Four lenses on people management in the public sector: an evidence review and synthesis

Abstract

We review the literature on people management and performance in organizations across a range of disciplines, identifying aspects of management where there is clear evidence about what works as well as aspects where the evidence is mixed or does not yet exist. We organize our discussion by four lenses, or levels of analysis, through which people management can be viewed: (i) individual extrinsic, intrinsic, and psychological factors; (ii) organizational people management, operational management, and culture; (iii) team mechanisms, composition and structural features; and (iv) relationships, including networks, leadership, and individuals’ relationships to their job and tasks. Each of these four lenses corresponds not only to a body of literature but also to a set of management tools and approaches to improving public employees’ performance; articulating the connections across these perspectives is an essential frontier for research. We find that existing people management evidence and practice have overemphasized formal management tools and financial motivations at the expense of understanding how to leverage a broader range of motivations, build organizational culture, and use informal and relational management practices. We suggest that foregrounding the role of relationships in linking people and performance—relational public management—may prove a fertile and interdisciplinary frontier for research and practices.

The (Missing?) Role of Institutions in Behavioral Public Administration

“…Researchers in BPA should derive added motivation for confronting these challenges from the potential prize: not just better external validity within BPA, but also the potential for BPA to transcend its current focus on individual-level cognition and behavior and truly grow into a body of research that can provide firmer microlevel foundations for our understanding of higher-level structures and processes (e.,g., of organizations, teams, networks [Ali et al 2021]) within public administration. This would help realize Herbert Simon's initial work in seeking to bridge the gap from individual behavior to organizational and institutional processes and performance (Simon, 1947;Bertelli and Riccucci, 2020), as well as moving BPA closer to being a "design science" that is better able to marshall theory and evidence to help policymakers improve the functioning of the institutions and organizations in which they are embedded (Moynihan, 2018;Bhanot and Linos, 2020).…”

Managerial Practice and Diversity Climate: The Roles of Workplace Voice, Centralization, and Teamwork

“…Teamwork in organizations involves “a distinguishable set of two or more people who interact dynamically, interdependently, and adaptively toward a common and valued goal/objective/mission” (Salas et al 1992, 4). Teamwork is an understudied topic in public administration (Ali et al 2021; Chen and Rainey 2014) that is nonetheless important because it provides an alternative work structure to bureaucratic hierarchy for addressing inherently complex public sector goals (van der Hoek, Groeneveld, and Kuipers 2018). Along with goal achievement, teamwork helps public organizations respond to increased political pressure to demonstrate private sector efficiency (Vashdi 2013).…”

“…Teamwork empowers two or more people to interact toward a common purpose (Salas et al 1992). While teamwork has received less attention in the public administration literature (Ali et al 2021; Chen and Rainey 2014), it provides an alternative to bureaucratic hierarchy for complex social goals (Lauritzen, Grøn, and Kjeldsen 2021; van der Hoek, Groeneveld, and Kuipers 2018; Vashdi 2013). All three managerial practices have been correlated in previous research with the key attributes of general organizational fairness or inclusion that we expect to influence diversity‐specific impressions of fairness and inclusion.…”

The Effect of Human Resource Management Practices on Improving Performance and Innovative Behavior of State Civil Apparatus

“…Three intrinsic motivators are also characteristic of public service motivation can influence the performance of civil servants: first, when civil servants feel that their efforts are meaningful; second, when they are committed to prosocial activities and desire to serve the public; and third, when civil servants feel a pleasant or positive emotional state (job satisfaction) by doing their job. In addition, social recognition and symbolic rewards for their efforts can also influence the performance of public employees by leveraging their intrinsic motivation [48]. The structural model formed with the t value is presented in Figure 4.…”