Description
The concept of strategic human resource management has played a key role in management research and practice for the last three decades. Ongoing analysis within the field generally focuses on how human resource management (HRM) can add strategic value and contribute to the organisational success. According to this approach, originating from the private sector, people are a key resource and a critical element in an organisation's performance
Tallinn University of Technology Doctoral Theses
Series I: Social Sciences, No. 18
Strategic Human Resource
Management in the Public Service:
Evidence from Estonia and Other
Central and Eastern European Countries
JANE JÄRVALT
PRESS
TALLINN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Faculty of Social Sciences
Department of Public Administration
Chair of Public Management and Policy
The thesis was accepted for the defence of the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy in Public Administration on 5 June 2012.
Supervisor:
Professor Dr. Tiina Randma-Liiv, Tallinn University of
Technology, Estonia
Opponents:
Associate Professor Dr.
University of Nottingham, UK
Jan-Hinrik
Meyer-Sahling,
Professor Dr. Patrycja Joanna Suwaj, University of Bialystok,
Poland
Defence of the thesis: 9 July 2012
Declaration: Hereby I declare that this doctoral thesis, my original investigation
and achievement, submitted for the doctoral degree at Tallinn University of
Technology has not been submitted for any other degree or examination.
/Jane Järvalt/
Copyright: Jane Järvalt, 2012
ISSN: 1406-4790
ISBN: 978-9949-23-316-8 (publication)
ISBN: 978-9949-23-317-5 (PDF)
CONTENTS
LIST OF ORIGINAL PUBLICATIONS ........................................................... 4
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 5
Scope and aim ................................................................................................ 5
Methodological note and the structure of the thesis..................................... 12
1. Strategic integration of HRM ................................................................... 13
1.1 External fit ......................................................................................... 14
1.2 Fit between macro- and micro-level HRM ........................................ 22
1.3 Internal fit .......................................................................................... 24
2. Role of managers in strategic HRM ......................................................... 28
3. Organisational performance and strategic HRM...................................... 34
Summary and conclusions ........................................................................... 38
References .................................................................................................... 42
SUMMARY IN ESTONIAN ........................................................................... 50
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................. 55
PUBLICATIONS...............................................................................................57
CURRICULUM VITAE..................................................................................139
ELULOOKIRJELDUS....................................................................................142
3
LIST OF ORIGINAL PUBLICATIONS
The dissertation is based on the following original publications:
I
Randma-Liiv, Tiina and Jane Järvalt. 2011. “Public Personnel Policies
and Problems in the New Democracies of Central and Eastern Europe.” Journal
of Comparative Policy Analysis 13 (1), 35-49.
II
Järvalt, Jane and Tiina Randma-Liiv. 2010. “Public Sector HRM: The
Case of no Central Human Resource Strategy.” Baltic Journal of Management 5
(2), 242-256.
III
Rees, J. Christopher, Jane Järvalt and Beverley Metcalfe. 2005.
“Career Management in Transition: HRD Themes from the Estonian Civil
Service.” Journal of European Industrial Training 29 (7), 572-592.
IV
Järvalt, Jane and Tiina Randma-Liiv. 2012. “Starting from Scratch:
Rewards for High Public Office in Estonia.” In B. Guy Peters and Marleen
Brans (eds). Rewards for High Public Office in Europe and North America.
London: Routledge, 190-208.
4
INTRODUCTION
Scope and aim
The concept of strategic human resource management has played a key role in
management research and practice for the last three decades (Guest 1987; Boxall
and Purcell 2011). Ongoing analysis within the field generally focuses on how
human resource management (HRM) can add strategic value and contribute to
the organisational success. According to this approach, originating from the
private sector, people are a key resource and a critical element in an
organisation’s performance. The main rationale for strategic HRM thinking is
that by integrating HRM with the organisation’s strategy and by applying
particular sets of human resource (HR) policies and practices, employees will be
managed more effectively, individual and organisational performance will
improve, and therefore success will follow (Holbeche 2001; Farnham 2010).
The term HRM, defined as a strategic and coherent approach to the management
of people who contribute to the achievement of organisations’ objectives, has
entered the management vocabulary as a replacement for “personnel
management” (Armstrong 2000). Although HRM is regarded to have many
similarities to personnel management, as just “old wine in new bottles”, the main
defining characteristic of HRM is considered to be its strategic focus (Guest
1989; Legge 2005). In order to emphasise this focus even more, often the
adjective “strategic” is added to HRM, referring to HRM as a strategic function
which does not only build organisations’ performance, but also is forwardlooking and creates competitive advantage (Holbeche 2001). “Strategic”
highlights the need for the determination of long-term goals of an organisation,
the undertaking of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for
carrying out these goals (Goldsmith 1997; Armstrong 2000).
The concept of HRM can be divided into a hard and a soft approach. The “hard”
version of HRM emphasises the need to manage people as any other key
resource to attain maximum return and added value from them, whereas the
“soft” approach highlights that employees need to be treated as valuable assets
and a source of competitive advantage through their commitment and high
quality of skills and performance (Storey 1989). It has, however, been found out
that organisations tend to mix “hard” and “soft” HRM approaches (Legge 2005).
The principles of strategic HRM also combine elements of both approaches.
Origins and changes in HRM theories and practices have been driven by broader
changes in social, economic, political and institutional context. HRM arose in
the 1980s in North America with an incentive to restore the competitiveness of
American industry (Millmore et al. 2007). It was soon adopted with quite an
5
enthusiasm in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. It also spread to different
sectors and different types of organisations. However, in addition to
organisational demands for efficiency and drive for quality, HRM owes its
momentum to technological developments, to changing values (e.g. rise of
individualism) and to increased workforce diversity (e.g. rise of knowledge
workers) (Mayrhofer and Larsen 2006; Van Buren et al. 2011). The globalisation
movement, which supported even stronger competition, more dynamic markets,
management of uncertainty and pressure for flexibility, has also been seen as one
of the dominant factors in increasing interest in HRM (Millmore et al. 2007).
Moreover, the transformation of personnel management into strategic HRM has
been viewed as a result of growing professionalism among HR practitioners and
their increasing desire to be strategic partners at the senior decision-making level
(Gooderham and Nordhaug 2011).
However, a major debate in the field remains: to what extent is HRM converging
across countries? Supporters of the convergence theory suggest that the AngloAmerican “new” HRM practices are becoming alike internationally as a result of
the global market and technological forces. The divergence theory, in contrast,
argues that HR practices tend to be country-specific because of institutional and
historical path-dependence (Farnham 2010). A number of studies have been
conducted in order to exhibit some evidence on the convergence-divergence
issue, especially in the context of European HRM (Gooderham and Nordhaug
2011). Findings show that HRM practices in Europe simultaneously become
more alike in certain areas and stay or become different in others (Mayrhofer
and Larsen 2006).
The use of strategic HRM in the public service is related to changes in the
administrative systems on a larger scale. The Weberian bureaucracy has
normally been linked to the rule-based personnel management. It could be
argued that associating these two tends to underestimate the role of personnel
management in the Weberian career systems, as managing public servants was
considered to be a crucial issue there. The emergence of HRM as a specific label
in the public service coincided with the rise of New Public Management (NPM)
in the 1980s. NPM has been characterised by the considerable decentralisation
of public-service management, emphasising administrative efficiency and
flexibility (see Table 1). The key elements of NPM-inspired public service
reform agendas have included setting up performance management systems,
developing business-like attitudes of public servants and emphasising
management culture. Although several years of attempts to implement NPM in
OECD countries have given more evidence of failure than success, NPM
continued to be used in the 2000s (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004; Drechsler 2005;
Hood 2011; Meyer-Sahling and Yesilkagit 2011).
6
Table 1. Basic assumptions and core elements of NPM and HRM
Area
External environment
Organisational
structures and
processes
Performance
management and
measurement systems
Role of management
and managers
Employees and
organisational culture
Elements in NPM
- Driven by external pressure, changing
environment and neoliberal ideas
- Market orientation, use of competition
in the provision of public services
- Stakeholder (incl. customer)
orientation
- Focus on organisational efficiency,
effectiveness and productivity
- Emphasis on cost-reduction,
outsourcing and privatisation
- Decentralisation, de-bureaucratisation,
agencification, flexibility of structures
- Devolution of responsibility
- Emphasis from input and process to
output and outcome
- Performance-driven, productivity and
efficiency enhancing measures
- Systematic assessment of performance
through targets, standards, indicators,
measurement and control systems
- Emphasis on “letting the managers
manage”, managerial discretion and
accountability
- Primacy of management function
- Empowerment of employees,
emphasis on “business-like” attitudes of
public servants
- Focus on leadership
Elements in HRM
- Driven by external pressure, changing
environment and neoliberal ideas
- Market and customer orientation
- Individualist, flexible and competitive
notion of employment relationship
- Focus on human resource advantage,
consequently HRM integrated to
organisational strategy
- Organisational flexibility
- Decentralisation, “flat” structures
- Devolution of responsibility for HR
- Emphasis on the contribution of
employees to the “bottom line”,
productivity and commitment
enhancing measures
- Systematic assessment of performance
- HRM largely integrated into line
management
- Emphasis on the role of top
management and its strategic
partnership with HR professionals
- Importance of building employee
trust, common values and commitment
to job and organisation
- Focus on leadership
Sources: Pollitt 2000; Taylor 2001; Torrington et al. 2002; Legge 2005; Christensen and
Lægreid 2007b; Diefenbach 2009; Farnham 2010; Boxall and Purcell 2011
However, there have also been other developments. The concept of
“governance” was argued to have replaced the idea of NPM in the 2000s in the
same way as the latter was said to have put “administration” in the background
in the 1980s and 1990s (Hood 2011). In Western Europe, rising attention has
been drawn to the emergence of “post-NPM” and “neo-Weberian
administration”, to the “whole-of-government” approach and to the “rediscovery
of bureaucracy” during the last decade (Pollit and Bouckaert 2004; Drechsler
2005; Christensen and Lægreid 2007a; Meyer-Sahling and Yesilkagit 2011).
Even if the glory days of NPM are over, another approach of that period, HRM
has not lost its appeal in the public service. The reasons of the durability of the
HRM can be explained by the fact that it addresses strategic HR issues both at
the micro and macro levels of public service and thus is also in accordance with
the elements of post-NPM as well as with the models of whole-of-government
and the neo-Weberian state. While the NPM approach emphasised
decentralisation and accordingly HRM on the micro or organisational level, the
7
post-NPM era has brought new vitality to the macro or public service level
(Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004; Christensen and Lægreid 2007a). As a response to
the problems of fragmentation, departmentalism and tunnel vision caused by the
NPM reform programmes, post-NPM emphasises achieving coordination,
collaboration and synergy across and within administrative systems (Christensen
and Lægreid 2007b). It also focuses on increasing central capacity and control of
public service and underlines the importance of establishing common values and
goals (ibid.). Moreover, increasing strategic leadership at the centre, establishing
value-based management and improving the development of public servants are
typical efforts of post-NPM era (Christensen and Lægreid 2007a). The basic
elements of HRM, such as the strategic integration of HRM, managerial
responsibility for HR and shared values of employees, fit well with the elements
of the post-NPM era as well as with the post-post NPM slogan of “merit with
flexibility” (see e.g. Drechsler 2005). There is also another reason why public
service continues to be an important environment for implementing a strategic
HRM approach. Namely, in the context of the economic and development issues
of today, the need for a high-quality governance apparatus and the role of public
servants is placed in a more central position compared to other actors, and
therefore, strategic management of human resources is not likely to lose its
appeal.
Still, some reservations have been also expressed about the concept of HRM by
a number of academics. According to Armstrong (2000), who has summed up
the critics, HRM has been accused of being overly simplistic, containing
contradictions, producing a gap between rhetoric and reality etc. Some of the
reservations are related to the fact that there is no universally agreed upon
concept of HRM or the practices it involves. Three broad categories of
perspectives can be identified (Farnham 2010; Lengnick-Hall et al. 2009;
Mayrhofer and Larsen 2006; Millmore et al. 2007). First, the universalistic or
normative perspective, such as the models of Walton (1985) or Pfeffer (1994),
suggests that there is one best way of achieving HR effectiveness across
organisations and under all conditions. Which HR practices are universal,
continues to be a source of debate. Second, the contingency perspective (e.g.
Schuler and Jackson 1987) argues that the choice of particular sets of HR
practices is dependent on an organisation’s strategy and its internal and external
contingencies. Third, the configurational perspective holds that coherence of HR
practices is equally important and that unique “bundles” of mutually compatible
HR practices have a positive effect on organisational performance (Farnham
2010; Lengnick-Hall et al. 2009). Giving best-management practices from the
universalistic perspective tends to ignore different contexts in which strategic
HRM operates. The main problems of both the contingency and the
configurational perspectives, however, are related to the static, top-down and
managerialist approach to defining strategies (Millmore et al. 2007; Van Buren
8
et al. 2011). As pointed out by Mintzberg (1994), strategy formulation is not
necessarily a rational or continuous process.
Considering the chronological development of strategic HRM literature, it could
be argued that during the 1980s, research was mainly conceptual – several
theoretical foundations were established (Lengnick-Hall et al. 2009). The 1990s
were characterised by a number of advances in theoretical research (e.g.
application of the resource-based view), but also by important accomplishments
in empirical research. For instance, broader perspectives of measuring the
impact of HR on organisational performance came forward during this period
(Guest 1997). In the 2000s, research on strategic HRM was expanded along
many fronts. How leadership styles, investments in human capital and HR
systems potentially affect organisational effectiveness was further examined.
Moreover, some special features of introducing strategic HRM in international
companies, in emerging markets, in different types of organisations and in
different sectors were identified. Current trends in strategic HRM research
involve further examination of the established ideas. Issues, such as how human
capital or HR systems affect organisational performance and what kind of
implementation issues of strategic HRM arise, continue to grab the attention of
researchers.
There are, however, problems that have been largely overlooked in the current
academic debate, namely what kind of tensions and challenges arise with HRM
strategic positioning in the public service in the context of the newly democratic
countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania,
Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia) of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE),
which have acceded to the European Union (EU). On the one hand, much of the
HRM research so far has focused on private-sector organisations rather than on
the public sector (Daley 2006). Therefore, the question of whether HRM
contributes to a more professional and better-performing public service remains
highly relevant. On the other hand, public management reforms in new European
democracies have already been studied by a number of researchers (e.g. Ridley
1995; Hesse 1996; Verheijen 1998; Drechsler 2000; Beblavy 2002; Boussaert
and Demmke 2003; Lucking 2003; Meyer-Sahling 2004, 2008 and 2011;
Randma-Liiv et al. 2011). Yet the HRM component of these reform attempts has
not received sufficient academic attention so far. The thesis proposes to make up
for both of these deficits by highlighting and exploring strategic HRM and some
key HR practices within the public services of CEE. Thus, the purpose of this
thesis is to extend the strategic HRM argument to the public service context and
conceptualise the mechanisms through which strategic HRM could create value
for the public services of CEE.
