In September 1993, Vice-President Gore unveiled the National Performance Review (NPR), a blueprint for a sweeping re-engineering of Federal personnel management. He stated that "We stand at the crossroads of the future of our federal government, of public service, of public confidence in government" (Gore, 1993: 3). This reform fervor was generated by nationwide interest in "reinventing" government (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). The reforms recommended by the NPR were widely and hotly debated within the Federal government community. Could the federal government adopt customer service, lower costs, and employee empowerment as values (Walters, 1992)? Were the reforms consistent with agency efficiency, political responsiveness, and employee rights? Could they win Congressional approval?

Yet fundamental as these issues were, the entire debate became moot in fourteen months: the Republican party gained control of Congress in the November 1994 election, claiming a mandate to make much more radical changes. In this context, Republicans claimed that the marginal increases in program effectiveness, service, and flexibility promised by NPR were simply not enough to solve the problem.

From a historical perspective, the events of the past two years signify a shift in the politics underlying public personnel management. The purpose of this chapter is to:

1. present a historical perspective on traditional public personnel management functions, processes, systems, and values;

2. examine the politics and values of the emergent anti-government paradigm: personal accountability, limited and decentralized government, and community responsibility for social service delivery;

3. evaluate the emergent paradigm's impact on traditional values; and

4. explore how the emergent paradigm affects the role of the public personnel manager.

1. A Historical Perspective: Public Personnel Management as Functions, Process, Values and Systems

Public personnel management in the United States can be viewed from at least four perspectives (Klingner and Nalbandian, 1993). First, it is the functions (planning, acquisition, development, and sanction) needed to manage human resources in public agencies. Second, it is the process by which public jobs, as scarce resources, are allocated.

Third, it is the interaction among fundamental societal values that often conflict. Responsiveness is best ensured through a budget process that allocates positions and therefore sets priorities, and by an appointment process that considers political or personal loyalty along with education and experience as indicators of merit. Efficiency means that staffing decisions should be based on ability and performance rather than political loyalty. Employee rights means that selection and promotion are based on merit, as defined by objective measures of ability and performance; and employees should be free to apply their knowledge, skills and abilities without partisan political interference. And social equity means that public jobs are allocated proportionately based on gender, race and other designated criteria.

Finally, public personnel management is the embodiment of personnel systems -- the laws, rules, organizations, and procedures used to express these abstract values in fulfilling personnel functions. Historically in the United States, public personnel management systems developed in at least four evolutionary stages. First came patronage systems (1789 - 1883), which awarded public jobs on the basis of political loyalty or party affiliation. Second, the increased size and complexity of public activities led to the emergence of a civil service model (1883 - 1933) that emphasized efficiency (modernization) by defining personnel management as a neutral administrative function, and emphasized individual rights (democratization) by allocating public jobs based on merit (Heclo, 1977). Third, a hybrid effectiveness model emerged (1933 - 1964) which combined the political leadership of patronage systems and the merit principles of civil service systems, because even pure merit systems must be responsive to political leadership if government is to be effective (Fischer, 1945; Sayre, 1948). Finally, two more systems emerged as advocates of two additional values. Collective bargaining emerged to represent collective employee rights (the equitable treatment of members by management through negotiated work rules over wages, benefits, and working conditions); and affirmative action emerged to represent social equity through voluntary or court-mandated recruitment and selection practices to correct the under-representation of minorities and women in the workforce. In this fourth stage (1964 - 1992), public personnel management in the United States could be described as a dynamic equilibrium among four competing values, each championed by a particular system, for allocating scarce public jobs in a complex and changing environment. As one might expect, this conflict exhibited a commingling of technical decisions (how to do a personnel function) with political ones (what value to favor or what system to use) (Nalbandian, 1981; Ban and Riccucci, 1991; Freedman, 1994).

Figure 1 shows the evolution of public personnel management systems in the U.S.:

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STAGE OF DOMINANT DOMINANT PRESSURES

EVOLUTION VALUE SYSTEM FOR CHANGE

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One Responsiveness Patronage Modernization +

(1789-1883) Democratization

Two Efficiency + Civil Service Responsive and

(1883-1933) Employee Rights Effective Government

Three Responsiveness + Patronage + Employee Rights +

(1933-1964) Efficiency + Civil Service Social Equity

Employee Rights

Four Responsiveness + Patronage + Dynamic equilibrium

(1964-1992) Efficiency + Civil Service + (self-correcting)

Employee Rights + Collective Barg. + among 4 competing

Social Equity Affirmative Act. + values & systems

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3. The Politics and Values of the Emergent Paradigm: Personal Accountability, Limited and Decentralized Government, and Community Responsibility for Social Services

In the traditional view of public personnel management, it was possible to evaluate techniques based on their contribution to the maximization of one or more of these four competing values. Thus, for example, affirmative evaluation programs could be evaluated favorably based on their contribution to social equity, or unfavorably based on their denial of individual rights for non-minorities. The state of the field at any one time could be evaluated in terms of the balance among the four competing values, with public personnel managers and others functioning to resolve conflict arising from the simultaneous implementation of competing values and systems. Thus, the traditional model reinforced all four conflicting values, and the role of personnel managers and others in mediating value conflicts.

