Human Resource Management in Public Service Organizations

The latest instalment of the successful Routledge Masters in Public Management series: Human Resource Management in Public Service Organizations addresses a significant gap in texts that are available to practitioners and scholars of public sector management. There has been an extensive adoption of private sector human resource management (HRM) techniques within the public sectors of various countries. This transformation has had its genesis in public choice theory which has argued that government is inefficient and non-responsive.

Beattie and Waterhouse combine practical techniques of human resource management within the context of the public sector focussing on a number of key areas:

• The various components of HRM and how they may be applied in a public sector environment
• Debates in relation to the benefits of HRM within the public sector, and in particular, whether the distinctiveness of the public sector calls for a unique practice of HRM.
• Critically evaluating the interaction between HRM and the changing context of public management.
• Critically evaluating the interaction between HRM and public and voluntary sector values.

Human Resource Management in Public Service Organizations seeks to equip public sector managers and students of public management with the necessary skills and knowledge to more effectively manage their human resources.

Rona S Beattie is Head of Change and Management Learning at Caledonian Business School, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow Scotland. She has extensively researched voluntary sector management, human resource development and human resource management. She has also taught these subjects at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

She has published extensively in the fields of voluntary sector management and human resource development across a range of subjects including change, management development, capacity-building and rural regeneration.

She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, a member of the British Academy of Management and a member of the University Forum for HRD. Rona is also a trustee of one of Scotland’s largest social care charities, which delivers a range of publicly funded services, and is chair of its HR committee.

Jennifer Waterhouse is a Post-doctoral fellow in the School of Management and a member of the Work and Industry Futures Research Program in the Faculty of Business at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She has extensively researched human resource management practices, corporate culture and organizational change within the public sector. In addition, she has taught in the areas of negotiation, employment relations and management at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

She has published extensively in the areas of public sector reform, corporate culture and change in the public sector and employment relations.

She is a member of the Institute of Public Administration, Australia, Queensland Branch and the Association of Industrial Relations Academics Australia and New Zealand.