The main research questions of the thesis are: first, what are the main features
and challenges that arise with HRM strategic positioning in the public service, as
9
experienced in Estonia and other CEE countries? What are the main ideas
behind strategic HRM both on the micro and macro levels of public service and
how do they appear in HRM practice in CEE? Second, how has strategic HRM
evolved in CEE over time – during the post-communist transition and during the
Europeanisation process both before and after the accession? Third, what could
be the implications for other countries that aspire to join the EU in the future?
Are there lessons to be learned from the experience of Estonia and other CEE
countries?
Taking into account the developments of the concept of HRM, the thesis
suggests three main pillars that constitute strategic HRM. First, HRM
emphasises the necessity of integrating HR activities with organisational strategy
and with each other (Legge 2005). Second, managers play a crucial role in
implementing strategic HRM (Storey 1989; Boxall and Purcell 2011). HR
professionals are supposed to design strategically aligned HR systems, which the
line managers are expected to carry out. Third, the link between HRM and
organisational performance is emphasised (Guest 1997). This is based on the
assumptions that HRM elicits commitment from employees and that committed
persons perform better and are also more loyal to the organisation (Storey 1989;
Boxall and Purcell 2011).
This originally private-sector strategic HRM model can also be adapted to the
public service. However, in the context of the public service, it is necessary to
make a distinction between the micro and macro levels. The micro level is
related to a single public service organisation, whereas the macro level
incorporates the entire public service, which in many countries is considered to
be one entity and which is often also regulated by a specific public service law.
The private sector analogue to that would be a large corporation consisting of
more or less autonomous units (Christensen 2006). The above-mentioned
strategic HRM model will apply to the micro level of the public service without
considerable modification, but it needs to be modified for the macro level. The
three pillars of a strategic HRM model on the macro level (see also Table 2)
would then include:
(1) Vertical and horizontal integration of HRM assumes the presence of a
public-service-wide HRM strategy (and a respective coordinating institution) as
a framework for designing, steering and coordinating micro-level HRM
strategies in individual public service organisations.
(2) Whereas the micro-level approach postulates line manager ownership of
HRM, the respective macro-level approach assumes ownership and
implementation of a central HR strategy by individual public organisations and
their leaders.
10
(3) In order to improve performance in the public service as a whole, the macrolevel commitment needs to be enhanced. It does not only mean commitment to a
particular organisation and its objectives but it also entails an overall public
service motivation including public ethics, a desire to serve the public interest
and loyalty to the government as a whole (Perry and Wise 1990).
Table 2. Strategic HRM model on micro and macro levels of public service
Strategic fit
Role of managers
Micro level
(a public
service
organisation)
- Integration of
organisational and
HR strategy
- Link between
organisational
strategy and external
context
- Integration and
coherence of HR
policies and practices
- Line managers’
ownership of HRM
- HR professionals as
strategic partners to
managers
- Top executives’
ownership of HRM
- Support of political
leaders to public
service HR strategy
- Strategic role of the
coordinating institution
Macro level
(public
service)
- Fit between public
service HR strategy
and external
environment
- Presence of publicservice-wide HR
strategy and
coordinating
institution
- Coherence of
micro-level HR
policies and practices
- Fit between public
service HR strategy
and internal resources
- Shared values of
public service
Organisational
performance
- Importance of public
servants’ commitment
to organisation
- Emphasis on
individual and
organisational
productivity and
performance
- Importance of public
service motivation,
including public ethics
and loyalty
- Importance of public
trust in the public
service
- Emphasis on public
sector performance
These three pillars of the strategic HRM model constitute the analytical
framework of the thesis. The main body of arguments is developed in the four
original articles, dedicated to several central issues of the topic – “Strategic
HRM in the Public Service: Evidence from Estonia and Other CEE Countries”.
The article “Public Personnel Policies and Problems in the New Democracies of
Central and Eastern Europe” (I) (co-authored with Tiina Randma-Liiv) analyses
the development of selected HR policies in CEE over the periods of institution
building in the 1990s and Europeanisation before and after acceding to the EU.
The second article “Public Sector HRM: The Case of no Central Human
Resource Strategy” (II) (co-authored with Tiina Randma-Liiv) studies the main
problems and opportunities related to the decentralisation and the absence of a
sector-wide HR strategy in the public service of a CEE country, namely Estonia.
The third article “Career Management in Transition: HRD Themes from the
11
Estonian Civil Service” (III) (co-authored with Christopher J. Rees and
Beverley Metcalfe) deals with the institutional perspective of career
management, a key area of strategic HRM, in the small transitional
administration of Estonia. The fourth article “Starting from Scratch: Rewards for
High Public Office in Estonia” (IV) (co-authored with Tiina Randma-Liiv) gives
an in-depth look into another key area of strategic HRM, reward management,
analysing the development of rewards of Estonian high public officials.
Methodological note and the structure of the thesis
The thesis is a combination of independently published articles. The theoretical
perspective has been a work in progress throughout the research period;
therefore, each of the articles has applied a slightly different angle within the
theoretical framework, summarised in II and in sections 1-3 of the introduction
below. The structure and methods of empirical study have also somewhat
differed. The thesis combines a qualitative case-study method with the
interpretation of existing literature and public service HR policies and practices
in CEE. First, the differences of the empirical research are related to the scope of
analysis – from a CEE region-wide study (I) to country case studies (II, III, IV).
Second, the methods of information gathering also vary across the publications.
The articles draw on existing reports and surveys on public service reforms and
on HRM (I, II), but also on semi-structured interviews with policy-makers and
stakeholders (III). Where possible, the above-mentioned material has been
expanded by considering applicable legislation as well as official documents and
websites (I, II, IV), previous country studies (I), existing scholarly literature (I,
II, III, IV) and personal communications with top public servants and HR
professionals (II, IV). Third, differences in the empirical analysis also concern
the scope of the research topics – within the theoretical framework, the research
issues extend from general public service HR strategy and policies (I, II) to
single key HRM activities, such as career management (III) or reward
management (IV). The common feature of the research, however, has been to
describe and explore, through the use of in-depth case studies, some of the key
issues of strategic HRM in the public services of CEE, particularly in Estonia.
Employing a broad range of information sources has allowed the author to gain
insights into dynamic decades of fundamental administrative reforms and an
opportunity for some generalisation regarding HR issues in the public services of
new democracies.
The research focuses on three distinctive periods of HR policy development in
the public services of CEE: (1) institution building and the introduction of
modern HRM during the post-communist transition years of the 1990s; (2)
efforts to reform HR policies before accession to the EU in 2004 or 2007; and
(3) post-accession developments up to the start of the global financial crisis in
12
2008. It is yet to be seen if the effects of the crisis and the various responses to it
across the region lead to more fundamental changes in public service HRM.
Based on the three pillars of the strategic HRM model, the following sections of
this introductory part give an overview of the main findings of the thesis.
Section one discusses the strategic integration of HRM. Both the vertical and
horizontal “fit” are examined on the micro and macro levels. In order to draw
conclusions on HRM alignment with broader strategies in the public sector, the
external context for strategic HR is analysed in this section, with a particular
focus on the specifics of CEE. The internal fit between different HR strategies,
policies and practices is also explored. Section two elaborates on the role of
managers in delivering HR. Top and line managers’ ownership of HRM and
their cooperation with HR professionals are the key issues to be analysed. The
delegation of HR responsibility to managers also raises the dilemma of
decentralisation vs. centralisation in the public service, which is further
examined. Section three takes an in-depth look into the connection between
strategic HRM and organisational performance. How HR policies and practices
could contribute to higher public service motivation and thereby to performance
is discussed. Sections one and two, which deal with the strategic integration of
HRM and with the role of managers, are based on the empirical research
presented in the four articles, whereas section three on organisational
performance provides a more theoretical approach. The concluding section
summarises the main findings of the dissertation and proposes future avenues for
academic research and policy analysis. It also makes some policy
recommendations for designing and implementing personnel reforms in
countries which are undergoing processes of transition and Europeanisation
similar to those experienced by CEE states.
1. Strategic integration of HRM
The first pillar of the strategic HRM model (presented in Table 2) – strategic
integration of HRM – refers to the organisation’s ability to integrate HRM into
its strategic plans (vertical integration) and to ensure that the various aspects of
HRM cohere (horizontal integration) (Storey 1989; Armstrong 2000). In other
words, it is assumed that there is a close link between HR and wider
organisational strategies and the external forces shaping them. Additionally, in
order to maximise the HR contribution to realising the “grand plan”, recruitment
and career management, training and development, performance appraisals,
reward systems and other HR matters need to be coordinated (Delery 1998).
This contingency approach suggests that for any organisational strategy on the
micro level, there will be a matching HR strategy and a corresponding “bundle”
of HR policies (Holbeche 2001). Although there is still a lack of evidence that
this strategic integration will automatically lead to improved performance, a key
finding in the research appears to be that implemented HR policies and practices
13
depend on the context and need to be internally consistent and complementary in
order to obtain the best effect (Holbeche 2001).
On the macro or public service level, vertical integration of HRM does not only
assume the presence of a public-service-wide HRM strategy (and a respective
coordinating institution), but also a close fit between public service HR strategy
and its external environment. Both the external fit and the fit between macroand micro-level HRM are further discussed in separate subsections below. The
notion of horizontal integration or internal fit of HRM needs to be expanded to
the macro level, as well. It refers to the coherence of HR policies and to the need
for shared values across public service and emphasises that internal resources
have to be taken into account when developing public service HR strategies. The
internal fit of HRM, as experienced in the public services of CEE, is presented in
the third subsection.
1.1 External fit
The external context of HRM is crucial because HR practices, in any country,
are socially embedded in their wider, institutional, external contexts (Farnham
2010). Thus, vertical strategic fit also means that an organisation needs to match
its capabilities and resources to the opportunities in the external environment
(McCourt and Ramgutty-Wong 2003). The strategic HRM model can succeed if
the limits of the legal and political environment are taken into account and the
influence of political, socio-economic and cultural factors in a particular country
is considered on both micro and macro levels.
Major political-legal, economic and socio-cultural developments have affected
HR strategies and practices in CEE countries for more than two decades.
Although there are important differences among the countries, they still appear
to share a number of common developments, opportunities and risks (I;
Randma-Liiv et al. 2011). CEE countries started out their state-building efforts
with a firm demand to be like the West. The Europeanisation process as well as
the worldwide NPM fashion of the 1990s both left their footprints on the HR
policies of CEE countries. As the new EU member states are gradually changing
from policy searchers to policy providers, the analysis of the external context of
HRM in CEE may help other new democracies to modernise their public
services and HR policies.
HRM in the public service depends very much on its legal and political
environment (I; IV). There are a number of factors specific to the public service
that might affect the implementation of a full-fledged strategic HRM approach
(II). First, strategic management in the public sector is specific in nature
(Allison 1992). The multiplicity of its goals, the complexity of measuring
performance and a tendency for conflicts to arise between its different objectives
14
and stakeholders make strategic HRM, and thus the achievement of both a
vertical and a horizontal integration, more difficult. Second, by the legislature,
public managers are subject to close scrutiny, which often limits the autonomy to
apply the strategic approach. There are more constraints on procedures and a
greater tendency to formalisation and control compared to the private sector. The
complexity and the legal framework may make both public managers and HR
professionals passive followers of the rules rather than proactive developers of
HRM tools. Third, successful HRM in the public service requires not only
backing from top managers but also political support (Storey 1989; I). The
limited time horizon of political leaders, however, may cause them to fail to
address strategic HR issues profoundly (IV). Although there are problems and
constraints in implementing strategic HRM in the public service, public
organisations could still benefit from the strategic approach (Stewart 2004; II).
The political environment in the newly democratic countries has been anything
but stable in the last two decades, particularly during the periods of institution
building and Europeanisation before the accession (I). This has demanded quick
decisions and fast changes, often without serious analysis preceding the adoption
of new regulation or policy. As the societies in CEE have been undergoing
sweeping changes, it has been relatively easy to accept new initiatives without
major opposition or public debate (IV). A key challenge faced by governments
in transitional environments has been one of having and maintaining a strategic
view both on macro and micro levels in the context of constantly changing
political frameworks. Instability, caused by the reshuffling of cabinets, top
officials and priorities, has resulted in a lack of consensus in the direction of
public service reforms and a lack of continuity (I; Randma-Liiv et al. 2011). It
has also made trust-building, commitment and cooperation difficult in the public
service (I). This was pointed out by OECD (1997), for example in the case of
Bulgaria, where the highly-politicised and therefore instable environment
complicated the creation of professional public service.
During the early years of transition, CEE countries had to cope with the different
tradition of doing HR (I; III). One of the problems resulted from the practice of
not regarding public servants as a category apart from any other group of
employees. Moreover, the countries in question had to contend with a
communist legacy that included patronage networks and considerable
ideological influence (III). Contrary to the developments in many old
democracies, which in the 1990s took steps to reduce differences in the general
employment conditions applicable in the public and private sectors, the CEE
countries passed public service laws, granting public servants a special status
and deliberately emphasising the merit principle (I). The dilemma between
continuity and change in the public service also became an important issue
during the early years of transition. In most CEE countries, including Romania
and Bulgaria and Hungary, a majority of the old cadre remained in office as
15
governments did not initiate the replacement of public servants (Drechsler 2003;
Meyer-Sahling 2004). However, in other countries, the old nomenklatura
problems were not so severe. For example in Estonia, the changes in personnel
were remarkable in 1992-1993, when 37 per cent of public servants were
replaced (Drechsler 2003).
Since the late 1990s, European integration was one of the few stable strategic
goals and a significant factor behind administrative reforms in CEE countries,
also creating an important motive for the systematic development of HR policies
(Viks and Randma-Liiv 2005; Meyer-Sahling 2011). However, the
Europeanisation process mainly focused on changes in the legal framework and
less on the “softer” European values of personnel reforms. At the same time, the
implementation gap between the adoption of formal acts and their realisation has
been a serious problem in most CEE countries (Meyer-Sahling 2008). Poland
and Slovenia represent the examples of countries which had reached quite high a
fit with EU standards for public service by the time they joined the EU (MeyerSahling 2011). However, the developments shortly after the accession, such as
politicisation in Poland and reform efforts creating a legal vacuum in Slovenia,
demonstrate that not all the principles of the European administrative space were
deeply rooted in the region during the Europeanisation process (ibid.). Romania
was no exception to this rule, as a number of EU-induced laws that were passed
there remained dead (Ioni?? 2007; Michalak 2012). Political instability can also
affect different HR subfields. The Estonian example from the pre-accession
period demonstrated that no long-term promises about career opportunities were
made by managers because this would have obliged them to take responsibility
for acting on those agreements, which may not have been feasible in the
changing environment (III).
