Person-Job Fit Changes As A Consequence Of Public Management Reforms In Self-Governmental Units ebook

Table of contents

Executive Summary4

Introduction6

Chapter 1 BASIC CONCEPTS AND TERMS12

1.1. Definition of Public Administration12

1.2. Defining Public Management Reforms15

1.3. Modernisation of Administration in the Sense of New Public Management16

1.4. Human Resources and Human Resources Management as a Key Element of Public Reforms25

1.5. Administrative Reforms’ Influence on Human Resources Management27

Chapter 2 THE IMPACT OF A NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT-TYPE MODERNISATION ON AN ADMINISTRATIVE UNIT’S HUMAN RESOURCES. THEORY-BASED DESCRIPTION33

2.1. Administrative Reforms Influence on Human Resources – a Basic Model33

2.2. Review of Organisational Development and Change Theories34

2.3. Concepts of Person-Environment Fit, Person-Organisation Fit and Person-Job Fit39

2.4. Review of Additional Theories With Explanatory Potential43

2.5 Conclusions and Formulation of Hypotheses46

Chapter 3 PUBLIC REFORMS IN POLISH MUNICIPALITIES48

3.1. Public Management in Polish Regional Administration48

3.2. Poland’s Public Sector Reform Issues from 2000 to 200855

3.3. Municipal Administration in Malopolskie and Opole Voivodeship65

Chapter 4 EMPIRICAL FINDINGS73

4.1. Statement from Desk Research73

4.2.Research Methodology76

4.3. Analysis of Survey Data81

4.4. Case Studies114

Chapter 5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS128

5.1. Summary of Empirical Findings128

5.2. The Results of Hypotheses Verification129

5.3. Accomplishment of Research Objectives132

5.4. Conclusions for Applied Theories133

5.5. Limitations and Future Research141

References147

List of Tables156

List of Figures157

Annex 1. Questionnaire159

Executive Summary

The dissertation has the title „person job-fit changes as a consequence of public management reforms in self-governmental units“. The research is based on the assumption that management reforms cause changes in municipal administration and its person-job fit. The theoretical description of the problem is possible by drawing on Edward’s (1991) person-job fit theorem. Literature on modernisation concepts as e.g. the New Public Management (NPM) shows a general awareness of reforms’ consequences on the personnel like e.g. a training need. Change management theories describe impacts of substantial change on the organisation and options to intervene. The human capital theory delivers explanations for the incentive to react of both the organisation’s executive level as well as the employees, in case management reforms cause a discrepancy in person job-fit.

The conducted empirical studies confirm that management reforms do result in changes with impact on the person-job fit. The literature research brought evidence that NPM has only been adopted partially. Since the transformation, some reforms and changes in legislation have laid the foundation for a self-governmental administration that scores compared to the EU standard as relatively modern. The investigated Polish municipalities react on the changes in the person job fit. For example, employees do learn in a self-organised way. The administration reacts on the discrepancies mainly by recruiting new staff and by reallocating the tasks. Training is not applied systematically as means to problem solving and is available in many cases only in the context of externally financed projects, and even then not oriented towards individual needs.

The empirical investigation suggests that changes do have enormous consequences for the personnel management of municipal administration. They change the requirements for the job holders substantially, and the administrations seem not able to react on the changes in a way that the personnel is enabled to meet the requirements. Unclear is if such an objective seems feasible if one considers the extreme dimensions of change, that spread between the paradigms of socialist administration and modernisation concepts in the sense of NPM. The service orientation that results from the modernisation approaches like the NPM let assume the need for continuous high efforts and investments into the training of employees.

The process of personnel training of Polish municipal administration (in the investigated regions) does not correspond with these consequences well. Training is in practice mainly training on legal issues. Content as service and client orientation is almost exclusively offered in the context of large-size externally funded projects, and in such cases hardly delivered in a way that it could meet individual training needs. Training is offered in some municipalities as training to accelerate the career path in public service. It is in such cases not directly connected with the current job and its tasks, but of a general nature. From the insights result further questions. E. g. on the causes of the insufficient training. They can lie in a lack of  awareness, in an insufficient financial allocation of budget at the municipal administrations. These interrelations, the consequences of reforms on the personnel or the human capital and the training need, are mentioned in a rather general form in literature on modernisation concepts as e.g. the NPM. Until now, the insight was missing about the dimension of the consequences and about solutions that correspond with the financial and operational capabilities of municipalities.