Because evolutionary change is by nature slow, it is difficult to pinpoint the precise point at which this consensus began to be altered. But if pressed, one could do worse than pick the 1976 Presidential campaign, won by Jimmy Carter who ran against the national government as a Washington "outsider." Following the election, he proposed the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act on grounds which included poor performance in the public service and difficulty in controlling and directing bureaucrats. Beginning in 1980, the Reagan administration, though starting from fundamentally different values and policy objectives, continued to cast government as part of the problem, and to campaign against the infrastructure of public agencies and public administrators.

The anti-government assumptions behind this shift were paralleled by a related transition from political to economic perspectives on public policy (Lan and Rosenbloom, 1992). This shift in perspectives emphasized the role of market forces on individuals and the economy, rather than program implementation by government agencies and employees, as the most efficacious tools of public policy. While public administration retained its role as the "great compromiser" among competing values, economic perspectives and the value of administrative efficiency clearly reflected these intense political and economic pressures on the public sector to "do more with less," a mandate that has "come with the territory" of public management since 1981. The first pressure -- "do more" -- caused government to become more accountable through such techniques as program budgeting, management by objectives, program evaluation, and management information systems. The second pressure -- to do more "with less" -- caused governments to lower expenditures through such methods as tax ceilings, expenditure ceilings, deficit reduction, deferred expenditures, accelerated tax collection, service fees, user charges, and a range of legislative and judicial efforts to shift program responsibilities and costs away from each affected government.

Since from 50% to 75% of public expenditures go towards employee salaries and benefits, efforts to increase accountability and reduce expenditures have focused on those managerial functions subsumed by public personnel management. The shift focused on philosophies and techniques used to enhance accountability in previous eras (such as the 1930s and the 1960s) by emphasizing program outputs, and by rationally tying program inputs to outputs. Examples of these trends were program budgeting, human resource forecasting, job evaluation, management by objectives, objective performance appraisal, training needs assessment, cost-benefit analysis, and gain-sharing (productivity bargaining). As the information systems revolution expanded access to information formerly used by management for coordination and control, this pressure has also been reflected in organizational restructuring and "downsizing" middle managerial positions.

The Presidential election of 1992 was fascinating from the perspective of civil service reformers, for it pitted proponents of sweeping, major change against proponents of even greater change. Less than a year after taking office, Vice-President Gore issued the National Performance Review, aimed at creating a government that "works better and costs less." The changes initiated by this report have been hotly debated in the public management literature since then, with an emergent consensus on several broad conclusions. Basically, increased government effectiveness required (1) fundamental changes in organizational structure and accountability epitomized by the term "reinventing government," (2) a decentralization of most public personnel functions to operating agencies and a corresponding reduction in the functions and authority of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and (3) a 10% reduction in federal civilian employment, largely in staff positions (personnel, budget, auditing, procurement, and middle management).

The Republican Party swept into control of Congress in 1994 for the first time in over 40 years. The emphasis of the "Contract with America" was that government, especially the federal government, should be doing less, and with less resources. Their electoral victory was a result of a contemporary shift toward three emergent anti-government values: personal accountability, limited and decentralized government, and community responsibility for social services.

First, proponents of personal accountability expect that people will make individual choices consistent with their own goals, and accept responsibility for the consequences of these choices, rather than passing responsibility for their actions onto the rest of society. Collectively, we are responsible for providing each other with equal opportunity to develop our individual knowledge, skills and abilities; but fundamentally, the responsibility for that development (or lack of it) falls on the individual.

Second, proponents of limited and decentralized government believe, fundamentally, that government is to be feared for its power to arbitrarily or capriciously deprive individuals of their rights. It is this libertarian belief that gave rise to the Constitution's Bill of Rights, which basically sought to limit the national government's power to infringe on individuals' freedoms of speech, press, association, and privacy. Proponents of this value also believe that it is easier to connect public policy, service delivery and revenue generation in a smaller unit of government than in way that is not possible with a larger one, in that decision makers are known, revenues are predictable, and services are directly visible. And for some, the reduction in size and scope of government is justified by the perceived ineffectiveness of government; by the high value accorded to individual freedom, responsibility and accountability; and, finally, by a reluctance to devote a greater share of personal income to taxes.

