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

By Omar Scharifi

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. 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. 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: epubli
• Release date: Aug 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9783741841194

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Table of contents

Executive Summary 4

Introduction 6

Chapter 1 BASIC CONCEPTS AND TERMS 12

1.1. Definition of Public Administration 12

1.2. Defining Public Management Reforms 15

1.3. Modernisation of Administration in the Sense of New Public Management 16

1.4. Human Resources and Human Resources Management as a Key Element of Public Reforms 25

1.5. Administrative Reforms’ Influence on Human Resources Management 27

Chapter 2 THE IMPACT OF A NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT-TYPE MODERNISATION ON AN ADMINISTRATIVE UNIT’S HUMAN RESOURCES. THEORY-BASED DESCRIPTION 33

2.1. Administrative Reforms Influence on Human Resources – a Basic Model 33

2.2. Review of Organisational Development and Change Theories 34

2.3. Concepts of Person-Environment Fit, Person-Organisation Fit and Person-Job Fit 39

2.4. Review of Additional Theories With Explanatory Potential 43

2.5 Conclusions and Formulation of Hypotheses 46

Chapter 3 PUBLIC REFORMS IN POLISH MUNICIPALITIES 48

3.1. Public Management in Polish Regional Administration 48

3.2. Poland’s Public Sector Reform Issues from 2000 to 2008 55

3.3. Municipal Administration in Malopolskie and Opole Voivodeship 65

Chapter 4 EMPIRICAL FINDINGS 73

4.1. Statement from Desk Research 73

4.2. Research Methodology 76

4.3. Analysis of Survey Data 81

4.4. Case Studies 114

Chapter 5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS 128

5.1. Summary of Empirical Findings 128

5.2. The Results of Hypotheses Verification 129

5.3. Accomplishment of Research Objectives 132

5.4. Conclusions for Applied Theories 133

5.5. Limitations and Future Research 141

References 147

List of Tables 156

List of Figures 157

Annex 1. Questionnaire 159

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,