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Given the rhetoric that human resource management (HRM) models adopted by public and private organisations are becoming more similar, this study questions whether the traditional distinction between public and private sector HRM is still relevant. Building from institutional theory, we study continuity and change using four-wave data from eight European countries. We find that the traditional public sector investment in employee well-being continues to be distinctive only for HRM practices aimed at equal opportunities. Private sector organisations, on the other hand, make greater use of performance-oriented HRM practices including compensation and benefits, performance appraisal data, and modern development and career management practices. Cross-sector convergence is explained through coercive and mimetic isomorphic change, while persistent differences indicate that time-honoured public sector values are less susceptible to change. This study provides a much-needed update of the public-private comparison and a trend analysis of developments over time.

For managers in public service organizations, stakeholders are very important as they have different and sometimes conflicting values. Yet, public administration scholars often neglect the stakeholders despite their vital role in defining good performance in democratic political systems. This chapter combines theoretical perspectives on public values (different understandings of the desirable) with contributions focused on creating public value. The chapter also pays attention to the co-existing and competing governance paradigms that are part of the context in which managing for public service performance occurs. These paradigms provide institutional templates, policies, operational strategies, and desired programs that prescribe how public service provision should be structured and how it should operate. Governance paradigms can be used to understand the links between stakeholders, public values, and public service performance. Giving insight into these links is the key contribution of the chapter. It uses nine illustrative studies to examine how the stakeholder concept and public value(s) are used in the public service performance literature. A key implication is that public administrators can be portrayed as experts who exercise judgment and make consequential decisions in identifying relevant public values, in creating public value, and in generating public service performance.

There is a dearth of studies of HRM in a public sector context that examine the legitimacy of HRM and its contribution to public service performance. This neglect is striking because public management studies acknowledge that public service performance is a contested concept involving many stakeholders with different views on what good performance is. The chapter describes how the classic bureaucracy and the NPM models of public governance embody different logics of legitimacy that have affected HRM policies differently. The legitimacy of today’s HRM policies and their public service outcomes are examined distinguishing between internal and external stakeholders. The literature review shows a range of significant HRM-related issues, including job insecurity, role overload, and mixed progress in equal-employment opportunities. These affect the internal legitimacy of HRM as perceived by employees but are also endangering the sustainability of various public services, thereby creating severe risks for HRM’s external legitimacy.

Human resource management (HRM) scholars studying HRM in a public-sector context hold that the public-sector context is distinctive despite decades of reforms oriented on private-sector management principles. Distinctive characteristics include (1) the multiple goals that public organizations serve, making vertical alignment of HRM difficult; (2) the constraints on managerial autonomy resulting from red tape and trade union involvement; and (3) employees’ public service motivation, which is antithetical to performance management. However, there is a lack of evidence on public- versus private-sector differences in the human resource practices that are actually applied. Using Cranet 2014/15 survey, this chapter examines whether public-sector institutional characteristics affect the application of human resource practices as theoretically expected. The results show that, compared to the late 1990s, HRM in public organizations continues to differ in some respects from HRM in private-sector organizations, but not in other respects. The traditional belief that public-sector HRM is not outright aimed at efficiency and effectiveness still holds. The public service ethic and the resilience of collectivized industrial relations likely contribute to this. However, the traditional public-sector HRM orientation on employee well-being is less distinctive, which will likely affect the position of public organizations in the labor market.

When pressure on human resource departments to make government more efficient is increasing, it is of great relevance to understand employees’ motivation and the fit of an employee with their job, as both contribute strongly to service performance. Therefore, this chapter discusses the role of public employees’ motivation and its relationship to individual performance. More specifically, this relationship is examined by focusing on public service motivation (PSM), a stream of research developed during the last three decades stressing the service orientation of public employees’ identity. Theoretically, how the relationship between PSM and individual performance is dependent on institutions is discussed, and an overview of the existing empirical evidence concerning this relationship is provided. The literature review discusses a variety of aspects such as direct vs. indirect effects, type of performance used, how performance is measured, and effect sizes. Finally, several avenues for future research are proposed, including methodological strategies.

The central issue in this chapter is people management in public organizations. That is, managers’ implementation of HR practices and their leadership behavior in supporting the employees they supervise at work. This chapter focuses on five key aspects related to HRM and leadership in a public sector context. First, the historical move from personnel management to HRM and leadership. Second, the distinction between external and internal management and this chapter’s focus on internal management. Third, the role of middle and frontline leaders in the implementation of policies and their responsibility for turning general policies into results. Fourth, the mutual dependency between HRM policies and leadership. Fifth, the distinction between intended, implemented, and perceived HRM and leadership. This chapter systematically draws on both the general HRM and leadership bodies of literature, and specifies these insights to the public sector context whenever possible.

It is easy to think of public service organizations in generic terms. However, on the basis of a multidimensional institutional perspective of publicness, which includes authority, funding, and values, one can quickly understand that the publicness of organizations comes in various guises. This institutional perspective not only explains the behavior of these various public service organizations themselves but also the behavior of individuals operating within these institutional boundaries. Key to explaining individual institutional behavior is the concept of identities. Depending on the extent of their internalization, identities influence individual behavior more or less strongly. An important level at which these insights can be harnessed to the benefit of the organization is at the level of management, which is the link between the individual and the organization. The mechanisms of management influence are illustrated by analyzing four different organizational systems (work design, reward, human resources flow, and employee participation) to manage human assets in public service organizations.

The central issue in this chapter is people management in public organizations. That is, managers’ implementation of HR practices and their leadership behavior in supporting the employees they supervise at work. This chapter focuses on five key aspects related to HRM and leadership in a public sector context. First, the historical move from personnel management to HRM and leadership. Second, the distinction between external and internal management and this chapter’s focus on internal management. Third, the role of middle and frontline leaders in the implementation of policies and their responsibility for turning general policies into results. Fourth, the mutual dependency between HRM policies and leadership. Fifth, the distinction between intended, implemented, and perceived HRM and leadership. This chapter systematically draws on both the general HRM and leadership bodies of literature, and specifies these insights to the public sector context whenever possible.

This chapter examines managers’ role in people management within a public sector setting and the factors explaining differences in people management performance between managers. The main question guiding this contribution is: What are the antecedents (favoring and hindering factors) of public managers’ HRM implementation and leadership behavior? The AMO model is used as a conceptual framework to map and examine the antecedents of public managers’ people management. Under the Ability category of the AMO model, the focus is on managers’ people management abilities and management development. Under the Motivation category, the focus is on managers’ willingness to take up people management responsibilities and their priorities. Under the Opportunities category, support from different organizational stakeholders (HR department, upper management, etc.) and (personnel) red tape are covered. As such, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the impact that typical public sector characteristics have on managers’ people management performance.