group work, helping students apply public personnel management concepts to real world situations.

In addition to full coverage of the increasingly important role of personnel management in nonprofit organizations, this new edition has been thoroughly updated to include timely material on the effects of the 2008 global recession, public service contracting, public sector unions, security concerns, performance measurement, remote management, management of volunteers, the challenges and opportunities of developing an organizational culture, and lessons from the experiences of countries around the world. This is a textbook that is ideally suited to prepare students to manage people, effectively, whether in government, nonprofit organizations, NGOs, or in the private sector.

PART I

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Personnel Management in Government Agencies and Nonprofit Organizations

The work of governments and almost all nonprofit organization is labor-intensive. To provide the services, implement the policies, and enforce the regulations of government, it takes people—and lots of them. Likewise, most nonprofits offer services, analyses, and consultation—the kinds of knowledge-based activities that requires able, dedicated individuals. If human resources are central to the work and the success of an organization, then the tasks of attracting, compensating, evaluating, disciplining, motivating, and developing quality employees are obviously critical.

A challenge that is common to personnel management in both governments and nonprofit organizations is that profit does not serve as a yardstick for success or failure. The policy premise for the official designation of an organization is that they exist for public purposes—charity, education, social welfare, culture, religion, and the like. Section 501 of the U.S. federal Internal Revenue Service Tax Code recognizes these organizations and provides them with tax-exempt status. They may not pay dividends on profits or distribute income to members and if they dissolve, their assets must be given to another nonprofit organization. In addition, both governments and nonprofit organizations are severely limited in the kinds of political activity in which they may engage.

Government agencies and nonprofit organizations come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. Some, like the U.S. federal departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security and state departments of health and human services, transportation, and natural resources, have thousands of employees, millions of dollars, and several units performing many different tasks. Nonprofit organizations like the YMCA and YWCA, Boys and Girls Clubs, and Nature Conservancy similarly have hundreds of employees, millions of dollars, and numerous branches throughout the country. International agencies include the World Health Organization, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, and the various units of the United Nations, have thousands of permanent and contract employees, and are present all over the globe. In contrast, there are government agencies with less than a handful of employees and a narrow scope of responsibilities and both domestic and international nonprofit organizations that are literally run out of someone’s home with a few part-time workers and some volunteers.

The employees that are the focus of this book number in the millions and are in a wide variety of occupations. Government workers include investigators and program analysts, postal workers and immigration authorities, scientists and accountants, spies and soldiers. Public authorities hire receptionists and computer programmers, social workers and prison guards, game wardens and highway engineers, purchasing agents and tax auditors, physicians and attorneys, budget analysts and building maintenance crews, police officers and teachers, civil engineers and librarians, pathologists and sanitation workers, recreation directors and parking lot attendants. Nonprofit organizations include many of the same specialties—accountants and lawyers, social workers and environmental engineers, policy analysts and health professionals, receptionists and researchers.

This book is for anyone interested in how people work in government and nonprofit settings, but especially for those who direct and manage others. Virtually all managers and professionals have responsibility for directing other employees. In order for these managers and supervisors to do their jobs effectively, they need to know the laws, rules, procedures, and techniques of personnel management. They need to know what motivates workers and how to match organizational needs with individual talents and interests.

This book explains the prescriptions and the restrictions of personnel management that applies to government and nonprofit organizations, and, importantly, the policy rationale for this framework. In addition, the text draws upon lessons from the fields of organizational behavior, industrial psychology, and industrial sociology to provide an understanding of how individuals behave in organizations. In short, the scope of this book includes concern for both the generic issues of human behavior in organizational settings and the specific needs of public sector accountability. Throughout the book, distinctions between the generic nature of personnel management and the specific requirements and characteristics of government and nonprofit organizations will be explained.

Most personnel management is done as part of the work of heading an agency or office or of being a senior analyst, accountant, engineer, librarian, social worker, police officer, or other professional. Medium- and large-scale jurisdictions do hire staff who specialize in employment testing, compensation, training, affirmative action, and collective bargaining. Most of these offices, however, were downsized in the 1990s and much of this work delegated to agency managers. Where there are human resource departments, they commonly serve as resources to line agency managers rather than functioning on their own.

Although the central perspective of this book is that of the manager, the substance of the individual chapters is the core tasks and functions of different personnel specialists and technicians. Those pursuing careers as specialists in personnel obviously will find that this book informs them about their field. Because of the managerial focus, this text will also sensitize specialists to the needs and concerns of their primary customer (i.e., agency managers).