It is argued that at the local level, decision-makers are known, revenues are predictable with the amounts understandable (millions versus trillions of dollars), and services are directly visible. Decentralization of government to the local level raises issues of equity in service delivery and regulation, but its proponents argue that these issues are generally best addressed not by uniform national policies or standards, but by increasingly representative legislative bodies and increasingly powerful ethnic group representation. The fact that this diversity and representativeness is likely to result in political gridlock at a national level is a primary reason for limiting and decentralizing government, as well as for avoiding attempts to "level the playing field" through income redistributive policies and programs.

Third, limited and decentralized government and personal accountability are supplemented with a third value -- community responsibility for social services . Even civil libertarians and free enterprise capitalists recognize that some individuals will be unable to compete economically and politically because they lack the necessary knowledge, skills, ability, or emotional makeup to do so, regardless of the incentives they are offered. The answer to this distributional problem is not government "handouts," but the maintenance of a safety net through the combined efforts of government social service agencies and non-governmental social institutions. A key development here is the emergence of non-for-profit non-governmental organizations responsible for social services, recreation, and community development activities. These may be churches, groups of civil activities, community centers, condominium associations, neighborhood associations, and other community based organizations that President Bush praised in his "Thousand Points of Light" speech in 1992. The most significant consequence of emergence of this value, at least as far as public personnel management is concerned, has been the creation of organizations that provide an alternative to the traditional notion that government has to fund and deliver social services. The trend toward downsizing and decentralizing government would be incomplete without the thousands of non-profit organizations that routinely provide local government social services funded by taxers, user fees, and charitable contributions.

The model of public personnel management presented in Figure 1 is the traditional paradigm, one that is both descriptive and normative. That is, it presents a historical and contemporary picture of the field that is intended to both describe the reality, and to defend the role of public personnel managers as an emergent profession characterized by compromise among competing values. The emergent paradigm emphasizes two general descriptive characteristics of contemporary public personnel management: (1) using alternative organizations and mechanisms to deliver public services, and (2) increasing the flexibility of employment relationships for those public employees that remain. The primary alternative mechanisms are purchase-of-service agreements with other public or non-governmental organizations; privatization; franchise agreements; subsidy arrangements; vouchers; volunteers; self-help; and regulatory and tax incentives (International City Management Association, 1989). The primary ways of increasing the flexibility of the public employment that remains are increased use of contingent employees, and exempt positions outside the civil service filled through employment contracts. The existence of these alternative instrumentalities is not new. But a review of recent examples indicates how commonplace they have become, and how much they have supplanted traditional service delivery by civil service employees hired through appropriated funding of public agencies.

a. Alternative Mechanisms:

Purchase-of-service agreements with other governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become commonplace. For example, Metropolitan Dade County now provides fire and rescue services to almost every small- and medium-sized municipality in Dade County (the exceptions are the cities of Hialeah, Miami Beach and Miami). These arrangements were negotiated because they offer persuasive advantages for Dade County and municipalities. For Dade County, there is the opportunity to expand services within a given geographic area, utilizing economies of scale. For municipalities, the arrangement offers the opportunity to reduce capital costs, personnel costs, and legal liability risks. In addition, because fire fighters are heavily unionized, it offers the opportunity to avoid the immediate political and economic costs associated with collective bargaining.

As another example, many local governments contract with individual consultants or private businesses to conduct personnel services such as employee development and training. The use of outside consultants and businesses (hired under fee-for-service arrangements on an "as needed" basis) increases available expertise and managerial flexibility by reducing the range of qualified technical and professional employees that the agency must otherwise hire to provide training. The costs of service purchase agreements may actually be lower than the same function performed by in-house personnel, in that the government agency pays no personnel costs or associated employment taxes, and reduces its own legal liability risks.

Privatization is the performance of a formerly public function by a private contractor. It differs from service purchase agreements primarily in philosophy and scope. While service purchase agreements contract for delivery of a particular service to a public agency, privatization means abolition of the entire public agency, replacing the infrastructure with an outside contractor who then provides all services formerly provided by the public agency. Privatization has become commonplace over the past fifteen years because it offers all the advantages of service purchase agreements, but on a larger scale. Privatization has become commonplace in areas such as solid waste disposal, where there is an easily identifiable "benchmark" (standard cost and service comparison with the private sector), and where public agency costs tend to be higher because of higher pay and benefits (Mahtesian, 1994). But privatization is spreading rapidly in other areas that have previously been almost entirely the prerogative of the public sector: schools and prisons.