Introduction

Why the issue of public management in Polish local administration is of relevance for the Polish public, can be understood from and thus justified by the following argumentation, stating a still not realised potential of improving local Polish administration and the risk of losing substantial EU budgetary means the regions are eligible for through their administrations. Poland’s administrative structures have experienced since the political transition various public management reforms, which many are in coherence with others introduced since the 1980ies in Europe.

One reason for the administration’s relevance comes from the European Commission’s recent study that is titled “Regional Governance Matters: A Study on Regional Variation in Quality of Government within the EU” (Charron, Lapuente, Dijkstra 2012). It presents “data on the ‘quality of government’ (QoG) – understood as low corruption and as high protection of the rule of law, government effectiveness and accountability – at both national and regional levels in the 27 EU Member States” (ibidem). Poland is ranked No 162 of 199 regions and countries with EQI of −0.939 and EQI 100 of 41.91. This score shows that there is still high potential for improvement, and this have been the case by 2008.

Moreover, it is worthwhile to mention the two following findings: The first is from the “National Strategy of Regional Development for 2010–2020” (MRD 2010, pp.57-58) states that “over seven hundred Polish gminas have not implemented any projects under the Structural Funds for the period 2004–2006, partly due to no interest in the available instruments, and partly because of ineffective attempts to raise funds. It should be noticed that the spatial distribution of municipalities showing the lowest activity in obtaining EU funds in the 2004–2006 perspective is quite evenly”. The Ministry’s report deduces that from this finding results “one of the key challenges of regional policy is to increase the institutional capacity to manage development, both at national and regional levels. Precondition for the success of regional policy is introducing in both of the above levels, a single and coherent system of development management relating to socioeconomic context and results of the carried out measures (evidence based policy)” (MRD 2010, p. 58). The second is coming from the National Development Strategy for 2007 to 2015 (MRD 2006, p.18), giving an account of the situation in the public administration: “Despite significant changes that were made during the last couple of years, it was not possible to fully implement the desired modern techniques of management and IT systems to the public administration, the management of the public finances was not fundamentally improved either. Without a significant improvement of the situation in this field, the condition of the public administration will remain a limitation making Poland’s development difficult. Moreover, functioning of the public administration is negatively influenced by a low confidence in the authorities and public administrations”. From the second – which is not giving on which data it is based – we can assume that public administration might have shortcomings in management in general and in management of finances. We can assume that this was among other reasons due to the factor that the administration was at that time lacking public management skills. From the first, we learn that a share of seven hundred from ca. 2,500 municipalities lack “the institutional capacity to manage development”. From these statements, the practical relevance of the issue and the quality of local public management in the surveyed Voivodeships can be seen.

The dissertation deals with the consequences of reform on Human Resources. For their general relevance in Public Sector reform, Truss (2008, p.3) gives a very simple reason:

“salaries can amount to up to 80% of organisational costs in the public sector (which is why) the domain of human resource management has received renewed attention under these reforms (Horton, 2003; Barnett et al., 1996; Corby and Higham, 1996). Potentially, it has been argued, improved human resource management could facilitate the recruitment and retention of valued staff, enhance organisational cost-effectiveness and serve to promulgate a performance-driven culture through adoption of a strategic HR role (Bach and della Rocca, 2000; Jaconelli and Sheffield, 2000, Ferlie et al., 1996)”.

