GLOBALIZATION AND HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT IN THE PUBLIC…
43
senior-level responsibilities. Despite the call to reduce the size without redefining the mission and the governments, particularly in the developed countries, did not address the problem of retiring individuals. HR managers in the public sector need to pursue an activist policy to recruit and retain the talented and qualified people because the success of the organizations depends on the personnel. The recent trends in human resources management further complicate the tasks.
Decentralization One of the ways in which many countries have responded to the process of globalization is the decentralization of the personnel functions to the agencies. The era of centrally managed civil services is coming to an end. There are wide variations in terms of recruitment and training in different agencies. Some countries are still following centralization, and many countries are adopting policies of decentralized recruitment and training. In New Zealand, a high degree of decentralization has led to the elimination of employee protections. The similar trend exists in “the United Kingdom, Australia, Switzerland and Sweden” (Shim 2001, p. 324). Based on the OECD (2000) data, the Netherlands, Denmark, Canada, and the United States have implemented a “moderate” amount of decentralization. On the other hand, Japan and France preserved centralized and highly protective systems (Shim 2001; OECD 2000). Similarly, the United States has undertaken a policy of decentralization by giving increased power to the agencies in terms of recruitment and compensation. Each agency can make an advertisement for the jobs and can hire to fill short-term positions. Agencies are given the rights to hire from colleges, universities, Indian tribal governments, and eligible non-profit organizations under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (US Office of Personnel Management 2017). As a matter of fact, “the past 35 years have seen significant experiments in the decentralization of virtually all functions of public personnel administration to strengthen managerial flexibility and allow line managers to exercise more discretion” (Brewer and Kellough 2016, p. 171). Some countries are trying to make the recruitment process more effective and modern, although in many cases they are not adopting the policy of decentralization with no particular enthusiasm (Shim 2001). This phenomenon is especially prevalent in Southern Europe, Korea, and Poland (Shim 2001, p. 342), as well as Hungary, and also parts of Sub-Saharan
