Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management

(Steven Felgate) #1

Drawing upon some of the distinctions made in the HR literature on manage-
ment styles, this focus on the eYcient use of human resources has more in
common with a cost minimization than a high-commitment approach to HRM
(Purcell and Ahlstrand 1994 ). Indeed, if personnel specialists in the new disaggre-
gated service units were involved in any activity, it was not so much devising new
HR practices which met local ‘business’ needs but in ensuring that labor costs were
reduced by tackling sickness absence and altering the composition of the workforce
(Kessler et al. 2000 ).
The pressures faced by the public sector workforce have been exacerbated by the
performance and audit regimes. In addition to encouraging a short-term approach
to people management, the target culture has aVected staVmorale. Kirkpatrick et al.
( 2005 : 176 ) highlight Wndings from the UK’s 1998 Workplace Employment
Relations Survey which showed that public sector workers were more likely than
employees in the private sector to experience stress and be absent through illness.
Guest and Conway ( 2002 ) reported that ‘levels of satisfaction, trust and commit-
ment are all lower in the public sector.’ Most signiWcant are the detrimental
consequences for recruitment and retention, particularly for professional groups
such as nurses, social workers, and teachers. Between 1995 and 1999 , the number of
applications to social work fell by 55 percent and, between 1996 and 2003 , the
vacancy rate for social workers rose from 6. 4 to 11 percent (TOPSS 2003 ).


23.5 Beyond the NPM
.........................................................................................................................................................................................


In the last few years, the NPM has lost some of its potency and its contradictions
have become more visible (Hood and Peters 2004 ). This shift of perspective is
exempliWed in recent OECD publications which have moved from wholesale
endorsement to a much more critical stance of the key assumptions of the NPM:


While it is important to have better goals, targets and measures in government, we must
recognise that such a highly formalised approach has severe limitations for complex
activities.... There is a danger that the constitutional, legal, cultural and leadership factors
which together create what is important and distinctive about public services and the
people who work in them, are not considered or, worse, are dismissed as the bureaucratic
problem which must be ‘reformed.’ (OECD 2003 :4 5)


These comments reXect a belief that a ‘post NPM’ era is emerging. If the traditional
organizational logic in the public sector was based on bureaucracy and that under
NPM was founded on markets, the emergent managerial form is seen as being
underpinned by networks. The emphasis represents a shift from ‘government’ to
‘governance’ which focuses on who makes public decisions and how these decisions


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