Productivity/Performance

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

Africa, including Uganda and Nigeria (Sezi 1997). By contrast, Sweden has abolished the civil service, jobs no longer have tenure, and all recruitment is subject to open competition. In a different approach, Netherlands has created a Senior Public Service. Austria, Germany, Norway, Poland, and Portugal have introduced pay for performance to make the public sector competitive with the private sector (Sezi 1997). Decentralized recruitment can cause problems in terms of complying with merit, favoritism and the loss of accountability. A coherent system of recruitment is impossible under a decentralized system. A decentralized system can invite favoritism, cronyism in the recruitment system. The problem is serious in the developing countries compared to the developed world.

Decentralization is not without problems because of potential problems of abuse of power and favoritism without any central control. Decentralization can lead to their being a dilemma of the tension between decentralization and centralization. On the one hand, decentralization allows the level of flexibility and autonomy that is necessary in the age of globalization which requires rapid responses. At the same time, if the local levels are unqualified to handle the problems, this can lead to inefficiency and, in an extreme case, can cause the abuse of power. So, the local units have a responsibility to recruit people on the basis of merit. Local agencies must be qualified to handle complex problems without the supervision of the central authority.

PRoDuctivity/PeRfoRmance Globalization has intensified the demand for productivity among the agencies, which is forcing them to outsource if they cannot improve. With growing competition and a limited budget, government employees are under pressure to increase productivity. The long-held common view that the government employees are inefficient, are protectors of red tape and rigidity increases the pressure on them. As a result, productivity improvement has become one of the major themes of HRM. Florkowsski and Liftton (1987) describe productivity as an amorphous construct and it is difficult to measure productivity. In the absence of market-driven prices of consumption, it is difficult to measure productivity in public services (Sudit 1995). Jordan and Battaglio (2014) assert that there is more emphasis on performance ever since the state of Georgia (USA) introduced At—Will employment.