And a third issue are management reforms and their consequences. After the scandal of the Prodi Commission around Eurostat, the European Commission put up a postponed reform (Metcalfe, 1999) in order to modernise the administration of the Directorate Generals, employing more than 20,000 employees. This initiative comprised various components, from the introduction of customer orientation to the change to an activity-based budgeting and management (EU COM Reforming the Commission White Paper I, II). Among these components was a large size training programme divided into 13 lots for external contractors. It had a volume of courses ranging from time management for secretaries to strategic management for the institution, to team management courses for newly appointed managers. The European Commission applied a comprehensive training programme covering many topics that are needed as competences for a modernised public service.

But, how come that such a training programme for administrative reform is such a unique occurrence? There is much discussion on a changed role of public institutions and a modernised public service, mostly connected with the term of New Public Management. A paradigm, that was and is almost common sense in UK, Australia, New Zealand, USA, and European countries. One possible explanation: Is the change into a modernised service only lip service, unless administrations do not deliver the skills, knowledge and competences to their employees to prepare them? If not, are public servants then so smart, autodidactically active and flexible that organised and systematic training and organizational support is not needed?

These observations motivated my choice and my interest for this subject. Polish administration interested me because of my professional background. I was involved as project manager of a private-sector firm into bilateral programmes of the German government with countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and Eastern Europe, when I began the dissertation in 2007. The difference of the public sector in Eastern European and CIS countries at the beginning of the 2000s was still so apparent, that I was highly interested to understand the administrative structure of one of the transition countries, its framework and the reality of the change process thoroughly.

I had not the possibilities to work full-time on the research project, what led to a stretch of the working period that lasted from 2007 until 2014. From 2008 to 2009, I conducted a survey as quantitative study. The period of 2000 to 2007/2008 is for Polish local administration specifically interesting, as some essential conditions for fundamental reform have been set in the previous decade of the 1990ies with the legal foundations to allow for management reforms in self-governmental administrative units.

The research contains both a theory- and practise-oriented angle. It applies a socio-psychological and organisational psychological perspective on the issues of reform effects on the relation of job-holder and job requirements. Human Resources Management with its other issues, career, recruitment etc. is not covered in the context of this work in detail.

The research work had the following six objectives:

– Objective 1: Find a theoretical model to describe effects of reform on personnel. Conduct a literature research and review theories. Objective 1 corresponds to hypotheses 1 and 2.

– Objective 2: Explore and investigate solutions for the occurring problems in the human resources field. It corresponds to hypotheses 3 and 4.

– Objective 3: Design a survey instrument to measure change in person-job fit through reform projects in public administration.

– Objective 4: Gather empirical data additional to the literature research to explore issues and test hypotheses empirically.

– Objective 5: Conduct a desk research about the surveyed regions.

– Objective 6: Give practical recommendations on the design of a reform project in regard to person-job fit issues.

The dissertation has the following hypotheses:

– H1. The majority of job-profiles change during a reform from bureaucratic to modernised public administration.

– H2. The degree of person-job-fit decreases, where job-profiles changed.

– H3. Measures to close person-job fit gap are taken by the management.

– H4. Measures correspond to the person-job fit gaps.

– H5. Public management reforms take place in the majority (above 50% of total) of self-governmental municipal organisations.

The dissertation is divided into five parts. Chapter 1 introduces the key issues, the scope of work, the research objectives and the degree, to which they were reached. It describes how the objectives were operationalised and which actions have been carried in this regard. It introduces basic terms and concepts of public administration and public management, namely the concepts of governance, of New Public Management and the Neo-Weberian state.

Chapter 2 introduces the focal theories for the defined research issues. A literature research and a review of theories was carried out and its results are described here. The review comprises organisational development and change management theories. A found theoretical model is presented that describes effects of reform on personnel. Additionally, theories as the human capital theory are described that allow predictions on the reaction of the organisation in regard to appearing person-job-fit gaps.