In 1994, the school board of a faded, working-class Pittsburgh suburb was facing desperate problems. It had the highest tax rate in the county; only one of 40 students who took the Scholastic Assessment Test in the year from June 1993 to June 1994 scored above the national average of 950 on math and verbal test results; and the number of high school graduates had plummeted from 225 in 1978 to 60 in 1994. It sent layoff notices to teachers at one of four schools, and hired a Tennessee company to pick its own teachers and run the school. Not surprisingly, it made this decision over strong opposition from unionized teachers and school administrators, who intimated that the purpose was union-busting rather than educational reform. A state court issued an injunction forbidding the contact; the district is considering an appeal (Applebome, 1995).

In 1990 a record of over one million people were incarcerated in federal and state prisons. Despite heavy increases in prison construction, most states have been at capacity for the past five years. Privatization is one option for increasing government performance while attempting to hold down costs. During the past five years, a number of private corporations have gotten into the business of managing prisons, halfway houses, boot camps, and detention facilities. These organizations offer elected officials an alternative to public construction and management of prison facilities, which is a soaring cost for most state governments.

Franchise Agreements often allow private business to monopolize a previously public function within a geographic area, charge competitive rates for it, and then pay the appropriate government a fee for the privilege. Examples are private shuttle bus companies which are developing in many major cities, utilizing vans instead of buses. The vans frequently duplicate public transportation services by "skimming" riders off of popular bus routes; but municipalities often encourage the procedure because it reduces their own costs, provides some revenue in return, and results in a continuation of a desirable public service.

Subsidy Arrangements enable private businesses to perform public services, funded either by user fees to clients or cost reimbursement from public agencies. Examples would be airport security operations (provided by private contractors and paid for both by passengers and airlines), some types of hospital care (for example, emergency medical services provided by private hospitals and reimbursed by public health systems), and some higher education programs For example, a state may choose to subsidize a private university by paying it to operate a specialized program, rather than to assign responsibility and resources for it to a public institution. It is because of subsidy arrangements that the University of Miami, a private institution with a prestigious (and expensive) medical center, receives more appropriated funds from the state of Florida than does Florida International University, the state university in Miami. Or local housing authorities may choose to subsidize rent in public housing projects based on tenant income to encourage occupancy by low-income residents

Vouchers enable individual recipients of public goods or services to purchase them from competing providers on the open market. Recent public opinion has focused on educational vouchers as a possible alternative to public school monopolies. Under this system, parents would receive a voucher that could be applied to the cost of education for their child at a number of competing institutions -- public schools, private schools, etc. Another variant is housing vouchers as a substitute for publicly constructed and managed housing. These vouchers would allow public housing recipients to purchase the best possible housing on a competitive basis from available private landlords.

Volunteers are widely used by a range of public agencies to provide services that might otherwise be performed by paid employees. These include community crime watch programs, which work in cooperation with local police departments. Volunteer teachers' aides provide tutoring and individual assistance in many public schools.

Self-Help is common in community development programs and correctional facilities. Community development programs frequently use residents on a volunteer basis to provide recreation, counseling, and other support services for a community. Frequently, such contributions are required to "leverage" a federal or state grant of appropriated funds. Contrary to the popular image of prisons as vacation resorts, prison inmates are usually responsible for laundry, food service, and facilities maintenance.

Regulatory and Tax Incentives are typically used to encourage the private sector to perform functions that might otherwise be performed by public agencies with appropriated funds. The Job Partnership Training Act (JPTA), for example, was a tax incentive-based national system for manpower training that replaced CETA. CETA (the Comprehensive Education and Training Act, was a federally-funded program that passed money through to state and local governments for assessment, training, and job placement activities. Its successor, the Job Training Partnership Act, offered income tax deductions for corporations that hired, trained and retained disadvantaged employees. The intended effect -- human resource development and employment -- was the same as with CETA, only the mechanism was different.

