Public unit concepts and overview

Public Personnel Administration Environment

The Environment of Public Personnel Administration

Personnel administration in the realm of public service involves a myriad of controllable and uncontrollable factors that make it continuously changing and complex. These factors make up the "environment" from which both nature and dynamics of public personnel administration are developed. The chapter opens with a discussion of the nature of public personnel administration, and goes in-depth by exploring the different issues surrounding public personnel administration.

The first part of the chapter talks about the principles that have driven public personnel administration throughout the years. Unfortunately, because public service is inevitably and highly influenced by socio-political movements and events, adhering to objective, public-service oriented goals, principles and values becomes a challenge to public service employees and managers alike. Because public service is linked with politics, it is almost always 'equated with partisan politics' (p. 3). This is the difficulty that public service personnel experience in the course of their jobs and responsibilities working for the government: their efforts and initiatives are inevitably linked with politics that the line between public service and 'politicking' are almost always blurred. Inevitably, public personnel become susceptible to criticisms as a result of suspicions of partisan politics within the department, agency or unit they work for. This is just one of the many reasons why public personnel administration has yet to establish a thoroughly objective and solid theoretical foundation from which management in the public sector can be best explained and analyzed. For public personnel, the only constant thing is that, public service and public servants will always be affected by social and political movements in American society and government.

Further into the discussion of public personnel, the chapter identified the similarities and differences between public and private sector employees. As earlier discussed, public sector employees are more susceptible to political changes, and thus have "more legal restrictions" (p. 4). This means that despite political changes in the government, public sector employees are expected to be neutral, and "moral legal restrictions" cover, in part, this required impartiality. Public sector employees are required to uphold, at all times, a moral character -- a character that is impartial and legally correct and proper. This is a tall order for public sector employees, given that the environment they work for everyday is constantly changing and driven by conflicts of interest, if not among the employees, but among its managers or politicians/public officials.