From Bureaucrats to Entrepreneurs to Networkers, Advocates, and Empaths: Reappraising Human Resources Management Ideals and Practices in Public Administration

Abstract

This article assesses how changing paradigms of public administration have been reflected in public sector human resources management over time. It finds that large-scale reform acts, such as the Pendleton Act or the Civil Service Reform Act and the National Performance Review reflected the “ideals” of the rule-following bureaucrat of the Old Public Administration (OPA) and of the result-seeking entrepreneur of New Public Management (NPM). However, the advocate, empath, and networker of New Public Administration (NPA) and New Public Service (NPS) has not been pursued through similarly encompassing reform efforts. While gradual changes such as a more representative bureaucracy and increased collaborative governance have paved the way for a deeper integration of NPA and NPS values into human resource policy and practice, more efforts are needed to promote advocates, empaths, and networkers as the core of the “new” public service. We conclude by making some tentative suggestions in this direction.

The bureaucrat, the entrepreneur, and the networker: Developing and validating measurement scales for civil servants’ role perceptions

“…The measurement scales are also useful for practitioners as they can be applied to a number of key HRM processes, for example, for recruitment and selection by providing insight into the profiles of candidates and help create a diversity of roles in the workforce (Schnell & Gerard, 2022). The scales can be used for training and development by having civil servants reflect on the role(s) they identify with, to improve certain roles, and to learn how new values and behaviors can be promoted (van der Meer et al, 2022).…”

“…In the public administration literature, the roles of civil servants have frequently been discussed, for instance by Reissman (1949), Downs (1967), Barlow et al (1996), and, more recently, by Peters (2010), Brandsen and Honingh (2013), Rhodes (2016), Hendrikx and van Gestel (2017), and Schnell and Gerard (2022). However, most studies that have focused on civil servants' roles were descriptive in that they only identified various roles, rather than empirically testing whether civil servants relied on different role perceptions.…”

“…This shift implied that civil servants should increasingly consider their role to be that of a networker, someone who delivers public services in a network of external actors (Klijn et al, 2010; Warsen et al, 2018). Schnell and Gerard (2022, 6) argued that civil servants are no longer “neutral implementers of a set of rules and regulations nor managerial entrepreneurs; they are listeners, facilitators, and mediators.” Within this role perception, civil servants view public organizations as a partner in collaborative networks, rather than as the main developer and executor of policies (van der Steen et al, 2018). Hence, we see a networker as someone who finds it important to collaborate with stakeholders in networks, maintain contact with them, and involve others in key decisions.…”

“…Nevertheless, several scholars propose differences between the three role perceptions in relation to PSM (Meyer et al, 2014; Schnell & Gerard, 2022). Civil servants relying more on bureaucratic and networking role perceptions are expected to have a stronger intrinsic motivation toward serving the common good (Schnell & Gerard, 2022).…”

Activation through welfare conditionality and marketisation in active labour market policies: Evidence from Indonesia

“…The first is that jobseeker activation occurs via the inclusion of monetary incentives, which could be seen as some form of unemployment benefit, although one‐off, in the jobseeker support package. Second, the deployment of a quasi‐market in services delivery signals the expansion of NPM paradigm outside of its original OECD geographical origins (Schnell & Gerard, 2022). Third, the universality of the program includes both informal and formal workers affected by the crisis, with the exclusion only of those who are in formal education or are public officers and employees of state‐owned enterprises and who have access to other schemes1 (Gentilini et al., 2022; SPEC, 2020).…”