Regulatory incentives include the zoning variances granted to condominium associations. Frequently, construction requires variances for roads, parking, waste collection and disposal. In return for these variances, the condominium association agrees to provide many services normally performed by local government. These include security (if the condominium has a gated entrance), waste disposal, public works (maintenance of common areas), etc. This may seem an unfair arrangement to the residents, who pay both maintenance fees to the condominium association and local property taxes for the same services (which are not provided by the municipality). But it does explain the increasing popularity among builders and residents of condominiums -- their lower unit cost often makes them the only available low or moderate housing available; and they would not be approved by local planning councils or zoning boards unless the contractor agreed in advance to require the condominium association to be responsible for services that otherwise would be the municipality's responsibility.

b. Flexible Employment Relationships for the Remaining Public Employees

All of the above mechanisms are techniques for providing public services without utilizing public employees, and in many cases through other funding sources besides appropriated funds. Yet even in those cases where public services continue to be provided by public employees working in public agencies funded by appropriations, massive changes have occurred in employment practices. Chief among these are increased use of temporary, part-time, and seasonal employment; and increased hiring of exempt employees (those outside the classified civil service) through employment contracts. These two devices, along with the increased use of outside contractors, have markedly changed the face of the public work force (U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, 1994).

Increasingly, employers reduce costs and enhance flexibility by meeting minimal staffing requirements through "permanent" employees, and by hiring "contingent" (temporary, part-time or seasonal) workers to meet peak workload demands. These positions usually offer lower salaries and benefits than career positions. And employees can be hired and fired "at will" (without reference to due process entitlements of civil service employees, or collective bargaining agreements). Skill requirement of these jobs are reduced by job-redesign or work simplification. Where commitment and high skills are required on a temporary basis, employers may seek to save money or maintain flexibility by using contract or leased employees to positions exempt from civil service protections.

Exempt positions are classified, in that positions must be created and funded before they can be filled. But they are not classified within civil services systems, so their incumbents are not "permanent" (at least, not in the sense of having a property interest in their positions). Instead, the terms and conditions of these positions are specified through performance contracts specifying pay and benefits, and limiting the term of employment. While contracts may be routinely renewed with the approval of the employee and the employer, employees may also be discharged "at will" in the event of a personality conflict, a change in managerial objectives, or a budget shortfall. Frequently, once employees become exempt, they lose their "bumping rights" back into a classified position in the event of a reduction in force (RIF). Increasingly, managerial and technical employees are hired into these types of contracts. They increase the salary and benefits that can be offered to highly qualified employees, and they enhance managerial flexibility to trim personnel costs quickly should this be necessary, without having to resort to the bureaucratic chaos precipitated by the exercise of "bumping rights" during a RIF situation.

The impact of these two devices is accelerated by retirement "buyouts," which offer employees close to retirement age an incentive to retire early within a limited period of eligibility ("window"). In a typical example, employees with 17-20 years service (in a jurisdiction with a 20-year eligibility requirement for retirement) may be offered, for a limited time period of two months, the opportunity to resign and receive retirement benefits equal to those they would have received with three additional years service. And the employer may even "sweeten the pot" by offering to pay its share of the cost of employee and family health benefits during the early retirement period (before the employee is eligible for Medicare). If the plan is designed properly so that enough employees retire to save substantially, but enough stay to provide for organizational continuity and skills, both employer and employee benefit. The employee gets an option to retire early at close to current salary; the employer gets to fill the vacant position with an entry-level employee at a much lower salary. The major drawback for the municipality is unexpectedly large lump-sum payments for accrued annual leave or sick leave. For example, the City of Miami estimates that it will need to find $10 million to compensate 339 employees who elected early retirement. The highest payout is $87,000; the average is $20,000 (Cavanaugh, 1995).

4. Assessing the Emergent Paradigm's Impact on Traditional Values

These two emergent public personnel systems -- using alternative mechanisms for delivering public services, and increasing the flexibility of employment relationships for those public employees that remain -- have implications for each of the four values that underlie the traditional model of public personnel management.

a. Impact on Employee Rights. Certainly employee rights is diminished by the new paradigm. Employees are more likely to be hired "at will," more likely to be hired into temporary and part-time positions, more likely to receive lower pay and benefits, and more likely to be unprotected by civil service regulations or collective bargaining agreements (Kilborn, 1995).

b. Impact on Social Equity. It is most probable that social equity is also diminished by the new paradigm. Comparisons of pay equity between the public and private sectors over the past twenty years have concluded rather uniformly that minorities and women in public agencies are closer to equal pay for equal work than are their counterparts in the private sector. Managerial consultants are overwhelmingly white and male. Part-time and temporary positions are exempt from protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act (1992), and the Family Leave Act (1992). And retrenchment in federal agencies responsible for enforcing affirmative action compliance means that their activities will be less visible and effective, in addition to the removal of many positions from their purview.

c. Impact on Efficiency. The impact of the emergent paradigm on public agency efficiency has been both positive and negative. On the positive side, it has characteristics that clearly increase public agency productivity and lower costs, particularly for civil service employees in appropriated positions. In many cases, the threat of privatization and/or layoffs have forced unions to agree to pay cuts, reduced employer-funded benefits, and changes in work rules (Cohen and Eimicke, 1992). A common example is that municipal trash collectors now are more likely to work a full shift by the clock, rather than being allowed to leave work when their route is completed.

