Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

156 Public Management and Administration
It is now realized that the personnel function – more often termed the human
resource management (HRM) function – needs to be actively managed.
Farnham argues there are five key features of contemporary human resource
management and employment relations emerging in the public services
(1999, p. 127):
First, the personnel function is attempting to become more strategic than administrative
in its tasks, but within resource constraints structured by the state. Second, management
styles are tending to shift towards more rationalist, performance-driven ones, away from
paternalist, pluralist ones. Third, employment practices are becoming more flexible and
less standardized than in the past. Fourth, employment relations are becoming ‘dualist’,
with most non-managerial staff continuing to have their pay and conditions determined
through collective bargaining, whilst public managers are increasingly working under
personal contracts of employment. Fifth, the state is moving away from being a ‘classical’
model employer. In its place, it appears to be depending increasingly on HRM ideas
and practices taken from leading-edge private organizations, whilst adapting them to the
particular contingencies of the public services.
The organization’s overall strategy and even its very survival is linked to the
competency of key staff. What is often termed strategic human resource management
in government seeks to integrate strategy with staffing and links in
other areas such as industrial relations, recruitment, training, incentives and
performance evaluation.
Davis argues that a contract state might turn out being similar to the traditional
model of public administration, containing a small elite of core officials
(1997). This might be so, but there is no particular need for this small core to
be long-term employees or to even have much knowledge of their department’s
area of expertise. The actual administration might be better if there were a core,
but the changes are so widespread that it would be hard to identify who should
be in the privileged core. The elite model proposed by Northcote–Trevelyan or
Weber may return, but seems unlikely in the short or medium term. More likely
is that the public service will become like a management consultancy firm.
Some consultants may have a long career in the same place, but this is unusual.
More likely is rapid change and short-term positions in the public service.
Perhaps there will be a floating population of policy advisers: sometimes in the
bureaucracy; sometimes advising politicians; sometimes working as consultants
for one of the big accounting or consulting firms. Permanency and a career
may be seen as archaic and not characteristic of many public service staff who
will transfer more readily in and out of the sector instead of being lifetime
employees.
The task for public managers is more complex and challenging than it once
was. A managerial public service may be more interesting for public servants
than was the traditional model. As Caiden argues (1996, pp. 30–1):
Few would want to return to the passive bureaucracy of the past, its conservatism, adherence
to the strict letter of the law, reluctance to depart from precedent, undue weight