For the Want of a Nail: The Interaction of Managerial Capacity and Human Resource Management on Organizational Performance

• Author: Kenneth J. Meier,Erin K. Melton
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12611
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017

118 Public Administration Review • January | February 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 1, pp. 118–130. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12611.

Kenneth J. Meier is the Charles

H. Gregory Chair in Liberal Arts and

Distinguished Professor of Political

Science at Texas A&M University. He is

also professor of public management in

the Cardiff School of Business, Cardiff

University, United Kingdom. His research

interests include public management,

representation, race and politics, and public

policy. He is currently working on building

and testing theories of public management

across different national contexts.

E-mail : kenneth-j-meier@tamu.edu

Erin K. Melton is assistant professor

in the Department of Public Policy at the

University of Connecticut. Her research

interests include public management and

race and politics. She is currently building

and testing theories of how minority status

affects the management and performance

of public organizations, specifically focusing

on public administrators of color. Her

research has been published in

Journal of

Public Administration Research and Theory

and

Social Science Quarterly.

E-mail : erin.melton@uconn.edu

Abstract : Human resource management and managerial capacity are well documented in the public management

literature as integral management functions. The field has devoted attention to the importance of human resources,

but it has yet to consider whether human resource management interacts with capacity in attaining organizational

outcomes. Using a large-N, multiyear data set of public organizations, this article seeks to rectify this gap in the

literature. The findings validate scholarly arguments on the importance of public organizations’ need to manage

human resources and capacity effectively, identifying just the right combination for performance gains. Empirical

results encourage practitioners to consider the ways in which human resource management and capacity work together

to influence performance but sometimes undermine each other in counterintuitive ways.

Practitioner Points

• Myriad goals in public organizations afford opportunities for managers to practice multiple combinations of

human resource management and capacity strategies.

• When capacity is low, quality human resource management may make up the difference.

• Organizational slack becomes less necessary as the quality of human capital improves.

• Putting skilled people in the wrong places impedes organizational performance.

O f all the relevant managerial functions

involved, the management of public

organizations’ human capital has been central

to the field since its foundation. Today ’ s frequent

references to the U.S. government ’ s “human capital

crisis,” the attention devoted to human resources

strategy by the U.S. Comptroller General (e.g.,

Walker 2001 ), and the arguments of a number of

scholars that human resource management (HRM) is

critical all amplify the theme (Bilmes and Neal 2003 ;

Bruel and Gardner 2004 ; Ingraham, Selden, and

Moynihan 2000 ; Kellough and Nigro 2006 ). Often

in the abstract, the emphasis is that the increased

development of human resources will always pay off,

but most organizational relationships are subject to

conditions that facilitate or dampen the impact. One

possibility with regard to the management of human

resources is the existing level of managerial capacity.

The great majority of U.S. public employees pursue

their careers at the local level, and far and away the

vast majority of these—more than 6.7 million—work

in the field of public education, especially elementary

and secondary education (Nigro, Nigro, and Kellough

2006 , 4–5, 8). Despite the huge size of this sector and

the importance of public management in such settings,

there has been surprisingly little research on the

contingent effects of managerial activities by scholars

specializing in public administration (Raffel 2007 ). We

seek to rectify this gap by examining the impact over

a several-year period of the management of human

capital as it interacts with managerial capacity to

influence the performance of a large sample of public

organizations that specialize in public education, while

controlling for a range of additional influences—other

resources, constraints, and managerial variables—that

might also shape outputs and outcomes.

We proceed by placing this investigation in the

context of existing literatures on human resource

management and managerial capacity. We offer

some theoretical background that serves to support

our focus on human capital and its management as

a key HRM function, and of management capacity

generally, and introduce a model that depicts how

public management helps shape policy results. We

then describe our sample and measures and report

results for estimations of the effect of human capital

on organizational performance contingent on

management capacity. We conclude with a sketch of

implications for scholars and practitioners.

Investigating the contingencies of managing human

capital or other factors is crucial for several reasons.

Erin K. Melton

University of Connecticut

Kenneth J. Meier

Texas A&M University

For the Want of a Nail:

The Interaction of Managerial Capacity and Human Resource

Management on Organizational Performance