But the personnel techniques that have become more common under the new paradigm may actually increase some personnel costs, particularly for independent contractors, reemployed annuitants, and temporary employees. Downsizing may eventually lead to higher recruitment, orientation and training costs. Maintaining minimum staffing levels also results in increased payment of overtime, and higher rates of employee accidents and injuries. As the civil service workforce shrinks, it is also aging. This means unforseen increases in several critical areas: pension payouts, disability retirements, workers compensation claims, and health care costs.

The impact of the new paradigm on public program effectiveness is also debatable. While the intention may be to create a government that "works better and costs less," it may have several unintended consequences for agency effectiveness (Peters and Savoie, 1994). First, downsizing causes a flow of human capital from the agency. While this may have no short term costs, in the long run it reduces organizational memory, hampers the development of clear and efficient procedures, and increases the orientation and training burden on the employees and supervisors that remain.

Second, the new paradigm tends to increase workforce tension and fear. For the past fifteen years, public employees have been told that they are the problem rather than part of the solution. Most managerial analysts would conclude that this does not enhance employees' professionalism, self-respect, or performance. In addition, career employees may be afraid of losing their jobs, afraid of training temporary workers who may become their replacements, and afraid of taking risks. Temporary workers are unhappy about working side by side with career employees who have higher pay, benefits, and job security.

Third, increased out-sourcing makes contract compliance the primary control mechanism over the quality of service, rather than traditional supervisory practices. This creates a real possibility of fraud and abuse (Moe, 1987). Contracts that are poorly drafted, or inadequately enforced, can cost agencies much more than if the same service were provided by public agencies and employees. For example, a state audit in Florida recently revealed that taxicab companies hired by Palm Beach County to provide transportation services to indigent public health patients had submitted exorbitant bills for reimbursement. In one flagrant case, auditors calculated that one cab would have had to have been driven 24 hours per day at 40 miles per hour to have accumulated the miles for which the county was being billed. And in another, US. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials canceled a contract with a private prison management company after releasing a scathing report detailing an atmosphere of abuse and penny-pinching in the jail for illegal immigrants and asylum seekers (Sullivan and Purdy, 1995).

Fourth, downsizing "squeezes" all programs, effective and ineffective alike. continual budget cuts result in agencies that are budget-driven rather than mission driven. That is, agencies tend to focus on achievement of short-term performance indicators that will result in maintenance of appropriated funding levels. This means that long-range planning, or indeed any planning beyond the current budget cycle, is likely to become less important. This means that agencies will not be able to do effective capital budgeting, to maintain capital assets (human or infrastructure) with any degree of adequacy, or to request incremental resources for long-range projects. And budget-driven agencies that address public problems with short-term solutions designed to meet short-term legislative objectives are not likely to be effective.

d. Political Responsiveness.

Political responsiveness is the ultimate value. This is because stakeholders (voters and special interests) support elected officials because of the actions they support are perceived as being beneficial to these groups, or to their conception of what constitutes the public interest. Political responsiveness by elected and appointed officials means favoring the value that has the most, or the most vocal, public support.

It is in its different approach to political responsiveness that the emergent paradigm has had the greatest impact on public administration in general, and public personnel management in particular. The traditional paradigm assumed that government, particularly a powerful central national government, was the major societal institution concerned with setting national objectives and reallocating the resources to pay for program implementation. The emergent paradigm places much less importance on the role of national government, particularly with respect to domestic issues, those not connected with defense or international affairs. That is because the first value (personal accountability) generally reduces the role of government in society. If problems are viewed as the results of a person's choices, then the responsibility for consequences is personal rather than societal. Second, emphasis on decentralization replaces the primary focus of governmental activity from a national to state and local level. Third, the maintenance of a "safety net" comprising some state and local government agencies, and other not-for-profit NGOs, de-emphasizes the role of the national government in making social welfare policies and redistributing income, a role that has been central to the concept of national government since 1933.