Chapter 3 describes two Voivodeships’ municipal administration and the framework of municipal administration. Its main task is to describe public self-governmental municipal administrations in regions of the two Polish Voivodeships where the survey was run (task 1). The term “region” is used here to refer to both poviats (counties) and gminas (municipalities) in a Polish Voivodeship (province). The description aims to concentrate on the time period of 2000 to 2009. Statistics in terms of numbers of territorial administrative units are provided. Furthermore, an account of administrative issues in the sense of reform topics or projects was planned. In the context of this work, accounts of reform effects on person-job-fit relations or measures taken to respond on such relations was also of interest. Methodologically, the description bases on a review of existing information and literature, mainly official publications in English language on the administration in the respective relevant regions. The issue of selecting the regions Malopolskie and Opole Voivodeships in Poland is addressed later in Chapter 4. As part of the subject-matter related framework is included here a brief description of selected aspects of reform programmes between on federal, state, regional and municipal level. The here relevant period is mainly the period between 2000 and 2008/2009, as it corresponds with the period covered by the conducted survey. The description of the administrations bases mainly on descriptions of the public national and regional development strategy papers. These papers provide an estimation of the status of the regions and of the capability of the administrations along various indicators and statistics. Taking into account the results of the literature research, it is addressed which human resources problems are reported and which development approaches or solutions are in use. The review of literature was supposed to gather information on the following topics:

– Which public reforms or reform projects are carried out in Poland and in the two voivodeships Opole and Malopolskie’s self-governmental municipal units between 2000 and 2008?

– Which Human Resources (HR) and HR Development policies are applied in Polish administration on municipal level between 2000 and 2008?

– If person-job-fit gaps appear during administrative reforms in Polish municipalities?

– Which and how solutions are organised for person-job-fit gaps?

At the end of this chapter, I formulate a research objective about Polish regional administration based on the resulting research and knowledge gap.

Chapter 4 states the research gap and the research objective that is addressed here. An empirical instrument for quantitative research is developed (objective 3), and it is documented how an online survey was carried out in both Voivodeships. The results are presented and interpreted. As a complement to the quantitative approach, four case studies are presented that base on interviews with executives of Malopolskie Voivodeship’s municipalities.

Chapter 5 finally relates the survey results to the hypotheses and interprets if and to which degree they were successfully tested and confirmed or not. It states moreover if and to which degree the six research objectives have been achieved or not, and interrelates the findings to the theories that were applied here. At last, it gives practical recommendation on the basis of the empirically collected data.

Finally, I’d like to express my gratefulness to persons who supported my work. I’d like to sincerely thank for the academic supervision of this work, that has always been very helpful and motivating, my supervisor, Professor dr hab. Marek Ćwiklicki and dr Marcin Zawicki.

I’d also like to thank Professor dr hab. Jerzy Hausner for some valuable insight into the reality of political reform in Poland from the perspective of a former member of the Polish government and for the initial supervision of the dissertation. I am not less grateful for the helpfulness and willingness of the interviewed municipalities’ executives to participate in this research: Mr. Adam Marek Panus, Sekretarz Gminy of the Municipality of Wieliczka, Mr. Jaroslaw Sadowski, Zastepca Wójta of the Municipality Michalowice, Mr. Jan Bereza, Sekretarz Gminy of the municipality of Krzeszowice, and Ms. Marta Kocjan, Quality management coordinator of the city of Olkusz. I thank also all persons from municipal administrations in the Voivodeships Opolskie and Malopolskie who participated in the online survey.

I’d also like to thank all other persons that supported me over the period I was working on the dissertation, among them Dr. Sven Bode, Hans Husch, Timo Tekhaus and my wife, Yolanda Calonge Martín.

Chapter 1 BASIC CONCEPTS AND TERMS

1.1. Definition of Public Administration

This chapter introduces the issues that are the contextual “surroundings” of the topics of this dissertation. It introduces basic terms and concepts of public management and public administration that relate to local administration on the one hand, and to theories and concepts of public sector modernisation and public management on the other hand.

The difficulty of definitions for “public administration” is caused by the high degree of abstraction. Administrations are very different per country and also inside each country. In terms of size, issues and working conditions, ministerial administrations of the federal level on the one end differ enormously from the local conditions and objectives of municipalities on the other end. The abstract definition mirrors that the things all layers do have in common are of a rather general nature.

