Staff Selection in the Australian Public Service: A History of Social Closure

Abstract

This paper argues that recruitment and promotion within the Australian Public Service (APS) have historically exemplified the practice of ‘social closure’. Three periods of AP'S staff selection that correspond to what Halligan and Power identify as the bureaucratist/technicist, administrationist and political management models of executive branch regime are identified. Social closure in each instance was based on educational credentials or lack thereof. These practices have been justified in terms of various ‘ideologies of promotion’. Such ideologies tend to reflect the ideal or material interests of social groups rather than the skill requirements of administrative work. The current form of social closure based on economics degrees illustrates this phenomenon. Accordingly, greater recognition of the value of non‐economics degrees is required.

Four Organisational Cultures in the Australian Public Service: Assessing the Validity and Plausibility of Mary Douglas’ Cultural Theory

“…Examples of such exclusion include the statutory limitation that was placed on graduate recruitment, the pre‐1966 ‘marriage bar’ that prevented married women from remaining in the service and the preference accorded to ex‐servicemen in appointment. APS personnel policy involved a strategy of ‘exclusionary’ social closure in which economic rewards and opportunities were restricted to insiders (Matheson ).The division between insiders and outsiders corresponded to a division between the virtuous and the morally suspect. The public service union in the 1950s, for example cautioned its members to be wary of ‘outside appointees, long‐hairs, professors, authors, psychologists, advisers and economic witchdoctors’ (cited in Thompson , p. 42).…”