Understanding Public Servants from a Global Perspective

Abstract

Public servants are an important component of any functioning administrative system. However, a comprehensive, comparative analysis of public servants from a global perspective is rare. The purpose of this chapter and section is therefore to analyze the concept of the civil servant from a global perspective. In order to do so, the chapter examines the concept of the civil servant, who they are, how they are trained, what they do, how they are rewarded, and how political and institutional factors shape personnel systems. Special attention is placed upon comparisons between civil service traditions, international conceptualizations of civil servants, the scope of public service work, and the status of women in public service. The chapter concludes with a brief introduction to each of the subsequent chapters in this section.

Intergovernmental collaboration in the context of digital transformation: state-of-the-art and theoretical notions

“…The results of this ambitious research project are extensive (Breaugh et al, 2020;Rackwitz et al, 2020), with several key themes that emerged across the case studies. First, given the complexities of digitalisation projects, especially when they cross ministerial boundaries, collaboration has become an essential, and default governance approach in tackling the complexity of the task at hand.…”

The coordination of digital government platforms: the role of administrative tradition and collaboration history

“…First is the role of the institutional environment. Administrative tradition is useful for understanding the institutional environments that impact project dynamics and thus provides a method for studying the system context of projects (Breaugh and Hammerschmid, 2020;Painter and Guy Peters, 2010a). The second component is the role of collaboration history.…”