By Design or by Drift: How, Where, and Why HRM Activities Are Organized in the Public Sector

• Date: 01 March 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X15626775
• Published date: 01 March 2018
• Author: Koen Verhoest,Jan Boon
• Subject Matter: Articles

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2018, Vol. 38(1) 110 –134

© The Author(s) 2016

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X15626775

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Article

By Design or by Drift: How,

Where, and Why HRM

Activities Are Organized in

the Public Sector

Jan Boon1 and Koen Verhoest1

Abstract

In the past decades, scholarship has recognized the potential of human resource

management (HRM) to contribute to organizational performance in the public sector. Even

so, the issue of how HRM activities are organized to achieve superior performance is still in

largely unknown territory. De-centering and re-centering dynamics for the organization of

HRM have been recognized, but insufficiently analyzed in terms of theoretical and analytical

integration. This study investigates the specifics of how the public sector organizes a variety

of HRM activities, including the questions of where and why.We find that a complementary

use of a rational design perspective and a constraining drift perspective is crucial in order

to fully understand the complexities of organizing HRM activities in the public sector. Public

organizations generally intend to seek the most optimal arrangement but are sometimes

constrained from doing so. Institutional constraints sometimes result in more optimal

arrangements, but they can also lead to unintended side-effects. This calls for more

research on how design and drift factors intertwine.

Keywords

human resources management, organizational arrangements, outsourcing, shared

services, public organizations

Introduction

This article addresses the important question of where, how, and why public entities

organize human resource management (HRM) activities.Scholars have recognized the

1University of Antwerp, Belgium

Corresponding Author:

Jan Boon, University of Antwerp, Sint-Jacobstraat 2 (M272), 2000 Antwerp, Belgium.

Email: jan.boon@uantwerp.be

626775ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X15626775Review of Public Personnel AdministrationBoon and Verhoest

research-article2016

Boon and Verhoest 111

importance of HRM as a part of management (Ingraham, Selden, & Moynihan, 2000),

demonstrating the positive relationship between HRM and organizational performance

(Gould-Williams, 2003; O’Toole & Meier, 2009). However, our knowledge of how pub-

lic entities organize HRM activities to achieve superior performance is limited. Despite

increasing practitioner and academic interest in organizational models for the delivery of

HRM (Coggburn, 2007; Redman, Snape, Wass, & Hamilton, 2007), a considerable

dearth of quantitative and qualitative research still exists (Battaglio & Ledvinka, 2009).

Early studies about the organization of HRM predominantly focused on the so-

called make-or-buy-decision in a private sector context, theorizing and testing motiva-

tions to minimize transaction costs (Klaas, McClendon, & Gainey, 1999), to maximize

internal strategic critical capacity (Quinn, 1999), or both (Lepak & Snell, 1998;

McIvor, 2008). However, a direct transfer of these theories—along with their underly-

ing assumption that organizational models are typically the outcomes of strategic

choices—to a public sector context seems unrealistic at best (Ponomariov & Kingsley,

2008). In 1987, Ronald Moe commented on the Achilles’ heel of privatization as its

inability to come to grips with complementary theories of public administration. Thirty

years later, Battaglio and Ledvinka (2009) concluded that there is, still, “clearly much

to be done in bridging the gap between private and public sector literature regarding

outsourcing administrative services” (p. 304).

Several studies have focused on the particularities of organizing HRM in the public

sector. Most of them, however, differentiate between either in-house production and

outsourcing arrangements (Battaglio & Ledvinka, 2009; Coggburn, 2007), or between

varying degrees of decentralization and centralization within government (Hou,

Ingraham, Bretschneider, & Selden, 2000; Tessema, Soeters, & Ngoma, 2009). Few

studies have analyzed the full range of delivery options that public organizations face

for the delivery of HRM activities, or considered whether and how different arrange-

ments place conflicting demands on managers of public entities.

The aim of our study is to integrate as follows: first, to provide a broad level of theo-

retical integration to understand the full complexities of organizing HRM in the public

sector, and, second, to provide an integration at the analytical level by mapping the full

range of organizational options within a specific jurisdiction. The purpose of this study is

to describe and explain, but not evaluate, the organization of HRM activities by individual

public organizations. The questions we want to address are positive, not normative.

The interest of this study touches upon a broader question of how successive and

layering, though often contradictory, administrative doctrines affect administrative

behavior (Christensen & Lægreid, 2010). For many years, New Public Management

(NPM) reforms have advocated for a transfer of private sector management techniques

into the public sector, including a decentralization of HRM activities (Hou et al.,

2000), and a greater reliance on outsourcing (Brown, 2004; Shim, 2001). In more

recent years, however, initiatives ascribed to a post-NPM agenda (Christensen &

Laegreid, 2007) or Digital Era Governance agenda (Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow, &

Tinkler, 2005) have resulted in a reintegration and stabilization of HRM functions

(Tessema et al., 2009). Insufficient attention has been devoted to how these develop-

ments affect the organization of HRM activities.