Jared J. Llorens

How Important are Competitive Wages? Exploring the Impact of Relative Wage Rates on Employee Turnover in State Government

In recent years, public management research has made great strides in explaining the drivers of employee turnover in the public sector, with key findings related to the role of employee loyalty, organizational satisfaction, person-organization fit, and compensation. This article contributes to this growing body of literature by assessing the influence of a previously untested driver of employee turnover at the state level of government: public—private wage equity. Contrary to conventional wisdom, results suggest that public—private wage equity does not significantly influence voluntary separation rates, whereas state government unionization and the average age of state government employees are found to be indirectly related to voluntary separation. Results also point to the potential implications of ethnicity, gender, and public service motivation in state government employee turnover and provide key insights for those seeking to further understand the impact of reduced expenditures on public sector wages and shifting age distributions in public sector employment.

A Revolution in Public Personnel Administration: The Growth of Web-Based Recruitment and Selection Processes in the Federal Service

As the movement toward greater decentralization of the federal recruitment and examination process gained momentum, new innovations emerged involving the use of Internet-based technologies which hold the promise of combining the advantages of centralization and coordination with the improved efficiency and timeliness that has been sought through decentralization. One of the largest efforts to leverage these new capabilities is the federal governments Recruitment One-Stop project organized by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Recruitment One-Stop can briefly be described as an attempt to both centralize many of the governments myriad recruitment processes and leverage current technologies available to advertise, recruit and fill positions throughout the government. This article provides an analysis of the federal governments efforts to implement automated recruitment processes and discusses the implications of implementing the Recruitment One-Stop project in a decentralized personnel environment.

Human Resources Management in a Changing World: Reassessing Public Human Resources Management Education

Public administration scholars have gone to great lengths to assess both the extent of personnel reform efforts across the public sector and their impact on employee attitudes toward public sector employment. However, to the degree that these reforms represent the future of public sector human resources management (HRM), the field has yet to fully address how the education of future public servants and human resources professionals should be adjusted to reflect this transformation. This article seeks to address this issue by reevaluating those subject areas and competencies that have long been considered the core of public sector HRM education, proposing what new competencies should be introduced into the core in light of the contemporary reform environment and providing a preliminary assessment of the extent to which contemporary academic and practitioner-based educational programs reflect the current landscape of public sector HRM.

A Model of Public Sector E-Recruitment Adoption in a Time of Hyper Technological Change

For the past two decades, governments at all levels have increasingly focused their human resources management efforts on developing effective e-recruitment and branding strategies in an environment of hyper technological change. For many public organizations, these efforts have centered on posting essential vacancy announcement information on their institutional employment web sites, but more technologically savvy organizations have rapidly begun to adopt multifaceted and innovative approaches to recruiting new employees through the use of Web 2.0 technologies and third-party e-recruitment networks. While there is a growing body of research documenting the increasing use of these new technologies in the public sector, this article seeks to add to the existing literature by proposing a typological framework of e-recruitment adoption and its impact, using the proposed framework to highlight the e-recruitment efforts of a select group of public employers and discussing the utilization of third-party e-recruitment technologies.

A Renewed Emphasis on Hiring: A Closer Look at the Federal Government's End-to-End Hiring Roadmap

This article overviews the federal government’s most recent initiative to improve its hiring processes, the End-to-End Hiring Roadmap. The Roadmap was developed through a joint partnership with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the federal Chief Human Capital Officers Council, and it is intended to provide a detailed improvement plan for federal agencies to follow in the areas of workforce planning, recruitment, hiring, security and suitability, and orientation. This article overviews the specific components of the Roadmap and addresses its place within the context of existing strategic human capital management initiatives. Last, prospects for a successful adoption of the Roadmap are discussed.