After joining the EU, the sustainability of public service reforms and strategic
HRM in CEE has essentially been dependent on domestic factors, namely the
commitment of government coalitions to continue with the public service
developments pursued before EU accession (I; Meyer-Sahling 2011). The
importance of domestic factors has resulted in somewhat different pathways of
different countries. The changes of government in Slovenia, Poland, the Czech
Republic and Slovakia meant a change in the direction of public service
developments, which from the EU perspective could be classified as reform
reversals (Meyer-Sahling 2011). In other cases, e.g. in Estonia and Latvia, the
political environment has been more stable after the accession, but the political
forces have been rather reluctant to conduct reforms going beyond a cosmetic
treatment of the underlying issues (I). In general, the political consent (or the
long-term stability of one political power) and consistency in public service
reform policies has been missing in CEE countries during the last few decades
(Verheijen 2003; Randma-Liiv et al. 2011).
16
In the legal-political environment of CEE, the positive role of public servants
could not be taken for granted neither during the post-transition nor during the
pre- and post-accession periods. In terms of public service HRM, the missing
positive concept of the state has continued to be a fundamental challenge,
leading to serious problems, including a lack of interest in public service careers,
an absence of common administrative culture and public discontent with high
public office rewards (I; IV). Such “anti-state” attitudes have also fostered the
popularity of ideas related to minimal state and NPM. Although the rhetoric of
NPM coincides with the concept of HRM, over-idealisation of the private sector
and “marketisation” of the state have led to sketchy HR practices in reality in a
number of cases in CEE. For example in Slovakia, both pre- and post-accession
amendments, initiated by the advocates of NPM in power, have led to the
deregulation of the salary system, the introduction of highly discretionary bonus
system and the abolishment of the central public service office (Meyer-Sahling
2011). The examples of NPM-inspired flexibility and discretion in reward
management can also be found in the Estonian and Hungarian public service (I;
IV; Meyer-Sahling 2011). It has been argued that contrary to Western Europe,
the popularity of NPM has even grown in CEE countries, especially after their
accession to the EU (Meyer-Sahling and Yesilkagit 2011).
Another fundamental challenge that stems from the legal-political context is the
politicisation of public service in CEE. In order to ensure principles of
impartiality, political neutrality, fairness and merit as well as to contribute to the
stabilisation of public services in CEE, EU has paid particular attention to
depoliticisation and professionalisation (Meyer-Sahling 2011). However, despite
the efforts, these principles are not met in the selection and promotion processes
of senior public servants in most of the CEE countries, except for the three
Baltic states (World Bank 2006; Meyer-Sahling 2008). Poland, Slovakia and
Hungary have, in fact, continued to politicise their public services even more
after the accession to the EU (Meyer-Sahling 2011).
In addition to the legal and political environment, economic factors have played
an important role in shaping HR policies and practices in the public services of
CEE. It was already emphasised in the context of political factors that the NPM
ideology sat well with countries that were abolishing their one-sector economies
and carrying out large-scale privatisations. Fast and radical economic transition
brought along organisational changes, such as downsizing, delayering,
decentralisation and reorganisation. These changes were more distinct in the
case of newly independent CEE countries, which had to be built up from scratch
in the 1990s (Randma-Liiv et al. 2011; IV). In the “old states” of the region,
however, the organisational changes were more evolutionary and path-dependent
(Randma-Liiv et al. 2011; Michalak 2012). Article III summarises some effects
of these changes on public service jobs in Estonia, one of the newly independent
states. On the one hand, organisational restructuring led to shortened and blurred
17
career paths, decreased job security, work intensification, multi-functional jobs,
an increased managerial span of control and sometimes to excessive competitive
behaviour (III). On the other hand, the changes provided opportunities for
“winners” of transition, such as greater functional flexibility, increased external
market recruitment and bigger jumps in responsibility in case of promotion (III).
Chronic resource shortage, be it financial, organisational or human, is another
economic factor that has been pointed out as an obstacle to the effective
implementation of public service reforms even before the financial downturn of
2008 (World Bank 2006). It could be argued that shortage of economic resources
might be a possible constraint on the pace of reforms in the public service but
should not prevent a strategic approach to HR (Lucking 2003). Still, the
economic changes have created many opportunities and therefore, a high
turnover of competencies and side-employment among top officials can be
noticed. It has been a problem particularly in the public sectors of CEE where
there have been no resources to value and reward competencies sufficiently
compared to the private-sector competitors or international institutions
(Boussaert and Demmke 2003; III; IV; Meyer-Sahling et al. 2012). In Bulgaria,
employment conditions hardly allowed for recruiting qualified personnel to the
public service in the 1990s (Verheijen 1999). In the case of Romania, the low
level of salaries has been considered a major factor leading to bribe-taking in the
public service not only during the transition years, but also during later stages of
democratic development (Michalak 2012).
Although the global financial crisis, which started in 2008, is not in the focus of
the current research, the consequences of the crisis on public services need to be
emphasised. The crisis as an external factor raises a number of questions in CEE
which remain to be answered in future research. As Peters et al. (2010) have put
the questions: do the governments maintain their paths of governing or does the
crisis become the source of change; where does the pendulum swing between
centralisation and decentralisation; does it require further politicisation or more
reliance on the expertise of bureaucracy to tackle the crisis; could governments
be expected to respond to the crisis with increased levels of coordination; and
does the crisis create short-term responses or generate long-term solutions and
provide opportunities to undertake major reforms?
Public organisations are also affected by the socio-cultural context and need to
develop appropriate HR strategies and practices (Farnham 2010). In the social
sphere, demographic trends are a key driver. In the first decade of transition, the
growth of young officials characterised the public services of several newly
independent countries of CEE (I; III; IV). Based on the Estonian example, it
could be argued that it resulted in greater adaptability to changes and provided
many career opportunities for the younger generation (III). But it also caused
accelerated turnover, loss of institutional memory, conflicts between different
18
generations at the workplace and unfulfilled career hopes for the “losers” of
transition (III). The impact of EU on public organisations, employees and the
HR function needs to be pointed out not only as a political factor, but also as a
social factor. The major freedoms and the greater labour market within the EU
have made international careers appealing and put the rewards in public services
of CEE into wider perspective (III; IV; Ioni?? 2007). Migration to Western
Europe and elsewhere, whether due to the search for a higher living standard and
more socio-economic equality or due to better career prospects, decreases the
potential labour force in the newly democratic countries.
The groundbreaking political and economic developments have also had a
powerful impact on cultural values. When a country is undergoing rapid
changes, economic and physical security is emphasised above other goals
(Inglehart and Baker 2000). Thus, in the 1990s, the importance of materialist
values increased in Estonia and many other CEE countries (ibid.). The Estonian
case demonstrates that although at the beginning of the transition period, many
of the nation’s best and brightest joined public service for mainly altruistic
reasons, this motive receded in the mid-1990s, and the materialist values became
more dominant (Lauristin 1997). Increased individualism and reduced
collectivism at home, at work and in society has also been underpinning these
trends (Farnham 2010). It could be argued that the cultural shift from the
supremacy of collectivism toward more individualistic and achievement
orientation has had an impact on career- and reward-related behaviour (Lauristin
1997; Realo 2002; III; IV). After the “building up the state” motive started to
recede in the Estonian public service, it was soon compensated by a certain
euphoria of looming EU accession and higher personal rewards (III; IV).
Moreover, increasing individualism has also resulted in a rising demand for
flexible working arrangements, more individually oriented HR policies and
practices and more job mobility within the workforce not only in CEE, but also
in the rest of Europe (Farnham 2010).
One of the main prerequisites for developing strategies for effective HRM is a
common understanding about the public service values in democratic societies.
Several democratic goals such as transparency, openness, equal opportunities,
access to public services, fair procedures, accountability and citizen
participation in decision-making may conflict with the more “technocratic” or
“rational” goals such as efficiency, value-for-money and fast decision-making
(Peters 2001; Diefenbach 2009). This contradiction has been especially hard to
solve in countries where the above-mentioned democratic principles are not as
deeply held as in countries with long democratic traditions (I; II). The situation
has been even more complicated as limited resources have brought pressure on
governments to adopt a cost-concerned and efficiency-oriented approach.
Finding a healthy balance between democratic and technocratic goals has
implications for the development of a variety of HR policies and tools (I; II;
19
IV), which is the reason why this field has become one of the greatest
challenges in the public services of CEE, particularly in the context of sharply
decreasing economic growth.
When focusing on Estonia, there is yet another social aspect that has to be taken
into account, namely the notion of the “small state”. In small societies, with
population figures around one million, where “everybody knows everyone else”,
relationships tend to be personal and consequently, situations and decisions are
likely to be more personalised (Benedict 1966; Sutton 1987). In this state of
affairs, people use informal means of communication, personal connections and
networking for career-related purposes (III). Yet this may reduce the value of
the merit principle in the public service and makes it difficult to develop
“hierarchical” values. Furthermore, the limits of a small labour market influence
the public service of Estonia. The shortage of high-level manpower has been
listed among the most serious problems of small societies (Bennell and
Oxenham 1983). This has contributed to the individualisation of rewards in the
public service and cross-sectoral mobility (IV). The small scale also requires
multiple roles, duties and a high degree of flexibility on the part of its officials
(III). Last, but not least, in small and flat organisations, it is difficult to design
smooth individual career paths (III; IV).
The legal-political, economic and socio-cultural factors have shaped the public
services and the respective HR policies in CEE to a large extent. For illustrative
purposes, a summary of these contexts as well as some key drivers within them
and their main implications on HRM in CEE are provided in Table 3.
20
Table 3. The external context of public organisations: some key drivers of
strategy and implications on HRM in CEE
Factor
Legalpolitical
Examples of key drivers of strategy
“Nature” of public sector
Communist legacy, consequently missing
positive concept of state
Institution building in the 1990s
Europeanisation before accession to EU
Post-accession developments due to
domestic factors
Politicisation
Political instability
Economic
Organisational changes (downsizing,
delayering etc.)
Chronic resource shortage
Sociocultural
“Marketisation” of state
Demographic changes (increased number of
young officials, migration)
Dominance of materialist and individualist
values
Public service values
Small-state factor
Sources: Farnham 2010; I; II; III; IV
21
Implications on HRM
Multiplicity of strategic goals; complexity
of measuring performance; tendency
towards formalisation and control; limited
managerial autonomy due to legal
framework
Lack of interest in public service careers;
absence of a common administrative
culture; public discontent with public
service rewards
Introduction of modern HR practices
Establishment of legal frameworks for
HRM; application of EU standards of public
service policy
Different pathways of public service
reforms
Importance of political criteria in public
service selection and promotion process
Lack of consensus and continuity in public
service reforms
Shift towards open job systems; decreased
job security and work intensification;
blurred career paths and functional
flexibility; bigger jumps in responsibility in
case of promotion
Turnover of competencies; increased sideemployment; uncompetitiveness of public
service rewards
Individualisation of rewards
Career opportunities for younger
generation; dilemma between continuity
and change
Flexible working arrangements; focus on
monetary rewards in motivating public
servants
Dilemma between democratic and
technocratic values; pressure for
transparency of rewards; merit principle in
recruitment and career management; focus
on performance management
Informal networks for career-related
purposes; shortage of high-level
competencies; cross-sectoral mobility;
individualisation of rewards; multiple roles
and duties
1.2 Fit between macro- and micro-level HRM
On the micro level, vertical integration of HRM refers not only to the external
forces helping to shape HR, but also to the links between HR and wider
organisational strategy and the management of an organisation as a whole
(Farnham 2010). On the macro level, vertical fit assumes the presence of a
public-service-wide HR strategy and a respective (central) institution to provide
a framework for designing, steering and coordinating micro-level HRM policies
and practices in individual public service organisations. As discussed below, the
piecemeal public service developments in the CEE region tend to take place
without comprehensive public-service-wide strategies and with decreased levels
of coordination.
Several authors (Ridley 1995; Hesse 1996; Verheijen 1998; Drechsler 2000;
Goetz 2001) have noted that the absorption of decision-makers in burning
economic, political and social problems of post-communist transition tends to
downgrade administrative reforms and the development of public service HR
strategies to a lesser priority. Although public service reform is usually ranked
among the “second generation” reforms of transition (Verheijen 2003), the
governments of CEE countries understood that an underdeveloped public service
shaped by inconsistent and inadequate HR policies was likely to put the political
and economic reforms at risk (Beblavy 2002). Whereas some countries (e.g.
Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovakia) started major organisational reforms
of public service in the early 1990s, these reforms were somewhat delayed in
other cases (e.g. Romania and Bulgaria) (Verheijen 1999; Randma-Liiv et al.
2011). The example of Estonia demonstrates that the creation of many new
functions, procedures, organisations, units and individual jobs during a short
period of time in the 1990s led to unclear hierarchical relationships, overlapping
functions, a duplication of duties and a lack of consensus on the principal
questions of public service (Randma-Liiv 2005a; II).
One of the strategic steps taken in CEE in the 1990s, as a result of the
Europeanisation process, was passing public service laws, thereby granting
public servants a special status (I). Although this legislation was not fully
implemented in all countries (World Bank 2006; Meyer-Sahling 2011), the
endorsement created a basis for the development of the merit principle. Through
that, sub-fields of HR policies (for example, recruitment, training, career and
reward systems) in the public service were fundamentally challenged (I).
Although the need for developing public service HR strategy was recognised,
the actual history of public service development in CEE tells a mixed story of
piecemeal attempts to reform existing systems (Verheijen 2003; Meyer-Sahling
2011). As already mentioned earlier, legislation continued to be in focus during
22
the Europeanisation process in particular. The European Commission was more
successful in pushing through formal instruments, but less successful in
influencing the actual content of change in the public services of candidate
countries (Meyer-Sahling 2008). After joining the EU, there has been a need for
thorough attention to structural defects in HR policies, which may have been
neglected during the rush of transition and accession. However, the actual postaccession and pre-crisis behaviour of the CEE countries shows either some
backsliding of public service reforms (e.g. Slovenia, Poland, Slovakia and the
Czech Republic) or only partial continuation of the reforms (e.g. Hungary,
Latvia, Lithuania) (Meyer-Sahling 2011).
One of the main challenges in assuring the strategic fit between macro- and
micro-level HRM stems from the poor coordination mechanisms characteristic
of CEE public services (World Bank 2006). Better co-ordination could help to
prevent the introduction of conflicting regulations and policies by different
public organisations. In reality, however, horizontal management systems such
as central public service agencies or departments have in several cases been
weakened or removed – most noticeably in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech
Republic (Meyer-Sahling 2011). Hungary and Estonia also lack a strong central
authority to coordinate their HR policies (World Bank 2006; II). This, in turn,
has brought about the risk of politicisation, fragmentation, problems with equal
opportunities and the decreasing transparency of HR policies (Lucking 2003;
Meyer-Sahling 2004, Randma-Liiv 2005b; Meyer-Sahling 2011).