While it may be unfair to expect the values behind an embryonic paradigm to be explicit or immediately validated by reality, critics view the emergent paradigm as an abdication of political responsibility rather than as a shift toward personal responsibility, decentralization, and community-based social services. These critics charge that the current paradigm shift represents less a redefinition of political responsiveness than the exercise of political and economic opportunism. Rhetoric aside, reducing the power of the national government limits income redistribution from the wealthy, and limits public scrutiny over the actions of public officials (Rainey, 1995).

So the transition from one paradigm to another leaves fundamental issues unresolved, at least for now. What is the appropriate role of government? To what extent are persons responsible for their choices, and the consequences of these choices? Who owns the vast public infrastructure now up for privatization -- current taxpayers or future ones? To what extent are elected and appointed officials who preside over the dismantling of social and public infrastructure for the sake of short-term political gain abdicating their responsibility to the public welfare? Are states, local governments, not-for-profits and community based organizations capable of maintaining a social safety net once the national government abandons its hegemonic role in social welfare policy? Or are we are essentially abandoning the political and social ideal of government as a provider of public goods and services in favor of the economic ideal of government as protector of private wealth and privilege? Does the emergent paradigm indeed reflect alternative values, or are these "alternative values" simply the rationalization of covert self-interest by political and economic elites? Are they in fact an emergent paradigm, or fundamentally rhetorical "sound bites" and political slogans designed for emotional and symbolic appeal rather than rational clarification and compromise among competing values.

These troubling issues are exemplified by cuts in local and state government services now occurring in California. This state's Proposition 13, passed in 1976, was the initial grassroots effort to limit government growth by capping property taxes for current residents. With Washington cutting back, the state facing perpetual deficits, and county governments in danger of bankruptcy, facing the impact of twenty years of budget cuts may now be unavoidable. Perhaps the greatest question to answer in evaluating the impact of budget cuts on political responsiveness is this: how much decline in quality of public life will people accept as the price of lower taxes? And there can be no doubt that the quality of public life has declined. Thirty years ago, for example, California had the fifth highest rate of spending per pupil in the country, and an envied educational system. Today it ranks 42nd in spending; it has one of the highest dropout rates in the country (only two states are worse); and last year its fourth graders tied for last place in an educational assessment test that was given in 39 states (Sterngold, 1995).

Perhaps the contrast between these two paradigms is best illuminated by the different responses of adherents to these events. Adherents to the traditional paradigm see the declining quality of public life as equivalent to a declining quality of life; adherents to the emergent paradigm view it as enhanced opportunity for individuals to make personal choices about their own spending priorities, including community responsibilities. Adherents to the emergent paradigm see their values as liberating, in the sense that they emphasize personal choice, and community responsibility. Adherents to the traditional paradigm see the emergent values as a hypocritical overlay atop greed and self-interest. The paradigm shift may also be difficult to define and discuss because it reflects a fundamental shift in the nature of political discourse, as well as its substance (Clymer, 1995). So deep is the current mistrust of government that any discussion of its role remains mired in the short-term jockeying for position that routinely takes place among candidates seeking to position themselves favorably in electoral campaigns.

4. The Changing Role of Public Personnel Management: From Compliance to Consultation to Contract Compliance

Over the past two centuries, the evolution of public personnel management has been driven by the gradual and sequential emergence of alternative competing values. As each emergent value has gained political strength, its increased importance has been reflected in the emergence of the corresponding public personnel system and its related techniques. And most significantly, this evolutionary process gave implicit recognition to the importance of public administration (and to public personnel management as a subset of this discipline) because it assigned to public administration and public administrators the authority to (1) incorporate diverse values and perspectives, and (2) resolve conflicts over the implementation of these values in particular administrative situations (Meier, 1994).

The evolution of public personnel management has meant corresponding changes in the role of the public personnel manager. During the development of public personnel management as part of the transition from patronage to merit systems (Stage Two), public personnel management functioned as the champion of merit system principles. It occurred within civil service systems whose development was characterized by a bipolar dynamic of competition between political patronage and civil service systems. In this context, the public personnel manager was viewed as a "watchdog" whose responsibility it was to protect employees, applicants and the public from the evils of the spoils system. This required knowledge of civil service policies and procedures, and a willingness to apply them in the face of political pressure.

During Stage Three (1933-1964), public personnel managers sought to maintain legislators and chief executives have sought to maintain bureaucratic compliance, efficiency and accountability through budgetary controls and position management. Through such devices as personnel ceilings and average grade level restrictions, it became to role of public personnel management to control the behavior of public managers and to help assure compliance with legislative authority.

During Stage Four (1964-1992), due to a variety of political and economic pressures, the focus of public personnel management shifted to work management as managers and public personnel specialists have continued to demand flexibility and equitable reward allocation through such alterations to classification and pay systems as rank-in-person personnel systems, broad pay banding, and group performance evaluation and reward systems. This trend coincides with employee needs for utilization, development, and recognition (National Productivity Review, 1993).