Fiscally driven compensation reform and threats to human capital capacity in the public sector

Compensation systems serve a critical role in strategic human resources management, and over the past twenty-five years, there have been an increasing number of public sector reform efforts aimed at better aligning compensation practices with institutional workforce needs. While many past reforms have been performance driven, the nationʼs most recent economic downturn has served as potent catalyst for a renewed focus on public sector compensation, particularly reforms to public sector retirement benefits. However, given the traditional importance of public sector retirement benefits within broader bureaucratic structures, these new reforms hold the potential to substantially alter human capital capacity in the public sector. Using wage and retirement benefit data from the U.S. Census Bureauʼs Current Population Survey and National Compensation Survey, this paper finds that state and local governments face significant threats to their long-term human capital capacity in light of potential benefit reforms that place a disproportionate emphasis upon competitive wage rates.

Editor’s Welcome

As incoming Editor of Public Personnel Management, I would first like to thank Cynthia Nalevanko and the SAGE Publications team for entrusting me to serve as the journal’s second Editor under SAGE’s ownership. Honored by this opportunity, I am fully committed to expanding the journal’s scope and impact within the field of public human resource management, and further strengthening its long-standing commitment to serving as a forum for exchange between the academic and practitioner research communities. Given the significant challenges facing public managers and human resources specialists both in the United States and abroad, the journal is well positioned to promote research that both sheds light on enduring questions affecting the field of public human resource management and informs policymakers and administrators tasked with effectively managing public service employees across the globe. I would also like to extend my sincerest thanks to outgoing Editor Dr. Eddie French and his editorial team. Having taken over editorship of Public Personnel Management in 2013, Dr. French successfully transitioned the journal from the International Public Management Association for Human Resources to SAGE and did an outstanding job of promoting and facilitating the publication of high quality research. Dr. French has also been an invaluable resource during my transition into the role of Editor and will remain a member of the journal’s Editorial Board moving forward. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the outstanding work of the journal’s Editorial Board and ad hoc reviewers over the past 3 years and thank our incoming Board Members for their willingness to further Public Personnel Management’s success. Last, I would like to acknowledge Louisiana State University’s E. J. Ourso College of Business and Public Administration Institute for their support of my Editorship and commitment to providing the necessary support and resources to effectively manage the journal. This March issue of Public Personnel Management begins with the second part of the December issue’s symposium on Humanistic Management and Development of New Cities and Towns in China, guest edited by Dr. Linda Sun. Along with the second part of the symposium, this issue contains two additional articles on public employee performance: the first by Geunpil Ryu which addresses employee well-being under strenuous working conditions and the second by Jun Yi Hsieh which provides a cross-sector exploration of job satisfaction and performance. In keeping with the focus of the journal, each of these articles addresses issues and topics of critical concern and relevancy to the field of public human resource management.

The Great Government Pay Debate

The three statements that follow were provided by individuals who have public positions that are likely to influence how government pay systems are planned and managed. Government pay and benefits have become political issues and the goal is to provide a forum prior to the election where three distinct positions can be stated, followed by comment and rebuttal. The first statement, by the two independent members of the Federal Salary Council, Stephen Condrey and Rex Facer II, joined by a colleague Jared Llorens, argues for a variation on the existing program model. As background, the Council makes annual recommendations to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the President’s Pay Agent on needed adjustments to the federal white-collar salary system. The second was drafted by Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine, prominent critics of government pay practices and occasional spokespersons on this subject for the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, respectively. Their comments are posted occasionally on the websites of their respective organizations. The third statement was provided by Michael Filler, who serves as a presidentially appointed member of the National Council on Federal Labor–Management Relations and Director of the Public Services Division, International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The Teamsters has over 260,000 public and professional employees across North America. Following each statement are comments by the two other “sides.” This article is intended to highlight the issues that are contentious as well as those where there is agreement. A key point is the general agreement that government pay should be aligned with market levels although there are differences in exactly what that means. 462333 CBRXXX10.1177/08863687124623 33Compensation & Benefits ReviewRisher 2012