In the Czech Republic, the absence of coordinated public service development
and the lack of coherent HR policies for two decades has led to the
differentiation and the emergence of “many public services” within the country
(Meyer-Sahling 2011). The Estonian central government also represents an
interesting case of an absent strategic HRM on the macro level, and only partial
strategic HRM on the micro level (II). There are several institutions with certain
coordinating responsibilities in HRM, but there is no institution at the central
government level with legitimate powers to develop the government’s HR
policies. Every ministry and executive agency is responsible for recruitment,
training, performance appraisal, promotion and setting of pay levels of its staff.
Consequently, there is no top-down steering of the development of strategic
HRM, and well-designed strategic HRM systems are seldom found even at the
micro level. HR issues are often, particularly in executive agencies, dealt with in
an ad-hoc manner, human resources are not approached coherently and HR
managers have little say in designing longer-term prospects in their
organisations (Riigikantselei 2006; Rahandusministeerium 2010). Thus, the
Estonian institutional framework does not guarantee the fulfilment of the
functions that a central coordinator is expected to perform, such as taking the
lead in creating an overall HR strategy, making the necessary interventions, or
mobilising the political will for required changes (Meyer-Sahling 2008; II). As a
23
result, the development of public service HRM has been fickle with gaps in both
the vertical and the horizontal coherence of different HR practices (II).
There are a number of limitations, but, in fact, also some opportunities to this
kind of decentralised HRM system, some of them particular to new democracies
(II). A lack of central HRM strategy and weakness of central coordination make
it possible for government units to flexibly consider specific environmental
factors surrounding each public organisation. This has been particularly
important in the highly dynamic context of post-communist transition and
Europeanisation, which inevitably required considerable institutional and HR
flexibility to adapt rapidly to changing tasks, environment and mobile workforce
(Meyer-Sahling 2008; I; II). Another reason why a poor central HRM
framework can still produce relatively good results is that organisations can
develop their own innovative initiatives in HRM, tailor-made to their own needs.
On the one hand, the heterogeneity of HR policies can help single public
organisations to become more competitive and attractive as employers (II). On
the other hand, different approaches and new ideas can be tested on a smaller
scale, and the best practices can then be allowed to spill over to other institutions
(Meyer-Sahling 2008; II).
Based on the Estonian example, it could be argued that decentralisation does not
mean absence of strategic HRM (II). However, in a decentralised system, the
role of the central coordinator becomes crucial to guarantee a more integrated
and holistic approach towards HRM. If this function is not carried out well,
individual ministries and agencies may partly fill up the resulting strategic
vacuum by developing strategic HRM on the micro level, but it might not lead to
the strategic approach to the development of the public service as a whole (II).
Then again, the centralisation of the HRM function does not automatically
signify the existence of strategic HRM, since even in highly centralised systems,
HRM may not be sufficiently integrated into strategic governance mechanisms.
Examples of vertical fit in practice indicate that integrating HRM with wider
strategies appears to be a highly complex process, which is very dependent upon
the interplay and resources of different stakeholders (Farnham 2010).
1.3 Internal fit
Whereas vertical integration of strategic HRM emphasises the importance of
HRM alignment with an organisation’s priorities and its external context,
horizontal integration underlines the “fit” between different HR policies and
practices and the degrees to which they support or contradict each other
(Farnham 2010). On the macro level, internal fit implies the adoption of a
holistic approach to the development of HR policies and the coherence of microlevel HR practices across public organisations. Horizontal integration also
24
assumes HRM fit to organisations’ internal resources, both on the micro and
macro levels (Armstrong 2000).
The absence of a central HR strategy and the weakness of horizontal
coordinating units, which is the case in a number of CEE countries (World Bank
2006; Meyer-Sahling 2008), pose significant disadvantages for public services.
If central government forms a number of loosely connected internal labour
markets, every unit is likely to develop its own particular culture and work
habits and reach very different development levels in the long run. Instead of cooperation, public organisations may find themselves in a situation where they
compete with each other. For example, in Estonia, individual salaries of public
servants vary to a large extent due to the effects of pay differentiation and “addons”, negotiated separately for each organisation and individual (II; IV).
Differences in rewards are also seen as an obstacle to mobility in the public
service (III). Another example of incoherence in the Estonian public service
HRM can be found in the field of training and development. The absence of a
central training institution and the consequent variety of development practices
across the public service has led to very different professional knowledge, skills
and values of public servants (Riigikantselei 2008). While public organisations
with better HRM systems and more generous working conditions attract highly
qualified people, this tends to raise the pressure on other government units as
recruiting and retaining good professionals becomes more difficult for them.
Such a “winner takes it all” practice worsens conditions for co-operation across
departmental boundaries, since public servants in different organisations tend to
perceive themselves as belonging to different “leagues” (II).
The implementation of strategic human resource practices, such as recruitment
and career management, training and development, performance management
and reward management, has a mixed record in CEE. Certain achievements have
been reported in creating merit-based systems in recruitment by institutionalising
open competitions and fair treatment of applicants (I; Meyer-Sahling 2008).
There is also evidence that CEE countries (e.g. Hungary and Slovenia)
increasingly provide systematic training programmes for new public servants.
However, several authors (Lucking 2003; Verheijen 2003; Randma-Liiv 2005b)
have noted that the training programmes have at times been rather random,
fragmented and unlinked to organisational or public service goals. A positive
exception to this practice was the pre-accession period when systematic trainings
were organised to improve the knowledge of public servants on the EU
institutions and policies (Lucking 2003). Diverse evidence of success is also
related to another key area of HRM, namely career management in CEE. None
of the countries have been able to develop a classical career system of public
service (Drechsler 2003), although the governments of Poland, Hungary and
Slovenia have tried to boost systematic career management. Thus, in the
changing circumstances and in the overall context of uncertainty, most CEE
25
governments have taken the ad-hoc approach to public-service careers. As the
Estonian case study demonstrates, this sporadic and incoherent approach on the
macro level has not prevented individual organisations from implementing
several on-the-job career management practices on the micro level (III).
Horizontal integration or internal fit may be achieved by the use of shared
processes such as competence management or performance management, which
provide a common framework for different HR practices (Armstrong 2000). The
use of competency models as an integrative force between HR planning,
recruitment, development and appraisals has been used, for example, in Estonia
(Järvalt 2007; I). In the absence of a broad underlying consensus on the direction
of reforms, the development of senior managers has been seen as a means to fill
this strategic vacuum and bring about necessary changes at the senior publicservice level via the development of competency frameworks. Thus, following
the example of some high-income countries, expectations to senior public
servants have logically found expression in a more structured approach in some
CEE countries, as well (e.g. Estonia and Lithuania) (I; Meyer-Sahling 2011).
Although there are a few achievements in some sub-fields of HRM across public
organisations in CEE, efforts of reforming the reward systems and using
performance-based management tools have mostly failed or remained
insufficient (Randma-Liiv 2005b; World Bank 2006; IV). Performanceorientation has been a central value in the rhetoric of HR reforms in CEE due to
the general popularity of NPM ideas. However, CEE countries generally have no
success stories of performance management so far, and it has not turned out to
be a linking process in HRM. Hungary and Latvia have made some progress and
Lithuania the most progress in this area by introducing performance evaluation
systems. This has not occurred without problems, which include cases of
perceived lack of fairness, resentment among public servants and weak links
between strategic goals and evaluation (Meyer-Sahling 2008). The Estonian
example of pay-for-performance has also received criticism, mostly because of
the poor management experience of public service leaders (Randma-Liiv
2005b). In reward management, a growing number of countries (for example the
Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia) have opted for broadbanding,
that is, grouping jobs into job families and salary brackets to achieve more
flexibility and discretion (World Bank 2006; Meyer-Sahling 2008). Estonia and
Poland have decentralised their public service salary systems to a large extent,
leaving a considerable degree of discretion to individual organisations and
managers. It has been expected that a high level of discretion makes it possible
to flexibly consider specific environmental factors surrounding each
organisation, but in reality, it has led to uneven development, cross-sectoral
differences and harsh competition across public service (I). It could be argued
that the reward systems have remained the weakest link despite reform
investments (Meyer-Sahling 2008).
26
Strategic horizontal integration does not only mean coherence between HR
policies and practices, but also fit between internal resources and opportunities.
The resource-based approach focuses on an organisation’s existing resources and
capabilities, through which it is able to attain and sustain a competitive
advantage (Maatman et al. 2010). HRM can play a major role in achieving it by
assuring better people and better ways of working (Lengnick-Hall et al. 2009;
Farnham 2010). When the external environment is in a state of flux, the
organisation’s own resources and capabilities may offer a more durable basis for
strategy than search for unsatisfied “market” needs or catch-up with latest
fashions (Armstrong 2000).
The failure to ensure that internal resources are available may also be a barrier to
the implementation of HR strategy. These internal resources include the
capabilities of the HR professionals, both on the macro and micro levels, who
are the key to the effective development and implementation of HR policies.
Another crucial resource in terms of implementing strategic HRM in the public
service is the managerial competence. Top officials are expected to adopt more
holistic perspectives in HR, to look more widely and across the network as well
as within departmental and national boundaries, to obtain greater management
and leadership responsibilities (Mountfield 1997). Middle managers play a
substantial role in carrying out HR practices on the micro level. The roles and
responsibilities of these key internal resources are further discussed in section
two.
Due to the lack of headway in developing public-service-wide HR strategies and
the absence of adequate cohesion-building tools on the macro level, it is hard to
talk about the coherence of HR policies across public organisations or
consistency between different HR practices themselves in CEE countries. The
promising examples of internal fit found in some individual organisations tend to
co-exist with incoherent HR policies in other organisations and on the macro
level. It could be argued that there is little evidence of a comprehensive and
successful attempt to achieve internal fit on the macro level of public service in
CEE. The problems could be related to the complexity of public organisations
and their strategies, which make it hard to achieve any coherence across a
diverse range of plans and practices. Obstacles to horizontal integration may also
arise due to management pressure for rapid changes and financial constraints
leading to “quick fixes” and incremental approaches to the development of HR
practices. The most common example of this could be the introduction of payfor-performance in the public services of CEE (Randma-Liiv 2005b; I).
Moreover, implementation difficulties are likely to jeopardise the achievement
of strategic fit. Grand plans may fail because either HR or line managers are
incapable of playing their part (Armstrong 2000; II).
27
2. Role of managers in strategic HRM
The second element of the strategic HRM model is represented in the idea that
effective implementation of HR strategies depends on the involvement,
commitment and cooperation of managers (Armstrong 2000). Strategic
integration implies that HR professionals are supposed to design the HR systems
that will align with strategic objectives, while managers are supposed to carry
them out (McCourt and Ramgutty-Wong 2003). According to the model, every
manager at any level of the organisation is a people manager having an
important role in building up the strategic role of the HR function and
contributing to the commitment of employees. Given these expectations, the
move from centralised to decentralised decision-making and control has become
a prominent issue (Meyer and Hammerschmid 2010). On the micro level of
public service, it refers to the degree of line managers’ ownership of HRM and
to the division of roles between HR professionals and managers in individual
organisations. On the macro level, however, the second pillar of strategic HRM
includes the top officials’ ownership of HRM and their commitment to publicservice-wide HR strategy, support of political leaders to public service HR
strategy and the strategic role of the coordinating institution.
The design of the public service HRM systems has been influenced by the ideas
of NPM, which have been attractive to a number of governments in CEE. The
well-known NPM slogans “let the managers manage” and “make them manage”
fit well with the concept of strategic HRM, which highlights the managers’
ownership of people management. However, following the ideas of NPM and
HRM may lead to considerable autonomy and to a high degree of discretion of
individual public sector organisations and managers. Thus, one of the main
questions in implementing strategic HRM in the public service is related to
finding an optimal balance between centralisation and decentralisation, i.e. to
how the roles and responsibilities are divided between the central HRM
institution and individual organisations. On the one hand, decentralisation forces
managers to deal with HRM matters and to build corresponding competences. It
also increases the probability that HR managers in each organisation are given a
more strategic role and wider responsibilities (II). On the other hand,
decentralisation may create an opportunity for abuse by individual public
organisations and their leaders. It may enhance instability and increase
politicisation as well as levels of corruption (Verheijen 1998; Meyer-Sahling
2004; Meyer-Sahling 2011). In post-communist countries, decentralisation may
prove risky because of an insufficiently developed legal framework, a high
incidence of corruption, a lack of democratic values in administrative culture,
inexperienced top and middle managers, and the general insufficiency of control
mechanisms (I; II). For instance, in a situation where the recruitment, selection
and appointment of public servants remains the exclusive responsibility of
individual organisations, a conflict can easily develop between HR practices and
28
the principles of openness and transparency if such a risk is not counterbalanced
by the use of open competitions.
A decision to decentralise or centralise is driven by the wish to either increase
responsibility and flexibility of individual organisations, or to centralise control
over support functions (Maatman et al. 2010). There are a number of benefits
and risks of both decentralised and centralised public service, the advantages of
one system often being the shortcomings of the other, as presented in Table 4.
While initiatives to decentralise HRM have been reported by many EU countries
and seem to have high symbolic appeal, a recent study demonstrates that the
administrative practice throughout Europe, including in CEE, is still rather
centralised (Meyer and Hammerschmid 2010). There has been more reform
rhetoric than actual reform itself. Meyer and Hammerschmid (2010) argue that
managers possess individual decision-making power to a limited degree, and
many HR issues are a shared responsibility of different actors within
administration. According to Ingraham (2005), after extensive devolution in the
reform process, many governments now seek a movement back towards some
central frameworks and value statements. The question is how to back up the
decentralisation efforts by other cohesion-building tools on the macro level (III).
Finding the right balance between too much of either in terms of HRM is a
major challenge for all governments (Meyer and Hammerschmid 2010).
Table 4. Advantages and disadvantages of centralisation and decentralisation of
the public service
Decentralised
public service
Disadvantages
Higher costs
Variable standards
Various control
environments
Duplication of
effort
Fragmentation
Advantages
Units in control
of decisions
Recognition of
local priorities
Responsive to
specific needs
Pooled experience
Enhanced career
progression
Synergies
Dissemination of
best practices
Centralised
public service
Advantages
Disadvantages
Consistent
standards
Common systems,
support, control
Critical skills mass
and expertise
Economies of
scale
Unresponsive
No unit control
of central
overhead costs
Inflexible to units’
needs
Remote from
“business”
Sources: Maatman et al. 2010; Meyer and Hammerschmid 2010
The role of top public servants, both on the micro and macro levels of public
service, cannot be emphasised enough, especially in the context of fundamental
public service reforms. Top public servants can substantially impact the design
of modern HR policies and, even more importantly, their actual implementation
in individual public organisations (I; OECD 2008). They are the officials who
interact with the politicians and directly influence the development of public
29
service values and common identity (Randma 2001). Without a central strategic
view, which can be provided only by top managers, HRM is likely to remain a
set of independent activities, each guided by its own practice tradition (Purcell
2001). Goldsmith (1997) argues that strategic thinking is more important than
any formal technique, and strategy formulation is often about preferences,
choices and matches rather than a pure exercise of applied logic. By working
through the ideas, sharing intentions and highlighting points of tension amongst
the top officials, consensus over goals can be found (Armstrong 2000). If top
management is all “singing from the same page”, this is more likely to lead to
actions in the public service being exercised on a collective, but at the same time
consistent basis.