According to Peters and Pierre (2007, p.4), the “principal activity of public administration is implementing laws, but there are also a range of other important activities carried on in these public organizations. One is that bureaucracies make policy, and in essence make laws”. And, its task is “translating laws and decrees made by politicians into action” (Peters and Pierre 2007, p.4).

Pierre (1995, p.ix) offers a functional definition and a description: “We conceive public administration as the key output linkage of the state towards civil society. However, the interface between public administration and civil society is a two-way street, including public policy implementation as well as policy demands from private actors towards policy-makers”.

The definition of the United Nations Economic and Social Council does address the aspect of an “aggregate machinery”. It defines the term as aggregate machinery funded by state budget and management of government activities related to provision of public services. It describes ‘public administration’ in its “Definition of basic concepts and terminologies in governance and public administration” (2006) as follows:

“(a) The aggregate machinery (policies, rules, procedures, systems, organizational structures, personnel and so forth) funded by the State budget and in charge of the management and direction of the affairs of the executive government, and its interaction with other stakeholders in the State, society and external environment;

(b) The management and implementation of the whole set of government activities dealing with the implementation of laws, regulations and decisions of the Government and the management related to the provision of public services“.

This aspect is fundamental for public administration, the “aggregation” of single public administrative entities and its functions in the sense of single authorities, that carry out the tasks of the state under execution of the relevant law and deliver its services to the citizen. Still, due to the high level of abstraction the proposed definitions do only provide a general understanding of the terms. They do not add value to a discussion of Polish municipal administration beyond that contribution. In the cases of administrative units that are covered in the empirical part in this dissertation, there were no cases where definitory problems occurred.

Another concept is “Governance”. It refers to the much broader level beyond the perspective of managing an administrative organisation or unit. According to Hyden et al. (2004), governance is “the formation and stewardship of the formal and informal rules that regulate the public realm, the arena in which state as well as economic and societal actors interact to make decisions”. Kaufmann et al. (2005) understand it as “the set traditions and formal and informal institutions that determine how authority is exercised in a particular country for the common good”. The OECD stresses the relevance of the concept for the citizen’s well-being  (2013, p. 210), when it defines that “good governance is about building a better national and regional socio-economic environment in which people can live, learn and work; in which entrepreneurs can innovate and commercialise the results of their creativity; and in which businesses can invest.” The paradigm of New Public Management relates with the approach of e.g. “contractualism” (Lane 2000) to aspects of governance. By the World Bank (1992, p.3) it is defined as “the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for development”. For Goodin (1996), “Governance (...) is nothing less than the steering of society by officials in control of what are organizationally the ‘commanding heights’ of society.” Lane (2000, pp.4-5) names a number of aspects that are relevant for a concept of governance in the public sector: The first is the financing of costs which can be covered by either the government or the citizen. The second is a “make or buy” decision about the public sector’s services or production by defining which services are carried out with own resources and which are bought on the market. The third aspect is a decision if the “arrangement” or the approach to acquire the service from a contractor bases on competition or not. This field contains innovative potential. The traditional bureaucratic concept drew e.g. on own production and not on the supply through the market. A fourth aspect is “ownership”. While the approach of traditional administration was to deploy organisations “closely linked to the state” or those that are owned by the state, the modern preference is for “joint-stock-companies” and indifferent in the ownership of its contractors. A fifth aspect is regulation or “whether government has set up a regulatory regime which covers the provision of goods and services“ (Lane 2000, pp.4-5) or not. It is not necessary to decide for one of the definitions here, as it becomes obvious from their review, that the differing definitory approaches of “governance” are not decisive for the research issue.

Another related concept is “public management”. Starting with the analysis of the meaning of the term, it becomes apparent that it is quite close to the term of “public administration”, as the meaning of management and administration in the sense of tasks to administer a public institution seems interchangeable. From my point of view, the Moore’s definition is convincing, that orients along the literal meaning of managing a firm or organisation.

For Moore (1984, pp.2-3), public administration is the broader term, of which public management is a part of. According to him “‘public management’ adds responsibility for goal setting and political management to the traditional responsibilities of public administration. (…) Our conception of public management adds some quintessential executive functions such as setting purpose, maintaining credibility with overseers, marshalling authority and resources, and positioning one’s organization in a given political environment as central components of a public manager’s job”.

