The State of Civil Service Systems in the Asia-Pacific Region

Abstract

Despite increasing interest in Asian public administration, understanding of Asian civil service systems is limited. This study compares civil service systems in 14 Asia-Pacific countries, focusing on their size, legal frameworks, supervising agencies, and recruitment. The countries fall into four categories: Western countries (Australia, New Zealand, and the United States), Asian industrialized countries (Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan), Southeast Asian developing countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand), and socialist transitional countries (Cambodia, China, and Vietnam). The study shows that the size of the civil service is much greater in Western countries and smaller in Asian industrialized countries. Some civil service reform initiatives, such as performance management, are commonly found across countries in all groups, which indicates the global diffusion of those initiatives. New initiatives for recruitment reform, ethics and transparency, and compensation reform are found mostly in Southeast Asian developing countries and socialist transitional countries.

Affective Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction: A Cross‐national Comparative Study

“…A growing body of literature has contributed to cross-national research in public administration (e.g. Berman et al 2013;Moon and Hwang 2013;Poocharoen and Brillantes 2013;Taylor et al 2013;West et al 2013) by testing the applicability of social theories as well as through the integration of administrative scholarship across geographical boundaries (Gulrajani and Moloney 2012). This study contributes to this literature by achieving the two research objectives stated at the outset of this article.…”

Ministerial Leadership and Endorsement of Bureaucrats: Experimental Evidence from Presidential Governments

“…Limited hiring of civil servants is done through open recruitment, and about 20 percent of positions ranked from grade 1 to 3 (i.e., senior ranks) are expected to be open to external candidates (Kim ; Moon and Hwang ).…”

Theorizing Contemporary Public Management: International and Comparative Perspectives

“…organizational strategies and culture) rather than others (e.g. structure and processes) by Ashworth, Boyne and Delbridge () is one which has been highlighted and further explored by others (see for example Andrews' () study of public finance isomorphism and Moon and Hwang's () review of similarities and differences in civil service systems among Asian countries). In a paper in this issue, Villadsen () continues this analysis as he seeks to elaborate relationships between isomorphism on different organizational dimensions and identify where trade‐offs might exist.…”