mab334@miami.edu

1. Public Personnel Administration
and Human Resource Management
Introduction to Public Administration

2. Introduction
• Public personnel administration – policies, processes and procedures designed to recruit, train,
and promote the men and women who manage government agencies.
• Human resources development – training and staff development of public employees designed
to improve job performance.
• Personnel considerations guided by three main values:
• The quest for strong executive leadership (Chapter 6)
• The desire for politically neutral, competent public servants.
• Politically neutral competence – idea that appointments to civil service positions should be made on the
basis of demonstrated job competence, and not based on diversity.
• Public service should mirror the demographic composition of American society.
• Diversity – respect for individuals of different characteristics such as color, race, ethnicity, gender, age,
religion, sexual orientation, or way of thinking.
• Diversity – differing cultures, languages, ethnicities, races, sexual orientations, religious sects, abilities,
classes, ages, and national origins of individuals in an institution, workplace, or community.
• This is a matter of ensuring representation in government for positions that are not elected.

3. Introduction
• Political Considerations
• Values of public personnel administration often come into conflict with one
another.
• Examples:
• Executive leadership can be stronger when there is a focus on patronage, or using
political appointments to control bureaucrats (see Chapter 6).
• Political neutrality would not accept a value of diversity as these characteristics would
be irrelevant.
• Those promoting diversity would deemphasize political neutrality to the benefit of
representativeness.

4. Why is the Study of Public Personnel
Administration Important?
• Hiring, firing, promotion, and demotion decisions have a direct impact on the makeup of
people in public administration.
• Discretion
• Differing attitudes and ideology
• Personnel decisions therefore have an impact on policy matters.
• Who works in public administration will determine the implementation and creation of
policy and service decisions.
• Personnel decisions themselves are also policy matters.
• Effectiveness
• Productivity
• Promoting diversity
• The costs for governments of paying personnel is a substantial concern.

5. Why is the Study of Public Personnel
Administration Important?
• Size and scope of government make concerns over public personnel administration and human
resources important (politicized).
• Democrats:
• Larger government creates jobs
• Republicans:
• Larger government stifles private sector growth and smaller government saves money.
• Myth:
• The size of the federal government, as measured by the number of personnel is growing.
• Accusation:
• The federal bureaucracy is dysfunctional.
• The lack of growth of federal civilian employees relative to the population could explain why we might see more
“failures” by the federal bureaucracy.
• Blame creates turnover as public administrators tire of being blamed.
• State and local governments have grown considerably and thus more of state and local budgets
are dedicated to paying personnel.

6. Merit versus Patronage Civil
Service Systems
• Civil Service – nonpartisan group of government workers who obtain work through merit and competence and
enjoy the benefit of seemingly permanent employment.
• Two demands:
• Fair and competent administration
• Responsive to partisan demands (executive leadership)
• Spoils/Patronage System
• Named “spoils” system based on the idea that to the victor go the spoils.
• Andrew Jackson
• No expertise necessary.
• Jobs given to those with the “right” political loyalties.
• Seen as populist politics that supported the common man and emphasized a distrust of the aristocracy.
• Reliance on:
• Ascriptive criteria – standards for making personnel judgments that are based on attributes or characteristics other than skills
or knowledge.
• Affirmative action
• Veteran’s preference
• Nepotism

7. Merit versus Patronage Civil
Service Systems
• Merit System
• Merit system – appointments and hiring based on exams, qualifications, and training.
• Achievement oriented criteria – standards for making personnel judgments based on an individual’s job related competence.
• Focus on:
• Competence
• Expertise
• Educational background
• Experience
• Ethical standards
• Why?
• Industrial revolution
• Assassination of President James Garfield by Charles Giteau
• Civil Service (Pendleton) Act of 1883
• Creates Civil Service Commission
• Establish job classifications
• Administer exams
• Oversee merit employees
• Promote neutral competence
• Reality: Neither merit or patronage systems exist

8. Merit versus Patronage Civil
Service Systems
• Advantages of Merit Systems
• Competent employees
• Continuity/stability, not turnover
• Changes in administrations under a broad spoils system would lead to constant changes in
bureaucracy.
• Advantages of Patronage Systems
• Chief executive has more control (promotes strong leadership)
• More loyalty
• This creates a more direct line between citizens who voted for a president and the
bureaucracy.
• Politics-Administration Dichotomy

9. Formal Arrangements of the
Federal Personnel System
• Office of Personnel Management (OPM)
• OPM is the agency responsible for:
• Formerly the Civil Service Commission (until 1978)
• Establishes pay rates
• Establishes job classifications
• Oversees hiring, training, promoting and firing of civil service employees.
• Managing the national personnel system.
• OPM is monitored by the Merit Systems Protection Board and Office of Special Counsel.
• 90% of federal employees fall under the jurisdiction of the OPM.

