Teaching Human Resource Management for Public and Nonprofit Students

• Author: Jessica E. Sowa
• Published date: 01 December 2014
• Date: 01 December 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X14547306
• Subject Matter: Book Review

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2014, Vol. 34(4) 421 –426

© The Author(s) 2014

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X14547306

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Book Review

Teaching Human Resource

Management for Public and

Nonprofit Students: The

Textbook Challenge

Jessica E. Sowa1

In 2011, Master of Public Administration (MPA) programs are increasingly serving

students who may choose to work in a wide variety of public service settings, includ-

ing various levels of government and the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit management is

becoming increasingly popular in MPA programs, with the number of courses and

concentrations growing across these programs (see Mirabella, 2007, for a detailed

discussion of this growth). In addition, more attention is being placed on how to inte-

grate discussions of nonprofit management into traditionally public-sector-oriented

curricula (Smith, 2008). Recognizing that our students will be serving the public in a

variety of settings, MPA programs are integrating nonprofit topics into many tradi-

tional MPA courses, from organization theory and management, ethics and leadership,

to human resource management (HRM). The challenge for educators moving forward

in serving these mixed classrooms of graduate students is to find materials that can

speak evenly across both groups, providing enough substance and examples from both

the public and nonprofit sector that students can apply the learned skills in their chosen

context.

This review examines two textbooks in HRM, with a focus on how these textbooks

serve both public and nonprofit management students. While both these works have

strengths and weaknesses, in reviewing these books, several main issues are high-

lighted: the approach adopted by the authors for examining the process of managing

people in the public and nonprofit sector, the tension of having to address two different

institutional contexts in one textbook designed to be used in a single course, and the

need for more sector-specific research on managing people in the nonprofit sector, in

particular research that surfaces the unique challenges facing grass-roots nonprofits

and those without significant HRM capacity.

1University of Colorado Denver, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jessica E. Sowa, University of Colorado Denver, CO, USA. P.O. Box 173364, Campus Box 142 Denver,

CO 80217 (303) 315-2155.

Email: Jessica.Sowa@ucdenver.edu

547306ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X14547306Review of Public Personnel AdministrationSowa

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