Ethical issues in an influenza pandemic often require local government offi cials to make unprecedented, complex decisions. Eff ective planning with signifi cant input from key community stakeholders is required well ahead of time in order to anticipate and mitigate a serious health crisis. Th e author evaluates the pandemic plans of 28 large cities across the United States using criteria derived from guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Th e analysis reveals that planning legitimacy can be enhanced by wider transparency and civic engagement, greater opportunities for the inclusion of all stakeholders in decision making, mock community-wide exercises and drills, as well as more public access to comprehensive emergency planning information.
New Public Management, with its emphasis on debureaucratization, decentralization, and accountability, has attempted to make public sector organizations function in the same way as those in the private sector. Its implications for traditional governmental entities, including the public school system, are yet to be fully determined. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 was intended to decrease achievement gaps caused by race, class, first language, and learning abilities. The act's foci of accountability, testing, sanctions, and rewards in the educational process are central to the federal government's framework for shaping the goals and outcomes of educational policy across the United States. The present research indicates that the development and use of performance measures to hold educators accountable and improve performance is limited by organized employee groups and enhanced by minority student populations. At this time, significant increases in student performance as a result of NCLB efforts are not evidenced.Over the past few decades, a wave of reforms has taken place aimed at enhancing the efficiency of the public sector and the power of policymakers over the bureaucracy. New Public Management and its accompanying changes have attempted to make public entities function in the same way as those in the private sector; and debureaucratization, decentralization, and accountability have been central themes in this reinventing-government movement. Reform efforts have included the application of scientific principles to the organization and management of employees; identification and elimination of fraud, waste, and abuse;
As academics and practitioners continue to challenge traditional models regarding the nature of the public employee relationship with government, increased emphasis on the contributions of strategic planning, formal workforce planning, and performance measurement to the mission and goals of public organizations have occurred. This study evaluates the opinions of human resource management professionals at the local government level to determine the importance of numerous functions and activities to the practice of human resource management today. Survey respondents are also requested to project the importance of these same concepts in 2019. We find that many of the traditional HR management practices are still considered very essential by human resource professionals at the local level; and the four major principles of reinvented HRM anticipated to emanate over a decade ago have been adopted at a much slower pace than expected.
This article evaluates the utilization of workforce planning by municipalities across the United States with data derived from a survey of local government human resource professionals. The research demonstrates that certain aspects of workforce planning such as assessments of employee retirement, long-term recruitment and retention, and training and development have been integrated into the human resource functions of several municipalities. The authors also find that local governments that recognize the importance of training and development, information management, managing diversity, unions, and council-manager forms of government are more progressive in their implementation of workforce planning initiatives. However, many local governments still fail to recognize the opportunities that comprehensive workforce planning presents in developing and achieving the strategic goals of their organizations and managing human capital, especially given the political and economic climates.
Keywords public human resource management, workforce planning, local governmentPublic sector human resource management (HRM) has encountered numerous opportunities and challenges in managing employees in contemporary organizations. Changes in public sector employment-civil service reform, labor relations, information technology, social media, privatization, and outsourcing-have transformed traditional public human resource management practices and procedures. Also, shifts in workforce demographics, competition from the private sector, and the overall perception of individuals regarding public service employment have compelled both scholars and practitioners to focus on both the supervisory and strategic roles that HRM plays in the overall success of the public organization. While thinking strategically about human resources is not new to management and economics scholars (Becker, 1975), its incorporation into public human resources management practices has increased dramatically since the late 1990s. As human resource activities are integrated fully into the public organization's longterm strategy, the importance of workforce and succession planning are evident. The information
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