HRM in Mission Driven Organizations

Managing People in the Not for Profit Sector

Chris Brewster, Jean-Luc Cerdin, Chris Brewster, Jean-Luc Cerdin

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319575827
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319575834
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Ethics
• Index: Business

 Collates chapters written by acknowledged experts in each area of not-for-profit work

Provides both general analysis of the problems and specific examples of practice

Presents an original approach to HRM in these organizations

© The Author(s) 2018

Chris Brewster and Jean-Luc Cerdin (eds.)HRM in Mission Driven Organizationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57583-4_2

Begin Abstract

People Management in the Public Sector

Eva Knies¹ and Peter Leisink¹

(1)

Public Administration and Organizational Science, Utrecht University School of Governance, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Eva Knies (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Peter Leisink

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

People managementPublic sectorMissionManagerial discretionRed tapePublic service motivation

Eva Knies

is Associate Professor of Organization Science and HRM, at Utrecht University School of Governance, the Netherlands.

Peter Leisink

is Professor of Public Administration and Organization Science, at Utrecht University School of Governance, the Netherlands.

End Abstract

Introduction

It is the mission that makes management and strategy in public organizations different from profit-seeking organizations (Moore 1995, 2000; Rainey and Steinbauer 1999). In for-profit organizations strategy is aimed at financial targets based on a plan to compete in the chosen product and service markets . In public organizations, the mission is central to the strategy, meaning the public value that politicians have authorized the organization to provide for citizens and society at large. Thus, public organizations assess the value they produce in terms of the accomplishment of their mission rather than in terms of the revenues they have earned.

This distinctive feature of public organizations seems to have been neglected since the 1980s when the new public management (NPM) movement propagated an emphasis on performance , efficiency, and effectiveness (Hood 1991). This is based on the idea that public organizations will perform better when business management practices are implemented. The public management reform practices adopted by many OECD countries included private sector HRM approaches (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004). Over the past two decades, however, the concepts of public value and public service performance have directed the attention of scholars again to the distinctiveness of public organizations. In line with this approach, this chapter aims at analyzing the distinctiveness of people management in public sector organizations. Thus, rather than focusing on the question of the extent to which people management in public organizations is similar to people management in private organizations, this chapter will tease out the implications of the mission-driven character of public organizations for the management of human resources and public leadership , which together constitute people management.

Before we start discussing its distinctive characteristics, some clarification is required as to what constitutes the public sector. Public administration researchers have suggested the formal criteria of government ownership, funding , and political versus economic authority to demarcate public sector organizations (Rainey 2009). As far as general government is concerned, these distinctive criteria hold fairly well. However, when it comes to other public services such as education and health , these formal criteria do not suffice. For instance, the National Health Service in the UK is part of the public sector on the basis of the formal criteria mentioned, whereas in the Netherlands health care is provided by organizations that are legally private bodies with a public task. Recent theorizing (Moore 1995; Rainey 2009) suggests complementing the formal criteria with the criterion of public value, suggesting that it is not just public organizations that create public value for citizens but also non-profit and even private organizations. For the purposes of this chapter, it is too complex to examine people management in the public sector covering the whole range of subsectors and the variety between countries regarding what is considered as public sector . Therefore, we will concentrate on general government, which is the most similar between countries. The recent OECD publication “Government at a Glance 2013” tells us that general government employment accounts for just under 16% of the total labor force in the 27 OECD countries. However, general government as a percentage of the labor force ranges widely, from 6% in South Korea to 30% in Norway in 2010. Generally, the Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland) have above-average levels of government employment, while the Asian (Japan, Korea) and Latin American countries (Brazil, Chile, Mexico) have below average government employment levels. A fair number of OECD countries, particularly in Europe, including Austria, Denmark, France, Italy, The Netherlands, and the UK, report an anticipated decrease in public employment numbers as a result of austerity reforms. However, the OECD report expects that significant reductions in public employment are hard to sustain in the long run because citizens’ demands keep growing. Average government expenditures represented about 45% of GDP in 2011, which shows that governments outsource the production of public service to an important extent to non-profit and private organizations.

There is a relative lack of research on HRM in the public sector in developing countries . Rees (2013) recognizes that the core HRM activities such as recruitment and selection, training and development , and performance management are likely to be similar, but that the objectives , stakeholders , values, challenges, and constraints of public sector organizations in the developing countries are likely to be radically different. Noting the stark differences between developing countries, Rees (2013) observes that the political, social, economic, educational, health , and environmental problems in developing countries inevitably result in an inadequate delivery of public services, specifically because public sector organizations lack the human capacity to deliver these. This in turn is related to the sector elements of HRM in the public sector such as low salary levels, lack of effective performance standards, inability to fire people and to attract appropriately trained people, and inadequate management by supervisors. Such ineffective HRM policies and practices need to be reformed if public services are to be improved. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to do justice to the contextual differences that should be taken into account and we acknowledge a bias toward advanced economies.

This chapter will be structured as follows. We begin by presenting insights from recent studies of the contribution of HRM to performance . These are directly relevant because it is argued that they present a model of the mechanisms through which people management can effect mission accomplishment or public service performance. The people management-performance model raises a number of issues for further analysis because these issues appear to be distinctive for public organizations. First, the concept of public value and public service performance will be examined. What does performance in the case of public organizations mean and how does the current economic and political environment affect public service performance? Second, one characteristic which is regarded as distinctive for public organizations is the constraint on the discretionary room which public managers experience, due to the influence of government control and political oversight. This raises the question of the extent to which managers are actually able to develop and implement HRM policies that influence employees and ultimately public service performance. Third, HRM-performance research has indicated that bundles of HRM practices aimed at influencing employees’ abilities, motivation , and opportunities to perform (AMO model) are more effective in influencing performance outcomes than isolated HRM practices are. We will, therefore, examine the prevalence of these bundles in public organizations. Fourth, HRM studies generally point out that HRM contributes to organizational performance through the attitudes and behavior of employees. Here, we focus on two aspects that are distinctive in a public sector context: employees ’ public service motivation and red tape perceptions. The conclusion will summarize the main findings regarding people management in the public sector.

Insights from HRM-Performance Studies

Before examining people management in the public sector , we present an overview of the general literature on the contribution of HRM to performance and the linking mechanisms. These conceptual and empirical insights are not specifically focused on HRM in a public sector context . In fact, private sector studies tend to dominate the HRM literature. In this section, we will present the conceptual framework, the HRM value chain, which underlies many studies on the contribution of HRM to performance and discusses three central concepts in HRM-performance research : vertical alignment, horizontal alignment, and implementation. Second, we will outline the most important conclusions of 30 years of empirical research on the relationship between HRM and performance.

Since the emergence of the academic field of HRM 30 years ago, the question of whether and to what extent HRM contributes to performance has been prominent on the research agenda. At first, most research efforts were aimed at demonstrating that an investment in HRM pays off in terms of, for instance, higher productivity , a high return on investment, and lower turnover. Over the years, research interests shifted to the question of how HRM contributes to performance. A theoretical model th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• The Management of People in Mission-Driven Organizations
• People Management in the Public Sector
• People Management in Volunteer Organizations and Charities
• HRM in the International Organizations
• Understanding HRM in Religious Organizations: HRM Practices Within Two Churches of the Protestant Federation of France
• HRM in Cultural Institutions
• HRM in Sport Organizations
• People Management in Social Enterprises: B Corporations
• Talent Management in Mission-Driven Organizations
• Management of People in Mission-Driven Organizations: Current State and Future Directions
• Backmatter