10. Formal Arrangements of the
Federal Personnel System
• The General Schedule
• The General Schedule is the pay scale for most federal employees.
• Has 15 grades (GS – 1 to GS – 15) of which each has 10 steps.
• Pay rates of public employees are a matter of public record.
• This is how position classifications help determine pay rates for positions in
the federal government.

11. Tasks of Personnel Administration
• Position Classification
• Position classification – classify jobs in different agencies that have
essentially the same type of function and responsibilities, based on written
descriptions of duties and responsibilities.
• The classification of positions allows for the determination of pay scales based on the
grouping of jobs.
• Written descriptions of job responsibilities allows for jobs to be classified, even across
agencies.
• Ambiguity
• Continuous updating of classification systems

12. Tasks of Personnel Administration
• Recruitment, Examination, and Selection
• Compensation
• Pay considerations:
• Economic subsistence
• The level of knowledge, expertise, and specialty associated with the work.
• The importance, quality, and quantity of work.
• Comparability
• Across the same job in the federal government.
• With the private sector.
• Pay gap – the difference between public and private salaries for comparable positions.
• On average, the private sector pays more than the public sector.
• Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA)
• The cost of living continually rises.
• Pay must adjust for this fact.
• Locality Pay
• Locality pay – adjustments to federal pay scales that make allowances for higher or lower cost areas where employees live.
• Different parts of the country have different costs of living.
• Cost of living adjustments allow the government to take into account differences in the cost of living between different states,
cities, etc.
• Ensures basic economic subsistence.

13. Promoting Diversity in Public Personnel
Administration: Diversity Strategies
• Affirmative Action (AA) – policy designed to give special attention to or
compensatory treatment to members of some previously disadvantaged group.
• One of the first actions to promote AA:
• Executive Order 10925 (Kennedy) – requires AA guidelines to prohibit discrimination in employment
by agencies and government contractors.
• Arguments for:
• Past discrimination needs to be rectified by providing special attention to minority groups.
• There continues to be systematic exclusion of certain groups that prevents a representative bureaucracy.
• Previous methods of personnel administration have been discriminatory (e.g., tests).
• Arguments against:
• Affirmative action is considered to be inappropriate of supporters of merit systems as it interferes with
emphasis on neutrality and competence.
• Reverse discrimination – unfavorable actions against white males to achieve affirmative action goals to
hire and promote more women and minorities.
• Board of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978)

14. Promoting Diversity in Public
Personnel Administration
• Anti-Discrimination Laws
• Civil Rights Act of 1964 – prohibits discrimination in private and public sector
employment and housing.
• Established the Equal Opportunity Commission which hears cases of discrimination
filed by employees.
• Equal Employment Opportunity Act – strengthen the EEOC, which enforces
antidiscrimination laws in public and private sector.
• EEOC has consistently been underfunded.
• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Prevents discrimination against employees from private employers with 15 employees
or more employees and all state and local governments based on gender.

15. Promoting Diversity in Public
Personnel Administration
• Equal Pay and Comparable Worth
• Wage gap – difference between women’s and men’s earnings.
• Women still earn about 77 cents on the dollar earned by men.
• Title XII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• No sex discrimination in hiring, pay, or promotion in the federal government.
• Equal Pay Act of 1963
• Act requires employers to pay the same wage to employees holding the same job.
• What is the same job?
• Jobs don’t have to be identical, they just have to be “substantially related.”
• Comparable Worth – the attempt made by some states and municipalities to compare jobs according to the skill, effort,
education, and experience needed by the occupant of the job in an attempt to eliminate gender-based disparities in pay.
• Evaluate jobs on the basis of characteristics.
• Education
• Degree of skill
• Characteristics are weighted ratings that are assigned to each attribute of the job.
• A score is then computed and a determination is made about whether a comparable worth adjustment is needed.

16. Rights of Public Employees
• Limits on Political Activities (1st Amendment)
• Elrod v. Burns (1976)
• Lower level employees cannot be fired for partisan reasons
• Should they maintain partisan neutrality as civil servants?
• Political Activities Act of 1939 (Hatch Act)
• Prohibits:
• Active participation in campaigns
• Running for office
• Being a party delegate
• Hold office in a political party
• United States Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers, AFL-CIO (1973)
• Upheld the Hatch Act
• Most of the Hatch Act was rolled back under Clinton
• Cannot run for political office or take campaign contributions while a public servant.
• The (absence of a) Right to Strike
• The Right to Organize (see chapter)