Managers, particularly in the public sector, must meet multiple objectives. This chapter introduces the generic objectives of productivity and satisfaction and then the specific public policy concerns of accountability. Subsequent chapters provide more in-depth discussions and more detailed explanations.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES OF THIS CHAPTER

• Secure an overview of the scope of activities included in personnel management in government and nonprofit organizations.

• Understand the major ingredients of human productivity in organizations.

• Appreciate the different personal needs that jobs meet for individuals.

• Understand the various kinds of demands that a representative democracy makes on personnel management in government and nonprofit organizations.

PRODUCTIVITY

A basic responsibility of all those with leadership responsibilities is to be sure the job gets done. Team leaders, committee chairs, agency heads, and chief executive officers must use the formal authority and informal influence they have so that the people under them work creatively and energetically to accomplish organizational goals. The fundamental ingredients of productivity are presented in Figure 1.1. Managers need staff that are competent and work hard. It does little good to have people with skills if they are too lazy or distracted to apply what they know. What may be even worse is to have energetic but incompetent people. There is nothing like correcting lots of errors! Managers are—or should be—involved in the personnel tasks of defining what skills are needed and who should be hired and/or retained. A daily challenge for managers is ensuring that employees apply their skills and abilities.

In part, working hard is dependent on environmental factors: Effort is dependent on motivation. Environment can facilitate or obstruct work. It rarely contributes in a positive, long-term way to productivity. Cleanliness and safety, for example, remove disruptions that interfere with production. But there is a limit to how clean or safe a place can get and, therefore, how much additional effort to clean or to protect will in turn lead to more productivity.

The quest for strategies managers might use to motivate their workers has been a long and rather frustrating one. In large part, the frustration is due to the dubious assumption that there is a single approach that will fit all employees and all organizations. It is important to learn that a job is inherently important only for some people. For others, work is little more than a necessary part of living. This difference is amoral and to recognize it is not to judge it. Research suggests that individuals who work in relatively low-skilled, routine jobs tend to have something other than their job as the main subject of concern in their lives. Professionals, on the other hand, tend to consider their work as a central part of their own identity. For them, achievements in their work are of vital importance to personal satisfaction and self-esteem.¹

As will be explained in more detail in Chapter 5, effective management depends on recognizing and acting on what motivates employees. Professionals generally respond well to managerial approaches that empower them, whereas those doing more routine work value participatory opportunities less and sometimes even regard them as manipulative. Incentives for professionals to do well lay in the accomplishments themselves and the recognition of those accomplishments. For those doing more structured tasks, incentives come in more immediate and tangible forms.

FIGURE 1.1 The Fundamentals of Productivity

One cannot say that everyone should or should not consider his or her employment as something that is intrinsically of personal value and satisfaction. To do so is presumptuous. Instead, managers need to recognize and to accept the different personal value systems of their employees and to pursue work motivation in ways that relate to these value systems.

Productivity is a concern of personnel management regardless of whether the organization is public, private, or nonprofit. Managers in government have additional issues that must be addressed.

GOVERNMENT SETTING

Although there are many similarities between personnel management in a private business or nonprofit organization and a government agency, there are also some distinct and important differences. The most obvious traits unique to the public sector are the links to legislative institutions and the electoral process.

Legislators differ in fundamental ways from stockholders. The former are accountable to the voters; if elected officials hope to repeat their success at the ballot box, they must act publicly and in accord with voter preferences. Legislators seek a wide variety of policy objectives, whereas stockholders are concerned primarily with the financial health of their company. As representatives of particular constituencies, elected officials pursue special concerns that vary considerably over time and from one official to another. Legislators are more involved in oversight than stockholders are in a private company. This is true even for part-time legislators in local and state governments. Constituent casework, legislative hearings, and the budget process all draw elected officials into the scrutiny and direction of public agencies.

In the 1980s and 1990s, a heightened interest in combating alcohol and other drug abuse reminded public employers of another difference between them and their private sector counterparts. The U.S. Constitution restricts how governments can treat citizens. Thus, when governments take action to identify drug abusers, including government employees, they must not violate constitutional rights to privacy, self-incrimination, and the like. Private employers, however, are not bound by the Constitution and have more options as they deal with drug abuse among their employees. Chapter 3 contains a discussion of how public employers’ needs are balanced with public employees’ rights.

The legal framework within which personnel management in public agencies must opera...