The development of the senior public service might prove particularly valuable
for the CEE countries that have been characterised by a high degree of
fragmentation of public administration (Verheijen 1998; World Bank 2006).
However, senior public servants in CEE countries either have long public
service experience from the Communist period, or alternatively, represent
relatively young people who have joined the public service only recently (Järvalt
2007). Politicisation of senior public service has also been pointed out as a
problem in CEE (Meyer-Sahling 2011). In all these cases, the public servants in
question may not have managerial and/or professional qualifications, as well as
experience in democratic governance (Randma 2002; II). If they lack an
understanding of the HR role, they may recruit HR executives who do not have
the strategic knowledge and ability and thus create a vicious circle. Top public
servants play a significant role in initiating and maintaining changes (or resisting
these) and therefore, development of their competence and ethical standards
requires special attention, and probably even a specific HR policy. The critical
role for managers in HRM also means that a great deal of HR activity and
energy is directed at managers themselves (Storey 2001). For instance in CEE,
Estonia and Lithuania have systematically invested in the development of senior
public servants during the post-accession period (Järvalt 2007; Meyer-Sahling
2008). Hungary has also established a separate senior public-service system,
which has, however, been abused by a politicised selection process of senior
officials (Meyer-Sahling 2011).
The development of high-quality managers is a broader task than just providing
them with training programmes. In practice, the effectiveness of management
development is seldom adequately evaluated beyond the short-term and reaction
level. For example in Estonia, the designed and implemented development
programmes have been beneficial in creating a common identity and improved
coordination between institutions, but the long-term return on investment in
terms of enhanced policy development, management of organisations and public
service delivery still remains questionable (Järvalt 2007). As a lot depends on
the key players in the system, it is important not only to recruit and develop the
30
senior public servants, but also to retain their valuable competence (IV). Failure
to recruit and retain suitable managers may constrain public service
performance, a problem that is prevalent in CEE countries that lose managerial
talent as greater opportunities are available in the private sector and in the global
market for executives (IV). Boxall and Purcell (2011) even argue that
constituting and renewing the top team should be regarded as the most strategic
concern of all in HRM.
On the macro level of public service, political support to strategic HRM is of
particular importance. Lack of continuity due to frequently changing
governments and political priorities may contribute to the mixed signals about
the importance of public service HRM efforts. Boxall and Purcell (2011) argue
that a large part of the difficulties experienced in the quality of employee
relations in the public sector occurs because governments change frequently,
introducing new philosophies, policy requirements and senior leaders. The
limited time horizon of political leaders, coupled with a general indifference on
the side of politicians on public service issues, may cause them to address
strategic HR policies less seriously. As emphasised in the analysis of the
political context of HRM, the government changes in Poland, Slovakia, the
Czech Republic and Slovenia between 2004 and 2006 meant that the public
service reforms negotiated and initiated before EU accession were put on the
back-burner (Meyer-Sahling 2011). Indeed, those responsible for drafting
important reform legislation rarely were in office for long enough to keep an eye
on its implementation (I).
In addition to top managers and politicians, line managers have a crucial role in
the concept of strategic HRM in the public service. Line-manager action or
inaction is often responsible for the differences between espoused HR policies
and their enactment (Boxall and Purcell 2011). The global rhetoric and trend
have been clear: to give line managers more responsibility for the management
of their staff and to reduce the extent to which HR professionals control or
restrict their autonomy in this area (Brewster 2001). Devolving HR activities to
line managers, however, is not without its difficulties. As NPM and HRM are
both very much about the establishment of management, there is a danger that
the primacy of management above other functions gets too much emphasis. It
has been argued that particularly in the context of public organisations, which
are based on values, ethical and professional concepts, management ideology
may “colonise” the professional work (Diefenbach 2009). Therefore, public
sector managers not only need broad managerial experience, but also widespread
knowledge and interpersonal competence and an understanding of work and
problems of frontline public servants.
However, line managers do not always have the skills and competencies needed
to manage people. In CEE, even after two decades of democratic development,
31
the features of the previous system (e.g. ambiguous responsibilities) still affect
the role of line managers on the one hand (Meyer-Sahling 2008; III). On the
other hand, inexperienced transition “macho managers” emerged in both the
public and private sectors: ready to make fast and radical decisions with no
hesitation, prior analysis or consultation with other stakeholders (III). The
cultural challenge for all CEE countries in the last decade has been to move from
the management practices of early transition years, where new institutions and
policies had to be adopted immediately, to more careful preparation and
evaluation of initiatives. Despite these efforts, there are still symptoms of illdeveloped management systems and lack of sufficiently skilled and experienced
managers (Randma-Liiv et al. 2011). In Estonia, for example, a study revealed
that top managers’ competence in HR was considered adequate and they were
sufficiently involved in HRM, whereas the role and competence of the line
managers was regarded as less sufficient (Riigikantselei 2006).
In other cases, line mangers tend to have more pressing priorities than managing
and developing people. In CEE, managers’ involvement in burning issues of
post-communist transition and Europeanisation has downgraded HR issues to a
lesser priority (Verheijen 1998). Subjective and discretionary decision-making
can be another consequence of the devolvement of HR activities to line
managers (OECD 2008). The ways in which HR practices are implemented by
them are often inconsistent and contradictory, unless HR support is provided.
For instance, some managers have been found unprepared and unqualified to
conduct performance appraisals as experienced in Estonia (Randma-Liiv 2005b).
The assessments are likely to be undertaken for “statistical purposes”, and in
many cases, nothing is done with the performance information afterwards (III).
Implementation problems of performance management have also occurred in the
Hungarian public service (Meyer-Sahling 2011). Training line managers and
their HR responsibilities and working in partnership with HR professionals
appears to be a key issue here (Farnham 2010).
As the organisations assign more responsibility to front line managers, the role
of HR professionals partly changes (Mayrhofer and Larsen 2006). The strategic
HRM imperative has raised HRM’s positioning in organisational decisionmaking processes: a “seat at the table” is now an expectation rather than an
aspiration for senior HR managers (Van Buren et al. 2011). The function is
assumed to take a prominent position and a more pro-active role in developing
organisations and their human resources. Various studies conducted in the
private sector have even suggested that whether there is an HR professional in
top management team could be a measure for assessing the strategic importance
of HRM (Brewster 2001; Sisson 2001; Kazlauskait? and Bu?i?nien? 2010).
The renewed role of HR professionals also has its implications in the public
service. In order to be full-fledged strategic partners on both the micro and
32
macro levels, HR professionals are expected to address major long-term issues
concerning the management and development of people, to strive to achieve
strategic integration and fit, to ensure top officials’ focus on HR issues, to
facilitate change and to systematically assess the impact and importance of HR
initiatives (Armstrong 2000; Schuler et al. 2001). In becoming a strategic
partner, however, HR is still required to deliver effective services and to provide
expertise and support to managers. If the basic HR processes are not in good
order, no strategic contribution is likely to be considered of value. The
development and implementation of people strategies also depends on the skills
of the HR specialists. Inability to persuade top management to actively support
HR initiatives or achieve ownership among line managers could be barriers to
the implementation of HR strategies.
HR attempts to make itself strategic by seeking to accomplish organisational
goals and by acting as a catalyst for HR efforts have also received some
criticism. Due to the strategic and resource factors in HRM activities, at times it
appears that the “human” element has been neglected (Lengnick-Hall et al.
2009). Strategic HRM, being more organisation-focused and less employeefocused, creates a set of ethical implications for HR professionals as not all
employees may be considered “strategic” (Van Buren et al. 2011). It has been
questioned whether HRM is a case of “the wolf in sheep’s clothing” (Legge
2005). It could be argued that the shift to a strategic mindset has marginalised
employee-focused HRM responsibilities and ethics activities. The latter,
however, are particularly important in the context of public service.
Implementing “hard” HRM in combination with NPM is likely to erode
commitment and shared values in the public service.
In CEE, HR membership of the top management team on the micro level is not
an obvious way of recognising the importance of HRM in strategic decisions.
Even in the private sector, which is usually considered to be the front-runner in
implementing the classical HRM model, the figures of HR departments directly
represented at the top decision-making level tend to be lower in CEE as
compared to some Scandinavian or Western European countries (Brewster
2001). When it comes to the question of HR influence on strategy in public
service organisations, there seems to be much variety: HR departments tend to
be greatly involved in strategy-making in some organisations, but there are also
examples of the HR departments functioning as mere personnel administrators
(Riigikantselei 2006). The Estonian central government represents the case
where the need for a strategic approach is more recognised in ministries and
much less in executive agencies, where HR issues are often dealt with in an adhoc manner and where HR professionals do not have a say in setting longer-term
perspectives for staff in their organisations (II). It could be assumed that in the
Czech Republic, where each ministry has its own HRM system (Meyer-Sahling
2011), the role and influence of HR professionals varies, as well.
33
As regards the competence of HR professionals in CEE, the Estonian case study
reveals that most HR managers have received their HR skills through the trialand-error method of testing various HRM policies and tools rather than from
conscious training and development, particularly during the immediate postcommunist transition (II). The uneven development of public service HRM
implies that there are organisations which do not yet understand the real value of
the strategic approach, and they may need the necessary impulse from outside
(II). For gaining this stimulus to understand the importance of HR function and
also to enhance the capability for creating strategic HR systems, horizontal
cooperation networks of HR professionals and managers could more soundly be
used (Uus 2007; II).
On the macro level, strategic HRM in the public service depends on the role,
mandate and competence of the central coordination institution. It is needed in
order to steer micro-level strategies and provide for their coherence. Better
coordination could also help to prevent the introduction of conflicting
regulations and policies by different public organisations. Moreover, a central
HRM co-ordinating institution is expected to invest time and energy in the
development of horizontal values, cross-departmental partnerships and
knowledge-sharing mechanisms between various government units to widen the
“critical mass” capable of a strategic approach (II). Supportive actions at the
central level can also minimise the problems related to the unequal quality of
HRM. If a high degree of decentralisation is not counterbalanced with
systematic development of coordination mechanisms, strategic HRM will remain
a rarity confined to a handful of organisations (II). In reality, however, central
coordination units have been weakened or abolished in Poland, Slovakia and the
Czech Republic after the EU accession (I; Meyer-Sahling 2011). Hungary and
Estonia also lack a central authority with a strong mandate to coordinate their
HR policies (I). Latvia and Lithuania, on the other hand, have created capable
structures to manage public service HR strategies and policies (Meyer-Sahling
2011).
3. Organisational performance and strategic HRM
The third defining characteristic of modern HRM is its emphasis on the
importance of enhancing high commitment and performance (Armstrong 2000).
It is based on a logical assumption that a committed person shows better results
and adaptability, is willing to “go the extra mile” and is also more loyal to the
organisation (Guest 1987; Storey 1989). According to the HRM model, HR
function is supposed to contribute to the creation of added value by ensuring that
employees with the required competences and levels of motivation are available
through traditional HR services, and by dealing with macro concerns such as
organisational culture and structure that stimulate performance. It is assumed
34
that human capability and commitment distinguish successful organisations from
the rest (Storey 2001). A number of authors (e.g. Delaney and Huselid 1996;
Delery and Doty 1996; Guest 1997; Paauwe 2009; Guest 2011) have conducted
research examining the relationship between HR practices and organisational
performance across a variety of settings. In order to prove the contribution of
HRM, HR activities themselves are also increasingly viewed in economic terms
leading to formal evaluation of HR activities (Mayrhofer and Larsen 2006). This
section, which examines the links between organisational performance and
strategic HRM, is not based on the empirical research from the public services of
CEE, but provides a more theoretical approach and some avenues of discussion
in the CEE context.
A steadily increasing number of studies exists that analyse the effect of HRM on
organisational performance at the conceptual and empirical level. In analysing
the impact, each of the linkage models complements the others by adding
constructs, variables or relationships. Despite different approaches, most studies
conclude that at least under specific conditions and in certain combinations,
HRM has a positive effect on performance, even though the size of the effects
are often relatively small (Mayrhofer and Larsen 2006; Paauwe 2009). Thus,
there is an array of studies which reveal how investment in HRM “pays off”.
Yet, despite such evidence, the task of persuading employers of the wisdom of
adopting such policies and practices appears to be as much of an uphill battle as
ever (Storey 2001). Lengnick-Hall et al. (2009) argue that until the facilitating
and enabling role of HRM is understood and links are made between HRM and
organisational outcomes, HRM will continue to be seen as an administrative
function vulnerable to financial constraints in difficult times.
The performance outcomes of HRM can be captured in a variety of ways. A
distinction could be drawn between financial, organisational and HR-related
outcomes. Financial measures, such as profits, sales, stock price and market
share dominate the research conducted in the private sector, but even there the
distance between the performance indicators and HR interventions is argued to
be too large (Paauwe 2009). So in the public service, there is a need for
performance indicators that are far more proximal in terms of what HR practices
can actually affect, such as changes in public servants’ attitudes (motivation,
commitment, trust) and behaviour (turnover, absence), and subsequent changes
in outcomes at the organisational level (e.g. productivity, quality of services,
organisational learning).
Despite considerable empirical evidence, significant conceptual and
methodological issues remain in the research. The problems are reflected, for
example, in the inadequacy of performance measures and in mixed results with
respect to causality. Diefenbach (2009) argues that the measurement systems
contribute to a further ignorance and devaluation of many intangible assets and
35
traditional values. Moreover, it is widely recognised that little is known about
and little has been done to unlock the “black box” of the processes that link
HRM and organisational performance (Storey 2001; Legge 2005).
Although the relationship between HR policies and organisational performance
has been thoroughly discussed in both academic literature and applied
organisational settings, the question of whether HRM contributes to a more
professional and better-performing public service, and helps to reform the
structure of public administration, remains highly topical – especially in the
countries going through major changes. There is less empirical work regarding
strategic HRM and its promised creation of value in the public sector, where
measures of organisation accomplishments are even vaguer and more
controversial than in the private sector (Goldsmith 1997). Even though it is
harder to measure the link, there is still the recognition that the quality of public
service can make a real difference in terms of both the efficiency and the
effectiveness of the public sector (Meyer-Sahling 2008).