Lynn, Heinrich and Hill (2001, pp.3-4) define public administration, similarly as Moore, by differentiating it from public management:

“When we talk of ‘public management’ or of ‘public administration’, are we talking of the same subject or of different subjects? Arguments to the effect that management and administration are fundamentally different have a long history in American literature, although the distinction often seems arbitrary. Many such arguments relegate management to subordinate, specialized or even stigmatized status with the result that the structural and institutional aspects of public management that are vital to understanding its significance to constitutional governance are overlooked. Numerous early commentaries either view the two terms as synonymous or regard management as the more general concept” .

An important study on public management reforms has been carried out by Pollitt and Bouckaert (2000). They have investigated why change in the sense of public management reforms has happened in some countries, and why it has not taken place in others. Public management is understood in their work in the sense of governance or in the sense of an overall management of the public sector, not in the sense of managing a single administrative organisation. They find that there are various political and social factors enabling factors of public management reforms. Pollitt and Bouckaert’s wider definition of public management seems to reflect the common opinion in literature and practise. This opinion becomes apparent from the fact that the term of “New Public Management” has been related to a context that is beyond the level of single managed public sector units, but refers to the broad perspective of governance.

Still, in my opinion the meaning and the usage of the term “public management” should be restricted to the “management” of a single authority, for the sake of an unambiguous and clear terminology. From my point of view, there is no need to extend its meaning beyond this scope, while we have with “governance” a concept that refers to an approach that deals with framework conditions of single administrative organisations rather than with themselves.

1.2. Defining Public Management Reforms

Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004, p.6) start their widely recognised comparative analysis on public management reforms with the statement that public management reforms are “potentially a means to multiple ends. These include making savings (economies) in public expenditure, improving the quality of public services, making the operations of government more efficient, and increasing the chances that the policies which are chosen and implemented will be effective“.

According to Pollitt and Bouckaert (2000, p.6), public management reforms are “usually thought of as a means to an end, not an end in itself”. They “consists of deliberate changes to the structures and processes of public sector organizations with the objective of getting them (in some sense) to run better” (2008, p.8).

“In English, we [Pollitt and Bouckaert] are conscious that ‘reform’ is only one among congeries of alternative and competitor terms (including, significantly, several from the business world, e.g. ‘transformation’ and ‘reinvention’, as well as others with a longer public sector history, e.g. ‘modernization’ and ‘improvement’). Like all these other words, ‘reform’ is a ‘loaded’ term, in the sense that it strongly implies not just change but beneficial change – a deliberate move from a less desirable (past) state to a more desirable (future) state. We accept this as an appropriate characterization of the intentions of many of those who pushed for management improvements, while always holding open the possibility that the actual effects of change could be experienced as less rather than more desirable by any or all of the main ‘players’” (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2006, p.15).

A distinction between “reform” and “change” is made by Caiden (1991, p. 41) through the aspect of resistance. If innovation meets resistance, it is a reform, while the innovation that is implemented without conflict be a change.

Pollitt and Bouckaert (2006, p.17) distinguish several levels of reforms. They agree with Lynn, Heinrich and Hill (2001, pp.35-37) who define in total four levels. At the ‘top’ is the global and national cultural environment. This tends to form a set of pervasive influences rather than being an explicit target for reform (although occasionally reformers will make large claims about how they are going to ‘transform the culture’). Then comes the level of institutional framework, where there are issues of (re)design and choice. Next there is a managerial level, where key actors develop strategies and shape relationships. Finally, there is the technical or primary work level, where the efficiency and cost of specific functions are a central focus. In the original version – not in our simplified adaption – there is also a fifth level of ‘political assessment’.

Applying this model on my topic as laid out so far, mainly the managerial level is relevant for the chosen research area. The second level of institutional framework will not directly be dealt with, the focus is set for this investigation on the managerial level and the technical or primary work level.

1.3. Modernisation of Administration in the Sense of New Public Management