In addition, because this period was characterized by a dynamic and self-correcting equilibrium among four competing values, the role of the public personnel manager involved political (mediating and conflict resolution) skills in addition to technical knowledge.

The current period (Stage Five, 1992 - present), calls for two types of behavior by public personnel managers. One is compliance oriented -- responsiveness to legislative mandates for cost control. The second is contract management, in that it has become the responsibility of the public personnel manager (along with the budget officer, attorney, and risk management specialist) to develop and manage the alternative techniques by which human resources are managed. Civil service and collective bargaining continue to be important, for many public employees (particularly school teachers and administrators, police and firefighters) are still covered by union contracts and collective bargaining agreements. But experience related to management of other types of employment contracts is also critical. These include individual performance contracts for exempt employees, temporary employment, independent contractors, etc. In this respect, it is noteworthy that the search and screen process for the personnel director of a mid-sized Florida city resulted in the highest ranking being given to a person with no previous civil service personnel experience. Instead, this person was a labor attorney with extensive private-sector experience negotiating and administering employment contracts with outside vendors and contractors.

The impact of paradigm shifts on the role of the public personnel manager can be seen in Figure 2 below.

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

STAGE DOMINANT DOMINANT PUBLIC PERSONNEL

VALUE SYSTEM MANAGER'S ROLE

______________________________________________________________________________

One Responsiveness Patronage

(1789-1883)

Two Efficiency + Civil Service Compliance:

(1883-1933) Employee Rights - Watchdog against the

"spoils system"

Three Responsiveness + Patronage + Compliance:

(1933-1964) Efficiency + Civil Service - Watchdog against the

Employee Rights "spoils system"

- Watchdog for

legislative mandates

Four Responsiveness + Patronage + Consultation +

(1964-1992) Efficiency + Civil Service + Balance

Employee Rights + Collective Barg. + among 4 competing

Social Equity Affirmative Act. + values & systems

Five Personal Alternative Compliance with

(1992-present) Accountability+ Organizations & Legislative Limits +

Limited Gov't + Mechanisms + Contract Compliance

Community Flexible

Responsibility Employment

Relationships

______________________________________________________________________________

The dominant values and systems represented by Stage One through Stage Four repeat the information given in Figure 1; the left-hand column summarizes the above analysis of the public personnel manager's role in each stage. Stage Five is the emergent paradigm.

The most troubling impact of this paradigm shift on the role of the public personnel manager emerges if the shift is viewed as the public policy rationalization (through emotive and symbolic value statements) of private privilege. If this is true, then the espoused role of contract compliance and compliance with legislative limits is merely a facade covering a reality of cuts in public programs and taxes to maintain the income of those who would rather not support policies or programs that redistribute income. This means that the public personnel manager's traditional function (like that of other public administrators) of mediating value conflicts has become something not only different, but more diminished professionally and ethically. If justice is nothing more than the interest of the stronger, than concepts such as the rule of law, substantive and procedural equity no longer have meaning. And if this is true, than public personnel managers (like other public administrators) will find it hard to maintain professionalism. Nor will ethical decision-making be an issue, unless public personnel managers work on two levels: one overtly accepting the status quo and performing the expected role of contract compliance and cost reduction; the other covertly rejecting the status quo and performing the subversive role of seeking to preserve and articulate the archaic values (social equity, individual rights, efficiency, and political responsiveness to a public service ideal) that characterized their role in the preceding paradigm.

5. Summary

The last twenty years have marked a turning point in the evolution of public personnel management. Until recently, the field was a dynamic equilibrium among four competing pro-government values. But beginning in 1992, strong political pressures to "do more with less" supplanted this evolutionary process with a new emergent paradigm characterized by three anti-government values: personal accountability, limited and decentralized government, and community responsibility for delivery of social services. The emergent paradigm has changed the role of the public personnel manager: from conflict resolution among competing values to implementation of contract compliance and compliance with legislative limits. Their role is changed more in the direction of their private sector counterparts, in that they are less responsible for resolving value conflicts than for increasing productivity as defined legislatively. And their role is diminished to the extent that the values idealized by the paradigm shift assume less of a role for public agencies and employees in the accomplishment of public policy objectives. And the emergent role may present professional public personnel managers with ethical dilemmas if it the values underlying the emergent paradigm are in fact nothing more than the rationalization, through emotive and symbolic slogans,of the protection of private privilege.

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