Organisational performance is dependent on commitment and motivation.
According to Armstrong (2000), strategic HRM is “commitment-oriented” – it
stresses both behavioural commitment to pursue agreed goals and attitudinal
commitment reflected in strong identification with the organisation. In public
service organisations, it is expected that public service motivation is positively
related to individual performance and organisational commitment (Perry et al.
2010). The belief is that individuals will be motivated to perform well when they
find their work meaningful and think that they have a responsibility for the
outcomes of their assigned tasks. Among the job characteristics that contribute
to performance motivation are autonomy, task identity and perceived
significance, intellectually challenging work, growth perspective and the
possibility to do good for others and shape the well-being of society (Taylor
2010; III). It can be argued that these are the attributes that individuals with
public service motives derive from public service employment. However, Perry
and Wise (1990) consider the trend of treating the public service as a private
enterprise a great risk as it fails to acknowledge the unique motives underlying
the public service employment and the linkage between the way bureaucracy
operates and the advancement of democratic values.
Regarding the organisational performance in the public services of CEE, it has
been argued that the fact that the countries had to go through early stages of
transition without general HR policy guidelines led to lower efficiency, higher
costs and poorer services (Lucking 2003). During the accession period, EU
compatibility could be seen as the benchmark for evaluating new member states’
administrative arrangements and the quality of public service (I). The
significance of external pressure and expectations shaping the path of reforms
has decreased following accession (Meyer-Sahling 2011). There are no series of
36
clear targets and deadlines to assess the performance of public service (I).
However, wishing to meet the standards of Western administrations and the EU
demands requires constant development and a broad range of competence of the
countries’ administrations. What is crucial for the continuity and sustainability
of the public service and the public administration is, therefore, the commitment
of public servants, not hard-line control mechanisms (Uus 2007).
The fundamental challenge to CEE has been to restore or (re)create the positive
concept of the state and a common understanding about the complex roles
fulfilled by public servants in democratic societies. The missing positive concept
has led to serious problems, such as unattractiveness of public service careers,
lack of loyalty, rivalry between government units and lack of common
administrative culture within the public service (Drechsler 2000). In Estonia, this
has also been indicated in the decreasing degree of popular trust for public
institutions and for the government officials over the last decade (II; IV). Low
levels of public trust have also characterised public services of other CEE
countries (OECD 1997; Verheijen 1999; Ioni?? 2007). Moreover, as experienced
in Estonia, these problems have been reflected in the lower levels of
commitment of public servants, including managers, as compared to the
commitment of employees in the private sector (II; Riigikantselei 2008).
Organisational psychologists also emphasise fairness or equity concerns in the
workplace, including employee concerns with the justice of their rewards
(Boxall and Purcell 2011). The process of building trust and positive motivation
to perform is seen to depend on the track record of fairness in HR decisions. The
discrepancy between public servants’ attitudes towards politicisation and the
actual HRM practices in CEE suggest that political interference with HR
decisions has a negative impact on the satisfaction and motivation of public
servants in the region (Meyer-Sahling 2008). Moreover, the substantial
differentiation of salaries across government institutions in CEE does not fit with
the European principles of administration, which favour the concept of equal pay
for equal work, regardless of the location in the governmental apparatus (MeyerSahling 2008). In the Estonian public service, for instance, the underlying
principles of public servants’ rewards are neither transparent nor consistent (IV).
The same applies to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, where the salary systems
have been characterised as fragmented and non-transparent (Meyer-Sahling
2011; Staro?ová and Láštic 2012). It could be assumed that such unfairness of
rewards in Estonia and elsewhere in CEE has its implications on performance.
Relatively high employee turnover could be another consequence of low
motivation. This represents a serious challenge for decentralised systems which
are dependent on cooperation and common values among various government
units. As trust builds after repeated interactions between the same partners, a
constant change of partners creates a rather unfavourable context for
37
collaborative action and poses a considerable obstacle to developing a common
public service culture which forms a basis for any macro-level strategy. (II)
It has been argued that there has been too much focus on measuring the strategic
contribution of HRM to organisational success. In the context of NPM, a whole
range of additional systems and tools of control, monitoring and evaluation have
been introduced (Diefenbach 2009). As a result, many public organisations
appear to be overwhelmed by forms of performance monitoring. Too much
focus on performance criteria of HRM can be also an issue in CEE, where public
managers often have insufficient managerial experience (II). Inexperienced
managers tend to over-quantify performance indicators that are easy to measure
and that may look more “objective” and understandable than qualitative data
(Mintzberg 1994; Randma-Liiv 2005b).
Organisational performance depends on the actual implementation of strategic
HRM. As several authors have noted, there is often a gap between the rhetoric of
strategic HRM and the reality (Legge 2005, Lengnick-Hall et al. 2009). There is
a growing recognition that intended strategic HRM practices may be different
from realised and perceived HRM practices. Lengnick-Hall et al. (2009) argue
that to simply rely on what is stated rather than what is actually in place may
lead to ineffective implementation as well as ambiguous results in studies.
Additionally, if there are different perceptions of strategic HRM among top
management and line managers, mixed or ambiguous messages may be
communicated downward in the implementation of HRM. The consistency
between intentions and actions is much harder to achieve when organisations are
subject to frequent changes. As the implementation gap has been and is likely to
remain a problem in CEE, as well, future modernisation efforts are expected to
pay particular attention to implementation issues as well as policy evaluation (I).
Summary and conclusions
The three-pillar model of HRM, which emphasises the strategic integration of
HRM, the role of managers and the impact of HRM on organisational
performance, is the dominating paradigm in theory and organisational practice.
The thesis has contributed to the field by extending the model to the context of
public service. On the macro level, strategic integration assumes the presence of
a public-service-wide HR strategy and a respective central coordinating
institution. Managers’ ownership on the public service level refers to the crucial
role of both senior officials and politicians in developing and implementing HR
policies. The link between HRM and public service performance is expected to
be made by enhancing macro-level commitment, i.e. public service motivation.
The strategic model of HRM may be desirable on the macro level, but there are
no straightforward ways of applying it successfully, as experienced in the public
38
services of CEE countries which joined the EU in 2004 and 2007. However, this
thesis is based on the evidence that, although there are many difficulties and
challenges with strategic HRM, a strategic approach in itself is a positive
development in order to give a sense of direction and a basis for the
establishment of relevant and coherent HR policies. For the public service, a
strategic HRM model can provide a unifying and analytical framework which is
broad, integrative and contingency-based.
Drawing on the literature and the CEE experience with strategic HRM in the
public service, it is demonstrated in the thesis that Western HRM practices have
become increasingly relevant in these newly democratic countries. Political,
economic and cultural changes during the post-communist transition and
Europeanisation have provided a fertile ground for an expansion of the modern
Western ideas and the concept of strategic HRM. However, the findings of this
research suggest that the general problems of the HRM model are complicated
by specific issues related to the developing phase of the countries, such as the
poor reputation of the state, political instability, profound institutional changes,
chronic resource shortage, sustained materialistic values, deficient coordination
mechanisms and insufficient management experience. Thus, HRM is not merely
another set of rules but reflects certain fundamental features of the persisting
political and administrative system.
CEE provides a unique mixture of unifying and dividing elements. The
communist legacy, the immediate post-communist transition process and preaccession Europeanisation have provided a more unified context for public
service organisations to operate in. Nevertheless, national institutions and
individual countries still play an important role in HRM practice. Somewhat
different pathways of different countries have appeared particularly during the
post-accession period, when public service development and the implementation
of strategic HRM have been essentially dependent on the domestic factors. The
public service development in the region, however, has not been linear
throughout the three distinguished periods of post-communist transition, preaccession Europeanisation and post-accession modification. During the
immediate post-communist transition, institution building and introduction of
modern HRM took place in CEE, even though there were some variations in the
fundamentality and pace of the reforms between the newly independent states
and the “old states”. The Europeanisation of HR policies before the accession to
the EU could be seen as a period of “project management” in the region, aimed
at meeting the EU standards of public service policy. After the accession, CEE
countries have chosen more and more divergent ways of public service
development – there are cases of reform continuation and reorientation, but also
examples of reform reversals. Therefore, in the future, it could be more difficult
to define a common “CEE trajectory” of public service developments and
implementation of strategic HRM.
39
As demonstrated in the thesis, a piecemeal approach to public service
development has characterised the region. In the rapidly and radically changing
context, organisations tend to deal with HR issues as they emerge, choosing the
ad-hoc development of HR policies both at the organisational level and across
public service. HRM has been generally perceived as an evolving process rather
than a conscious design of an effective framework for managing people. The
lack or weakness of public-service-wide HR strategies and respective central
coordinating institutions has led to a rather fragmented setup of public service
HRM in Estonia and elsewhere in CEE. On the one hand, this setup has made it
possible to consider specific external factors surrounding each public service
organisation and to carry out major organisational reforms, which required
considerable institutional and HR flexibility in the highly dynamic context of
post-communist transition and EU accession. On the other hand, the setup has
caused an uneven capacity of HRM. Although some public organisations in CEE
countries might have a strategic approach to HRM, their adherents can still at
best be viewed as “islands of success”, which do not have a substantial effect on
the public service as a whole. The failure to understand the strategic needs of
public service on the central level has often had the consequence that HR
strategic initiatives have been seen as irrelevant.
The thesis also reveals that implementation of the strategic HRM model requires
sufficient capacity and competences of different key players of HRM both at the
micro and macro levels. The role of top public servants in designing and
implementing HR policies cannot be emphasised enough, particularly in the
context of fundamental reforms. As a lot depends on the particular persons in
HRM systems, it is important to attract and retain the necessary competence.
Another critical issue is to develop the competences of HR professionals, not
only at the micro level, but also at the public service level, and to provide the
coordinating authority with sufficient capacity and mandate. Moreover, the
strategic approach makes new demands on the skills of line managers, who play
a major role in implementing it. Last, but not least, political leadership and
support to strategic HRM remains the key condition for progress to be made in
the region.
The assessment of strategic HRM in the public services of CEE has implications
for the countries that aspire to EU membership in the future. The study provides
an opportunity to draw lessons from the transition, pre-accession and postaccession experience of the post-communist countries. Although there are limits
to the extent to which findings of the thesis may be generalised to other
countries and settings, there are still several practical recommendations and
lessons to be learned from the CEE experience.
40
The first lesson concerns the applicability of the strategic HRM model on the
macro level of public service. Based on the experience in Estonia and in other
CEE countries, it could be suggested that a strategic framework for managing
public servants at the central level is needed. The strategic HRM model is not a
panacea, but it may help to address some common issues, such as a lack of
shared values, fragmentation, rivalry and uneven quality of HRM within the
public services. The framework may also offer a positive contribution to meet
the immediate and future challenges of the public services by introducing more
systematic and long-term approach. Although modernisation of the public
services in new democracies is taking place in a challenging context, strategic
HRM is a realistic target also in these settings through careful planning, training
and follow-up.
The second implication concerns the strategic fit between a country’s HRM
model and the wider context in which it is applied. The task for transitional
governments is to respond adequately to the distinctive challenges they face in
people management. While the post-communist transition and the EU accession
process could be seen as “project management” exercises characterised by a
series of clear targets, EU membership and the following more stable
development period brings with it permanent demands for managing complex
processes. This requires systematic attention to be paid to broader HRM
deficiencies that were sometimes neglected during the hasty times of transition
and EU accession. Moreover, with an ongoing global financial crisis, it has
become more obvious that the role of the government in tackling the crisis is
crucial. This requires a professionally managed public service that is based on
effective HRM strategies on both the micro and the macro levels.
The third implication concerns path dependency, which is a particularly relevant
factor in newly democratic states. It means that institutions, social structures and
patterns of behaviour in the present are bounded by what has happened in the
past, even though earlier circumstances may no longer apply (Farnham 2010).
Once a specific way for HRM development has been chosen (often on an
emergency basis and with limited prior analysis), it is very hard to change it
afterwards. For example, continuing to espouse the combination of
decentralisation and insufficient coordination tends to magnify the unevenness
of HR development. Consequently, the “winners” of transition may become
reluctant to give up their flexibility and discretion in HRM. In order to minimise
the problems related to unequal quality and the perceived inner inequity of the
existing HRM systems, strategic public-service-wide HRM is needed. For the
coherent development of the public service, it is necessary to point out more
clearly where the organisations’ practices should be homogeneous and what the
commonly agreed principles of HRM are, building upon a general vision for the
development of the public service. Such a framework would help define HR
priorities, taking into account the specific needs and challenges of individual
41
organisations. Thus, the institutional setup, role, tasks and limitations of central
HR coordinators in public service deserve special attention as they seem to play
a crucial role in strategic HRM.
The fourth implication has to do with the implementation gap. There is often a
mismatch between the rhetoric of strategic HRM and the reality of its impact and
therefore, good intentions can easily be subverted by the harsh realities. The
analysis threw some light on the implementation issues of HR strategies. Some
of the barriers that appeared in CEE provide lessons for other countries:
inadequate assessment of the contextual factors of HRM, the development of
irrelevant initiatives, possibly because they are current fads or because there has
been inadequate analysis, execution of one initiative in isolation without
considering its implications on other areas of HRM and failure to ensure the
availability of resources. Therefore, future modernisation efforts in CEE and
elsewhere are expected to pay particular attention to implementation issues as
well as evaluation.
The thesis also provides a number of avenues for further research. First, while
the micro-level HRM in public service has received sufficient attention in
scientific literature, the HRM model on the macro level deserves further
research. Second, although the relationship between HRM and organisational
performance has been discussed in both academic literature and applied
organisational settings, the question of whether the strategic HRM approach
contributes to a better-performing public service remains highly relevant. The
potential impact of HRM on public service motivation and, hence, on public
service performance that was discussed in the thesis from a theoretical
perspective, offers interesting opportunities for empirical research. And finally,
the effects of the global financial crisis on the public management in general and
on public service HRM in particular, which were not in the focus of the current
research, require further analysis.
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49
SUMMARY IN ESTONIAN
Strateegiline personalijuhtimine avalikus teenistuses: Eesti ning teiste Keskja Ida-Euroopa riikide kogemus
Strateegiline personalijuhtimine on olnud nii akadeemilise debati keskmes kui
juhtimispraktikute huviorbiidis juba mitukümmend aastat. Vaatamata valdkonna
pikaajalisele ja ulatuslikule uurimisele ning rakendamisele erinevates sektorites
ja riikides, on seni vähem tähelepanu pälvinud strateegilise personalijuhtimise
temaatika avaliku teenistuse kontekstis Eestis ning teistes Kesk- ja Ida-Euroopa
(KIE) riikides. Seetõttu otsib väitekiri vastust järgmistele uurimisküsimustele:
•
•
•
Mis on peamised probleemid ja eripärad, mis ilmnevad strateegilise
personalijuhtimise rakendamisel Eesti ja teiste KIE riikide avalikes
teenistustes? Milles seisneb strateegiline personalijuhtimine nii avaliku
teenistuse mikro- kui makrotasandil ning kuidas see väljendub
erinevates personalijuhtimise praktikates KIE riikides?
