Value Shifts in Public Sector Human Resource Management: A Congressional Perspective

• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X15605159
• Author: James R. Thompson
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• Date: 01 December 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2017, Vol. 37(4) 375 –404

© The Author(s) 2015

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X15605159

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Article

Value Shifts in Public

Sector Human Resource

Management: A

Congressional Perspective

James R. Thompson1

Abstract

Various scholars have put forth frameworks for interpreting how public sector

human resource management (HRM) policies and practices have tracked shifts in

societal values. Although such frameworks serve important heuristic purposes, the

empirical support offered for the interpretations made is generally thin. This study

employs content analysis techniques to assess the relative validity of these different

schemes with a focus on the priority assigned to the different values by members of

Congress in debates over the federal civil service. According to the results, among

the most dominant HRM-related values for the 122-year period (1883-2004) are

efficiency, morality, and progress.

Keywords

civil service history, administrative values, content analysis, human resource management

The current interest in “values” as a framework in which to understand and interpret

the work of public administrators presents an opportunity for a reexamination of that

portion of the public sector human resource management (HRM) literature that associ-

ates each of several, successive historical eras with a distinctive set of values. A series

of authors including Mosher (1982), G. E. Roberts (2000), Klingner and Lynn (1997),

and Klingner, Nalbandian, and Llorens (2010) have offered frameworks for interpret-

ing HRM-related developments according to the value or values that were “dominant”

1University of Illinois at Chicago, IL, USA

Corresponding Author:

James R. Thompson, Department of Public Administration (MC 278), University of Illinois at Chicago,

412 S Peoria Street, Chicago, IL 60607-7064, USA.

Email: jthomp@uic.edu

605159ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X15605159Review of Public Personnel AdministrationThompson

research-article2015

376 Review of Public Personnel Administration 37(4)

during each era. As one example, Mosher references the period 1883-1906 as “govern-

ment by the good” based on the “evangelical” nature of the civil service reform move-

ment which led to the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883. Mosher (p. 68) comments,

“It was essentially a negative movement designed to stamp out a system which was a

‘disgrace to republican institutions’—to eradicate evil.” This study constitutes a simi-

lar attempt at associating different historical eras with different dominant values.

Distinct from its predecessors, this study employs content analysis techniques in pur-

suit of a more methodologically rigorous basis for the formulation of such associa-

tions. The nature of the inquiry necessitates the identification of the group or groups

making the associations. It was determined that in light of its centrality to the gover-

nance process, Congress would serve as an appropriate initial focus.

Scope and Level of Analysis

The focus in much of the public value/public values literature is on the individual

public manager and on what the manager can do to “create public value” (Moore,

1995). Thus Moore (p. 10) promotes the exercise of discretion by executives in ways

that can “reshap[e] public sector enterprises in ways that increase their value to the

public in both the long and short run.” The HRM-related values literature, in contrast,

focuses on the institutions of government rather than on individual managers. In place

of the question of how individual managers can create new value, the focus of the

scholars associated with this literature has been on how an understanding of broad

institutional and societal value trends can enhance our understanding of HRM-related

eventualities.

Its distinctive value associations make the civil service generally and the federal

civil service specifically a logical focus for an inquiry into HRM-related values in the

U.S. public sector. That is the perspective adopted here as well as by both Mosher

(1982) and G. E. Roberts (2000). While Klingner et al. (2010) make reference to “pub-

lic HRM systems and values in the United States” (p. 17) generally rather than to the

federal sector specifically, apparent from their framework is an implicit focus on

developments at the federal level.1

The present study places an exclusive focus on Congress as the basis of the value

associations identified. This stands in contrast to the approaches of the authors refer-

enced above who do not limit the hypothesized associations to a specific stakeholder

or group of stakeholders. A problem with that more global approach that becomes

apparent in attempting to establish an empirical basis for the value associations made

is that one needs to identify who is doing the valuing: Value associations exist not in

the abstract but only as assigned by one or more stakeholders.

Among the different groups that have an interest in and opinions regarding the

federal civil service are Congress, the president, the Supreme Court, the American

public, and civil servants themselves. One approach to the development of an over-

arching values framework would be to undertake separate investigations of the atti-

tudes expressed by each of the different stakeholder groups and to synthesize the

results.