Public Personnel Management

Recent research has demonstrated that public service motivation (PSM) is positively associated with the compatibility that public employees have to public organizations. However, the person–work environment (PE Fit) research also highlights the importance of compatibility not only between individuals and organizations (PO Fit) but also between individuals and jobs (PJ Fit). Hence, there is a need for research that investigates the level of the government work environment that PSM contributes to the most. Subsequently, this study sought to shed some light on the relationship that PSM has to PO Fit and PJ Fit. Using a sample of 205 randomly selected employees drawn from three public organizations in the States of Oregon, Indiana, and Kentucky, PSM was found to be a significantly better predictor of PO Fit, than PJ Fit. The implications of this finding for public administration research and practice are discussed.

Over the past 40 years, the research on workforce diversity has increased significantly. Despite this increased research, little attention has been given to the application of diversity and integration indices to departments with small workforces. Even less attention has been given to inferences that are made based on the diversity or integration scores that are obtained from the application of diversity indices. These issues are important because human resources managers and administrators are likely to modify or implement diversity policies or initiatives based on the diversity scores they obtain. This article applies three diversity indices to departments with small workforces and evaluates how data aggregation affects diversity scores and the inferences made based on those scores.

Almost 6 months after winning their U.S. Supreme Court case, a group of New Haven, Connecticut, firefighters celebrated their victory in grand style. The decision in Ricci v. DeStefano proved that the City of New Haven erred when it denied promotions to White firefighters who fared better on promotional examinations than did minority applicants. This article (a) examines the thrust of the Ricci decision, which involved two competing facets of the same equal employment opportunity (EEO) statute; (b) discusses the mistakes inherent in the testing procedures of the City of New Haven, Connecticut; (c) addresses the involvement of Justice Sonya Sotomayor in the decision; and (d) examines the implication of the decision for public-sector employers using testing procedures of the nature found in Ricci v. DeStefano. The author concludes that the decision underscores the need for use of alternative testing procedures and suggests that Ricci v. DeStefano is but a precursor to further litigation designed to render use of disparate-impact analysis unconstitutional.

We have a proliferation of tools to evaluate federal agencies’ performance and effectiveness. This article explores how effectiveness and performance values are distributed across government agencies based on three well-known assessment instruments used during the Bush administration: the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Management Scorecard, the Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART), and the Best Places to Work (BPTW) survey. A cluster analysis of the scores from these assessment tools allows us to examine the topography of the agencies in terms of the relationship between the tools and the context of performance, namely, the type of mission carried out by the agencies. Depending on the policy mission type, some agencies fare better in some assessment measures than others. By comparing scores from PART and OMB Scorecard with the BPTW survey, we also find a complex picture when leadership-driven performance metrics are compared with the results of an employee-based assessment of organizational effectiveness.

Does the bureaucracy represent the interests of the public or react to the partisan and ideological demands of political principals? This study uses data from the federal workforce reports and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s Central Personnel Data File to demonstrate that partisanship and ideology influence the demographic composition of the federal senior executives. The analysis indicates that fluctuation between administrations is largely attributed to presidents nominating and appointing individuals who share similar ideological views. The analysis also suggests that political control by ideologically driven principals has the potential to perpetuate divisiveness over polarizing issues. The partisan and ideological influences that continue to influence access to policy-making positions contribute to the perpetuation of patterned disparities in the representation of interests and undermine government performance.

Employers have a duty to perform workplace investigations in situations involving a workplace incident that violates an employer’s rules, regulations, policies, or procedures. Workplace investigations occur for many different reasons including reports of sexual harassment, employee altercations, safety issues, security breaches, customer complaints, and other issues. The primary goal of a workplace investigation is to produce findings that will provide the employer with the basis to make a decision concerning the action to be taken regarding the incident. By taking the necessary steps to determine what happened the employer is provided with a solid foundation to defend any action that may be taken with respect to a subsequent challenge.