Kuidas on strateegiline personalijuhtimine KIEs arenenud aja jooksul –
postkommunistlikul üleminekuperioodil ning europaniseerumise käigus
enne ning peale liitumist Euroopa Liiduga (EL)?
Lähtudes KIE avalike teenistuse kogemustest strateegilise
personalijuhtimise rakendamisel, millised võiksid olla peamised
järeldused ja õppetunnid teistele riikidele, kes liituvad EL-ga tulevikus?
Väitekiri koosneb neljast teadusartiklist (I; II; III; IV) ja sissejuhatusest, mis
annab tervikliku raamistiku artiklitele, sünteesib nende teoreetilise panuse ning
võtab kokku juhtumianalüüsid. Teadusartiklid käsitlevad strateegilist
personalijuhtimist Eesti (II; III; IV) ning teiste KIE riikide (I) avalikes
teenistuses, analüüsides nii personalijuhtimist tervikuna (I; II) kui uurides
konkreetseid personalijuhtimise alavaldkondi (III; IV).
Väitekiri võtab aluseks strateegilise personalijuhtimise võtmeelemendid ning
pakub välja kolmesambalise raamistiku, rõhutades eelkõige personalijuhtimise
orienteeritust organisatsioonilise sidususe ning organisatsiooni eesmärkide
saavutamisele. Esimene sammas – strateegiline sidusus, mis tagab
personalijuhtimise tervikliku ja organisatsiooni strateegiat toetava korralduse, on
mitmesuunaline. Personalijuhtimise väline ehk vertikaalne sidusus tähendab, et
personalijuhtimine kui teatud tegevuste ja põhimõtete komplekt lähtub
organisatsiooni strateegilistest eesmärkidest ning arvestab väliskeskkonnaga.
Personalijuhtimise sisemine ehk horisontaalne sidusus aga eeldab, et
personalijuhtimise erinevad valdkonnad (näiteks värbamine, hindamine,
arendamine ja tasustamine) moodustavad kooskõlalise paketi. Teine sammas
raamistikus keskendub juhtide võtmerollile inimeste juhtimisel ning
50
personalijuhtimise praktikate elluviimisel. Personalijuhtidele omistatakse
seejuures eelkõige strateegilise partneri roll. Raamistiku kolmanda samba
rõhuasetus on töötajate pühendumuse ning seeläbi organisatsiooni
tulemuslikkuse saavutamisel. Eeldatakse, et pikemat perspektiivi arvestava edu
jaoks on vajalik tagada inimeste pühendumus, sest pühendunud inimesed on
produktiivsemad, rahulolevamad ja lojaalsemad.
Väitekirja panuseks on selle algselt erasektorist pärineva strateegilise
personalijuhtimise raamistiku kohandamine avaliku teenistuse konteksti. Kui
avaliku teenistuse mikrotasandil, st üksikutes avaliku teenistuse asutustes saab
nimetatud raamistiku ilma põhjalike muudatusteta üle võtta, siis makrotasandil,
mis hõlmab avalikku teenistust kui tervikut, tähendab raamistiku rakendamine
teatud täiendusi. Seega makrotasandil sisaldab kolmesambaline mudel järgmisi
elemente (Tabel 1):
(1) Vertikaalne ja horisontaalne personalijuhtimise sidusus eeldab avaliku
teenistuse ülese personalistrateegia (ja ka vastava koordineeriva institutsiooni)
olemasolu, et tagada mikrotasandi personalijuhtimise poliitikate ja praktikate
kooskõla ning koordineeritus.
(2) Juhtide võtmeroll strateegilises personalijuhtimises makrotasandil viitab
eelkõige avaliku teenistuse tippjuhtide vastutusele personalijuhtimise eest ning
poliitilise toetuse olulisusele avaliku teenistuse personalistrateegia kujundamisel.
(3) Avaliku teenistuse organisatsioonide tulemuslikkuse saavutamiseks tuleb
makrotasandil tähelepanu pöörata mitte üksnes avalike teenistujate
pühendumusele oma tööle ja organisatsioonile, vaid avaliku teenistuse
motivatsioonile laiemalt.
Strateegilise personalijuhtimise mudel avaliku teenistuse mikro- kui
makrotasandil võib olla soovitav, kuid KIE riikide kogemus, mis ühinesid EL-ga
aastatel 2004 ja 2007, tõendab, et selle rakendamisel ilmneb mitmeid
väljakutseid. Tuginedes akadeemilisele kirjandusele ja läbiviidud uurimustele,
näitab väitekiri, et läänelikud personalijuhtimise praktikad on muutunud järjest
asjakohasemaks ka KIE kontekstis. Poliitilised, majanduslikud ja kultuurilised
muudatused postkommunistliku ülemineku ja europaniseerumise perioodidel on
loonud soodsa pinnase kaasaegsete personalijuhtimise ideede ning strateegilise
personalijuhtimise mudeli ülevõtmiseks. Käesoleva väitekirja raames läbiviidud
uurimused toovad aga esile mudeli rakendamisel ilmnevad probleemid, mis on
seotud KIE riikide eripärase keskkonnaga, näiteks riigi ja avaliku teenistuse
kehva maine, poliitilise ebastabiilsuse, ulatuslike institutsionaalsete muutuste,
pideva ressursinappuse, süvenevate materialistlike väärtuste, ebapiisava
juhtimiskogemuse
ja
-kompetentsi
ning
nõrkade
koordinatsioonimehhanismidega.
51
Tabel 1. Strateegilise personalijuhtimise mudel avaliku teenistuse mikro- ja
makrotasandil
Mikrotasand
(avaliku teenistuse
organisatsioon)
Makrotasand
(avalik teenistus)
Strateegiline sidusus
Juhtide roll
- Organisatsiooni- ja
personalistrateegia
sidusus
- Seos organisatsioonistrateegia ja väliskeskkonna vahel
- Personalipoliitikate ja
-praktikate sidusus ning
kooskõla
- Keskastmejuhtide
vastutus inimeste
juhtimisel
- Personalijuhtimise
professionaalid kui
juhtide strateegilised
partnerid
- Avaliku teenistuse
personalistrateegia
vastavus
väliskeskkonnale
- Avaliku teenistuse
ülese personalistrateegia
ja koordineeriva
institutsiooni olemasolu
- Mikrotasandi
personalipoliitikate ja
-praktikate kooskõla
- Avaliku teenistuse
personalistrateegia ja
sisemiste ressursside
vastavus
- Avaliku teenistuse
ühised väärtused
- Avaliku teenistuse
tippjuhtide vastutus
personalijuhtimise
eest
- Poliitiline toetus
avaliku teenistuse
personalistrateegiale
- Koordineeriva
institutsiooni
strateegiline roll
Organisatsiooni
tulemuslikkus
- Avalike teenistujate
pühendumuse olulisus
- Rõhk nii individuaalsel
kui organisatsiooni
tootlikkusel ja
tulemuslikkusel
- Avaliku teenistuse
motivatsiooni, sh avaliku
teenistuse eetika ja
lojaalsuse olulisus
- Avalikkuse usaldus
avaliku teenistuse vastu
- Rõhk avaliku teenistuse
tulemuslikkusel
KIE avaliku teenistuse personalijuhtimise puhul saab välja tuua nii riikidele
sarnaseid kui neid eristavaid jooni. Kui kommunistlik pärand, üleminekuperiood
ja EL-ga liitumisele eelnenud europaniseerumise protsess on loonud üsna
sarnase konteksti avaliku teenistuse organisatsioonidele erinevates riikides, siis
suuremad erisused on ilmnenud peale EL-ga liitumist, mil avaliku teenistuse
arendamine ning strateegilise personalijuhtimise rakendamine on sõltunud
eeskätt siseriiklikest teguritest. Avaliku teenistuse personalijuhtimise arengut
KIEs ei saa pidada lineaarseks, sest peale liitumist on riigid valinud lahknevad
teed – on nii näiteid avaliku teenistuse reformide jätkamisest ja strateegilise
personalijuhtimise rakendamisest kui ka näiteid tagasikäikudest ja
taandarengust. Seetõttu on tulevikus keerulisem leida KIE ühisosa avaliku
teenistuse personalijuhtimise arengutes.
KIE juhtumianalüüside põhjal võib väita, et avalikku teenistust on neis riikides
arendatud n.ö jupi kaupa. Kiiresti ja radikaalselt muutuvas kontekstis on
organisatsioonid tegelenud personaliküsimustega jooksvalt ning valinud
52
personalipoliitikate arendamiseks ad hoc lähenemise nii asutuste tasandil kui
avalikus teenistuses tervikuna. Makrotasandi personalistrateegia ning vastava
keskse koordineeriva institutsiooni puudumise või nõrkuse tõttu on Eesti ja teiste
KIE riikide avaliku teenistuse personalijuhtimine fragmenteeritud. Ühelt poolt
on fragmenteeritus võimaldanud arvesse võtta iga asutuse spetsiifilisi
keskkonnategureid ning viia dünaamilises ülemineku ning EL-ga liitumise
protsessis ellu suuri organisatsioonireforme, mis on nõudnud institutsionaalset ja
ka personalijuhtimise-alast paindlikkust. Teisalt on fragmenteerituse tõttu
strateegilise
personalijuhtimise
rakendamise
võimekus
ebaühtlane
organisatsioonide lõikes.
Väitekiri toob ka esile, et strateegilise personalijuhtimise raamistiku
rakendamine eeldab mitmete oluliste osapoolte suutlikkust ja kompetentsi nii
mikro- kui makrotasandil. Tippametnike roll personalipoliitikate kujundamisel ja
elluviimisel on võtmetähtsusega, eriti fundamentaalsete muutuste kontekstis.
KIE kogemus tõendab ka, et tähelepanu tuleb pöörata personalijuhtimise
valdkonna professionaalide kompetentsile mitte ainult mikrotasandil, vaid ka
avaliku teenistuse tasandil ning tagada koordineeriva institutsiooni piisav
võimekus ja mandaat. Lisaks eeldab strateegiline lähenemine keskastmejuhtide
kompetentsi inimeste juhtimise alal ning poliitilist toetust avaliku teenistuse
arendamisele regioonis.
Strateegilise personalijuhtimise raamistiku rakendamise või mitterakendamise
kogemus KIE avalikes teenistustes annab võimaluse järelduste tegemiseks ning
õppetundide saamiseks ka teistele riikidele, kes liituvad EL-ga tulevikus.
Esimene õppetund on seotud strateegilise personalijuhtimise mudeli
rakendatavusega makrotasandil. Eesti ja teiste KIE riikide kogemus näitab, et
selline strateegiline raamistik avaliku teenistuse juhtimiseks kesksel tasandil on
vajalik. Kuigi tegemist ei ole imerohuga, aitab see siiski tähelepanu pöörata KIE
avalike teenistuste probleemidele, nagu ühiste väärtuste puudumine,
fragmenteeritus, rivaliteet ja ebaühtlane personalijuhtimise kvaliteet. Raamistik
pakub süstemaatilise ja pikaajalise perspektiivi, et toime tulla tänaste ning
tulevaste väljakutsetega avalikus teenistuses.
Teine järeldus puudutab personalijuhtimise ja väliskeskkonna strateegilist
sidusust. Üleminekuperioodi ja EL-ga liitumisele eelset perioodi võib pidada n.ö
projektijuhtimise perioodideks, mida iseloomustasid selged eesmärgid ja
tähtajad muutuste läbiviimiseks. EL-ga liitumisele järgnenud stabiilsem periood
võimaldab aga süstemaatilisemat ja komplekssemat lähenemist avaliku
teenistuse personalijuhtimise kitsaskohtadele, millele ei pööratud piisavat
tähelepanu kiirete muutuste ja pealesuruvate tähtaegade kontekstis varasematel
perioodidel. Strateegilist lähenemist ja professionaalselt juhitud avalikku
teenistust nii mirko- kui makrotasandil eeldab ka finantskriis, mille lahendamisel
on avalikel teenistujatel oluline roll.
53
Kolmas Eesti ja KIE õppetund on seotud arengutrajektoorist sõltumisega (path
dependency). See tähendab, et tänased institutsioonid, sotsiaalsed struktuurid ja
käitumismustrid sõltuvad sellest, mis toimus minevikus, isegi kui kontekst on
tänaseks muutunud. Kui personalijuhtimise arendamiseks on valitud mingi
konkreetne tee (sageli kiirkorras ja ilma eelneva analüüsita), on seda arenguteed
hiljem keeruline muuta. Näiteks Eesti avaliku teenistuse juhtumisanalüüsi põhjal
võib väita, et detsentraliseeritus koostoimes ebapiisavate kesksete
koordinatsioonimehhanismidega süvendab personalijuhtimise ebaühtlast
kvaliteeti ja arengut ning sisemist ebaõiglust. Väitekirjas väljapakutud
strateegilise personalijuhtimise raamistik annab avaliku teenistuse arengutee
valimiseks lähtekoha, rõhutades vajadust kokku leppida teatud ühtsetes
põhimõtetes, kuid jättes võimaluse arvestada ka asutuste spetsiifiliste
vajadustega. Seejuures mängib olulist rolli see, milline on avalikku teenistust
koordineeriva keskse instutsiooni mandaat, ülesanded ja võimekus.
Neljas KIE kogemusel põhinev õppetund on seotud strateegilise
personalijuhtimise elluviimise problemaatikaga. Personalijuhtimise retoorika ja
reaalsus ei pruugi sageli ühtida ning häid kavatsusi võivad õõnestada mitmed
elluviimise probleemid. Need võivad tuleneda näiteks personalijuhtimist
mõjutavate väliste tegurite ebaadekvaatsest hindamisest, avaliku teenistuse
konteksti sobimatute juhtimispraktikate ülevõtmisest või moevooludega
kaasaminemisest, ebapiisavatest ressurssidest või ka üksikute arenduste
läbiviimisest, arvestamata nende kooskõla teiste personalijuhtimise
valdkondadega. Seetõttu tuleb edaspidi nii KIE kui teiste riikide avalike
teenistuste arendamisel pöörata erilist tähelepanu elluviimise ning
personalipoliitikate ning -praktikate hindamisele.
Väitekiri toob välja ka mitmed olulised uurimisvaldkonnad edaspidiseks. Nii
strateegilise personalijuhtimise raamistiku rakendamine avaliku teenistuse
makrotasandil, finantskriisi mõju avaliku teenistuse personalijuhtimisele kui
strateegilise personalijuhtimise roll avalike teenistujate motivatsiooni ja seeläbi
avaliku teenistuse tulemuslikkuse tagamisel väärivad põhjalikumat käsitlemist
tulevikus.
