Carolyn Ban

Human Resource Challenges in Human Service and Community Development Organizations Recruitment and Retention of Professional Staff

Nonprofit managers often report difficulties in hiring and retaining top-quality professional staff members. The goals of this study were to assess the seriousness of the problems and to identify some best practices that can be used by nonprofit managers. The study focused on small and mid-sized nonprofits in the human service and community development fields in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Although the problems identified were not of crisis proportion, organizations faced particular difficulties in hiring and retaining staff members in information technology and development. Use of contemporary recruitment techniques, including the Internet, was surprisingly limited, but some organizations had creative approaches to retaining valued employees.

Management and Culture in an Enlarged European Commission

List of Tables Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. Structure, Culture, and Management: The Status Quo Ante 2. The European Commission and the Process of Enlargement 3 The Kinnock Reforms: Preparing for Enlargement, Changing Culture? 4. The Outsiders Come in: Self-selection, Selection and Socialization of Entry-level Staff 5. Fitting in or Standing out? The Arrival of Managers from the New Member States 6. Nationality: Why it Matters Less than Expected 7. Gender: Why it Matters More than Expected 8. Language, Culture, and Management: the Impact of Enlargement on Language Use in the Commission Conclusions Bibliography

Models of Public Management: Are They Useful to Federal Managers in the 1980s?

Definition of proper relationships between the career bureaucracy and political leadership is one of the enduring problems of public administration. Several models which seek to describe these relationships have emerged in literature and debate, but they have seldom been tested empirically. It is clear, however, that serious differences which distinguish various models can be evaluated. Because these conflicting role prescriptions have important implications for both career managers and political executives, such empirical tests are needed. Two recent developments highlighted and altered the nature of career-political relationships in the United States national government. The first was the introduction in 1978 of the Senior Executive Service (SES); the second was the election and re-election of Ronald Reagan. In this analysis, the major models which are present in public administration literature are described and tested, using survey and personal interview data, against current realities of public management in the federal service.

Politics and Merit: Can They Meet in a Public Service Model?

This analysis examines existing models of career bureaucrat and political appointee relationships and asks: to what extent is the broader purpose of public service for both politicals and careerists considered? Because most current models focus on career responsibilities, but exclude the special public responsibilities of political managers, a new “Public Service Model” is proposed. The new-model proposes a joint political-career commitment to serving the public interest and a heightened recognition of the value of both sets of public executives. Both have a critical role to play in democratic policy processes; joint action and cooperation are essential to effective governance.

Drug Testing in the Federal Workplace: An Instrumental and Symbolic Assessment

How effective is thefederal governments employee drug-testing program? Frank Thompson, Norma Riccucci, and Carolyn Ban offer an assessment thatfocuses on both the instrumental and symbolic rationales for the program. They find little evidence to support contentions that drug testing improves workplace efficiency, nor do theyfind supportfor arguments that it promotes public health or reduces crime.

The State of the Merit System: Perceptions of Abuse in the Federal Civil Service

To what extent are personnel decisions in the federal government really based on merit? This article examines the perceptions of two knowledgeable groups, personnel specialists and federal employees, about abuses of the merit system. While the occurrence of most forms of abuse are relatively infrequent, perceptions of their occurrence differ sharply by agency. Survey findings suggest that perceptions of discrimination increased markedly in the eight years of the Reagan administration.

Retaining Quality Federal Employees: Life after PACE.

In January 1981, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) signed a consent decree in which it agreed to eliminate use of the Professional and Administrative Career Examination (PACE). For several years, PACE had been the main route for entry-level hiring for many federal government agencies. Indeed, PACE was used for hiring into 118 different occupations. This paper examines how the federal government has coped with the demise of PACE, focusing on the methods now used for entry-level hiring, particularly Schedule B and newly-developed alternative exams. Also examined are the impacts of the consent decree and of the new hiring methods on minority employment and on the quality of the federal workforce.