Abstract
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The type of the civil service system is one of the key pillars and attributes of a public administration system. There are a huge professional literature and a tremendous practical experiences about the historical development of the civil service systems, and during the last decades we have been facing to the big question of the transformation between the two main models: the Weberian bureaucracy and the business-like employment solutions in the public sector.
The European Institute of Public Administration carried out a comparative study entitled “The flexibilisation of the employment status of civil servants: from life tenure to more flexible employment relations” in January, 2005. Today, the reforms in the public administration systems are usually transformed the civil service systems as well, and not only into one direction: from the rigid “old” forms to the more flexible “new” ones, but in an opposite direction as well. In the NMP based countries – like Australia - there were very important debates about the more effective safeguarding of the neutral civil service in the danger of the politicization of the business-like employment environments.
While the different practical versions of the civil service system reforms are representing a certain amount of compromises between the two basic models, we do not have a comprehensive, theoretically well-founded answer to the question: whether there is real possibility of a “positive sum game” in such mixed models?
We should analyze the paradigms of the Weberian bureaucracy and the NPM based civil service employment model. Both model is based on a definite social-economic system and a set of cultural and ethical values. How are those different conditions compatible within a mixed system? Can they support the positive elements of each other, or they just destroy important elements of each other? If we have practically operating mixed models, we have to study their conceptual expectations and the reality of the implemented HR management methods, processes and instruments.
Some proposed topic for research:
• “being civil servants is a vocation” and the sources of the prestige and the respect of the profession at the market economy based society,
• tenure vs. agencification, politicization and marketization,
• values of the seniority and tenure vs. values of the competing job market,
• flexible employment and the strategic HR management in the PA.
The strongest tool for the HR management is the pay-system. In the seniority-based pay systems, the primary basis for pay increases is the employee’s tenure. Obviously, the seniority-based pay systems take into account the performance, but the main factor is tenure. The benefits of seniority-based pay include loyalty, retention, and stability of all staff members, regardless of performance levels.
In the performance-based pay systems the performance is the primary basis for pay increases. As with seniority-based pay systems, other factors, like tenure, can be accounted for in a performance-based system, but employee performance, however conceptualized by the organization, is the impetus in determining pay raises. (Personnel Psychology, 60, 903-928.) It is a real dilemma how the impacts of the seniority and the performance on the organizational performance may or can be harmonized and balanced in a mixed system. Another important dimension of the topic is the optimal opportunity of the merge of the tenure- and scope-based civil service systems.
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