54
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In writing this dissertation, many people have helped me, but I would
particularly like to acknowledge some of them for their support. First of all, I
would like to thank my supervisor and co-author Prof. Tiina Randma-Liiv for
guiding me so helpfully along the lengthy journey towards completing the
dissertation. I have benefitted greatly from her inspiration, her challenging
critique and her insight into the field. Tiina has greatly shaped my ways of
thinking and my professional career.
I would like to thank colleagues in the Department of Public Administration of
Tallinn University of Technology. Prof. Wolfgang Drechsler’s and Prof. Rainer
Kattel’s influence on the success of DPA and their demand for high academic
standards made me finish my PhD studies and this dissertation. Külli Sarapuu
has shaped my professional career and academic development for many years
both in Tartu and Tallinn. I am also grateful to former fellow PhD students in
DPA whose doctoral theses and successful academic careers have encouraged
me and given me the feeling that “it” would be possible.
A part of this thesis has benefited from fruitful cooperation with Christopher J.
Rees, who supervised my Master thesis during my studies at the University of
Manchester. I also thank Beverley Metcalfe for co-authoring a research article.
In addition, I am deeply indebted to a range of colleagues from Nordea, Ministry
of Social Affairs, State Chancellery and PARE who have taught me a lot in
strategic HRM practice over recent years, bringing the touchstone of the “real
world” into the discussions.
I thank my immediate family and friends who must have wondered what I was
doing for several years, while this work was being written. I appreciate the
constructive comments, helpful feedback and personal support provided by
Karsten Staehr. As ever, my heartfelt thanks go to my daughter Amanda, who
helps me to see the world of work from a fresh perspective, and my grandmother
Elve, who has been taking such good care of my child while I was focusing on
the thesis.
55
PUBLICATIONS (Articles I – IV)
Article I
Randma-Liiv, Tiina and Jane Järvalt. 2011. “Public Personnel Policies and
Problems in the New Democracies of Central and Eastern Europe.” Journal of
Comparative Policy Analysis 13 (1), 35-49.
57
??????????ÿ??ÿ??????ÿ????????ÿ??ÿ??????????ÿ??ÿ???ÿ? ÿ¡?¢?£???ÿ? ??
t1?74
The concept of strategic human resource management has played a key role in management research and practice for the last three decades. Ongoing analysis within the field generally focuses on how human resource management (HRM) can add strategic value and contribute to the organisational success. According to this approach, originating from the private sector, people are a key resource and a critical element in an organisation's performance
Tallinn University of Technology Doctoral Theses
Series I: Social Sciences, No. 18
Strategic Human Resource
Management in the Public Service:
Evidence from Estonia and Other
Central and Eastern European Countries
JANE JÄRVALT
PRESS
TALLINN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Faculty of Social Sciences
Department of Public Administration
Chair of Public Management and Policy
The thesis was accepted for the defence of the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy in Public Administration on 5 June 2012.
Supervisor:
Professor Dr. Tiina Randma-Liiv, Tallinn University of
Technology, Estonia
Opponents:
Associate Professor Dr.
University of Nottingham, UK
Jan-Hinrik
Meyer-Sahling,
Professor Dr. Patrycja Joanna Suwaj, University of Bialystok,
Poland
Defence of the thesis: 9 July 2012
Declaration: Hereby I declare that this doctoral thesis, my original investigation
and achievement, submitted for the doctoral degree at Tallinn University of
Technology has not been submitted for any other degree or examination.
/Jane Järvalt/
Copyright: Jane Järvalt, 2012
ISSN: 1406-4790
ISBN: 978-9949-23-316-8 (publication)
ISBN: 978-9949-23-317-5 (PDF)
CONTENTS
LIST OF ORIGINAL PUBLICATIONS ........................................................... 4
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 5
Scope and aim ................................................................................................ 5
Methodological note and the structure of the thesis..................................... 12
1. Strategic integration of HRM ................................................................... 13
1.1 External fit ......................................................................................... 14
1.2 Fit between macro- and micro-level HRM ........................................ 22
1.3 Internal fit .......................................................................................... 24
2. Role of managers in strategic HRM ......................................................... 28
3. Organisational performance and strategic HRM...................................... 34
Summary and conclusions ........................................................................... 38
References .................................................................................................... 42
SUMMARY IN ESTONIAN ........................................................................... 50
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................. 55
PUBLICATIONS...............................................................................................57
CURRICULUM VITAE..................................................................................139
ELULOOKIRJELDUS....................................................................................142
3
LIST OF ORIGINAL PUBLICATIONS
The dissertation is based on the following original publications:
I
Randma-Liiv, Tiina and Jane Järvalt. 2011. “Public Personnel Policies
and Problems in the New Democracies of Central and Eastern Europe.” Journal
of Comparative Policy Analysis 13 (1), 35-49.
II
Järvalt, Jane and Tiina Randma-Liiv. 2010. “Public Sector HRM: The
Case of no Central Human Resource Strategy.” Baltic Journal of Management 5
(2), 242-256.
III
Rees, J. Christopher, Jane Järvalt and Beverley Metcalfe. 2005.
“Career Management in Transition: HRD Themes from the Estonian Civil
Service.” Journal of European Industrial Training 29 (7), 572-592.
IV
Järvalt, Jane and Tiina Randma-Liiv. 2012. “Starting from Scratch:
Rewards for High Public Office in Estonia.” In B. Guy Peters and Marleen
Brans (eds). Rewards for High Public Office in Europe and North America.
London: Routledge, 190-208.
4
INTRODUCTION
Scope and aim
The concept of strategic human resource management has played a key role in
management research and practice for the last three decades (Guest 1987; Boxall
and Purcell 2011). Ongoing analysis within the field generally focuses on how
human resource management (HRM) can add strategic value and contribute to
the organisational success. According to this approach, originating from the
private sector, people are a key resource and a critical element in an
organisation’s performance. The main rationale for strategic HRM thinking is
that by integrating HRM with the organisation’s strategy and by applying
particular sets of human resource (HR) policies and practices, employees will be
managed more effectively, individual and organisational performance will
improve, and therefore success will follow (Holbeche 2001; Farnham 2010).
The term HRM, defined as a strategic and coherent approach to the management
of people who contribute to the achievement of organisations’ objectives, has
entered the management vocabulary as a replacement for “personnel
management” (Armstrong 2000). Although HRM is regarded to have many
similarities to personnel management, as just “old wine in new bottles”, the main
defining characteristic of HRM is considered to be its strategic focus (Guest
1989; Legge 2005). In order to emphasise this focus even more, often the
adjective “strategic” is added to HRM, referring to HRM as a strategic function
which does not only build organisations’ performance, but also is forwardlooking and creates competitive advantage (Holbeche 2001). “Strategic”
highlights the need for the determination of long-term goals of an organisation,
the undertaking of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for
carrying out these goals (Goldsmith 1997; Armstrong 2000).
The concept of HRM can be divided into a hard and a soft approach. The “hard”
version of HRM emphasises the need to manage people as any other key
resource to attain maximum return and added value from them, whereas the
“soft” approach highlights that employees need to be treated as valuable assets
and a source of competitive advantage through their commitment and high
quality of skills and performance (Storey 1989). It has, however, been found out
that organisations tend to mix “hard” and “soft” HRM approaches (Legge 2005).
The principles of strategic HRM also combine elements of both approaches.
Origins and changes in HRM theories and practices have been driven by broader
changes in social, economic, political and institutional context. HRM arose in
the 1980s in North America with an incentive to restore the competitiveness of
American industry (Millmore et al. 2007). It was soon adopted with quite an
5
enthusiasm in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. It also spread to different
sectors and different types of organisations. However, in addition to
organisational demands for efficiency and drive for quality, HRM owes its
momentum to technological developments, to changing values (e.g. rise of
individualism) and to increased workforce diversity (e.g. rise of knowledge
workers) (Mayrhofer and Larsen 2006; Van Buren et al. 2011). The globalisation
movement, which supported even stronger competition, more dynamic markets,
management of uncertainty and pressure for flexibility, has also been seen as one
of the dominant factors in increasing interest in HRM (Millmore et al. 2007).
Moreover, the transformation of personnel management into strategic HRM has
been viewed as a result of growing professionalism among HR practitioners and
their increasing desire to be strategic partners at the senior decision-making level
(Gooderham and Nordhaug 2011).
However, a major debate in the field remains: to what extent is HRM converging
across countries? Supporters of the convergence theory suggest that the AngloAmerican “new” HRM practices are becoming alike internationally as a result of
the global market and technological forces. The divergence theory, in contrast,
argues that HR practices tend to be country-specific because of institutional and
historical path-dependence (Farnham 2010). A number of studies have been
conducted in order to exhibit some evidence on the convergence-divergence
issue, especially in the context of European HRM (Gooderham and Nordhaug
2011). Findings show that HRM practices in Europe simultaneously become
more alike in certain areas and stay or become different in others (Mayrhofer
and Larsen 2006).
The use of strategic HRM in the public service is related to changes in the
administrative systems on a larger scale. The Weberian bureaucracy has
normally been linked to the rule-based personnel management. It could be
argued that associating these two tends to underestimate the role of personnel
management in the Weberian career systems, as managing public servants was
considered to be a crucial issue there. The emergence of HRM as a specific label
in the public service coincided with the rise of New Public Management (NPM)
in the 1980s. NPM has been characterised by the considerable decentralisation
of public-service management, emphasising administrative efficiency and
flexibility (see Table 1). The key elements of NPM-inspired public service
reform agendas have included setting up performance management systems,
developing business-like attitudes of public servants and emphasising
management culture. Although several years of attempts to implement NPM in
OECD countries have given more evidence of failure than success, NPM
continued to be used in the 2000s (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004; Drechsler 2005;
Hood 2011; Meyer-Sahling and Yesilkagit 2011).
6
Table 1. Basic assumptions and core elements of NPM and HRM
Area
External environment
Organisational
structures and
processes
Performance
management and
measurement systems
Role of management
and managers
Employees and
organisational culture
Elements in NPM
- Driven by external pressure, changing
environment and neoliberal ideas
- Market orientation, use of competition
in the provision of public services
- Stakeholder (incl. customer)
orientation
- Focus on organisational efficiency,
effectiveness and productivity
- Emphasis on cost-reduction,
outsourcing and privatisation
- Decentralisation, de-bureaucratisation,
agencification, flexibility of structures
- Devolution of responsibility
- Emphasis from input and process to
output and outcome
- Performance-driven, productivity and
efficiency enhancing measures
- Systematic assessment of performance
through targets, standards, indicators,
measurement and control systems
- Emphasis on “letting the managers
manage”, managerial discretion and
accountability
- Primacy of management function
- Empowerment of employees,
emphasis on “business-like” attitudes of
public servants
- Focus on leadership
Elements in HRM
- Driven by external pressure, changing
environment and neoliberal ideas
- Market and customer orientation
- Individualist, flexible and competitive
notion of employment relationship
- Focus on human resource advantage,
consequently HRM integrated to
organisational strategy
- Organisational flexibility
- Decentralisation, “flat” structures
- Devolution of responsibility for HR
- Emphasis on the contribution of
employees to the “bottom line”,
productivity and commitment
enhancing measures
- Systematic assessment of performance
- HRM largely integrated into line
management
- Emphasis on the role of top
management and its strategic
partnership with HR professionals
- Importance of building employee
trust, common values and commitment
to job and organisation
- Focus on leadership
Sources: Pollitt 2000; Taylor 2001; Torrington et al. 2002; Legge 2005; Christensen and
Lægreid 2007b; Diefenbach 2009; Farnham 2010; Boxall and Purcell 2011
However, there have also been other developments. The concept of
“governance” was argued to have replaced the idea of NPM in the 2000s in the
same way as the latter was said to have put “administration” in the background
in the 1980s and 1990s (Hood 2011). In Western Europe, rising attention has
been drawn to the emergence of “post-NPM” and “neo-Weberian
administration”, to the “whole-of-government” approach and to the “rediscovery
of bureaucracy” during the last decade (Pollit and Bouckaert 2004; Drechsler
2005; Christensen and Lægreid 2007a; Meyer-Sahling and Yesilkagit 2011).
Even if the glory days of NPM are over, another approach of that period, HRM
has not lost its appeal in the public service. The reasons of the durability of the
HRM can be explained by the fact that it addresses strategic HR issues both at
the micro and macro levels of public service and thus is also in accordance with
the elements of post-NPM as well as with the models of whole-of-government
and the neo-Weberian state. While the NPM approach emphasised
decentralisation and accordingly HRM on the micro or organisational level, the
7
post-NPM era has brought new vitality to the macro or public service level
(Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004; Christensen and Lægreid 2007a). As a response to
the problems of fragmentation, departmentalism and tunnel vision caused by the
NPM reform programmes, post-NPM emphasises achieving coordination,
collaboration and synergy across and within administrative systems (Christensen
and Lægreid 2007b). It also focuses on increasing central capacity and control of
public service and underlines the importance of establishing common values and
goals (ibid.). Moreover, increasing strategic leadership at the centre, establishing
value-based management and improving the development of public servants are
typical efforts of post-NPM era (Christensen and Lægreid 2007a). The basic
elements of HRM, such as the strategic integration of HRM, managerial
responsibility for HR and shared values of employees, fit well with the elements
of the post-NPM era as well as with the post-post NPM slogan of “merit with
flexibility” (see e.g. Drechsler 2005). There is also another reason why public
service continues to be an important environment for implementing a strategic
HRM approach. Namely, in the context of the economic and development issues
of today, the need for a high-quality governance apparatus and the role of public
servants is placed in a more central position compared to other actors, and
therefore, strategic management of human resources is not likely to lose its
appeal.
Still, some reservations have been also expressed about the concept of HRM by
a number of academics. According to Armstrong (2000), who has summed up
the critics, HRM has been accused of being overly simplistic, containing
contradictions, producing a gap between rhetoric and reality etc. Some of the
reservations are related to the fact that there is no universally agreed upon
concept of HRM or the practices it involves. Three broad categories of
perspectives can be identified (Farnham 2010; Lengnick-Hall et al. 2009;
Mayrhofer and Larsen 2006; Millmore et al. 2007). First, the universalistic or
normative perspective, such as the models of Walton (1985) or Pfeffer (1994),
suggests that there is one best way of achieving HR effectiveness across
organisations and under all conditions. Which HR practices are universal,
continues to be a source of debate. Second, the contingency perspective (e.g.
Schuler and Jackson 1987) argues that the choice of particular sets of HR
practices is dependent on an organisation’s strategy and its internal and external
contingencies. Third, the configurational perspective holds that coherence of HR
practices is equally important and that unique “bundles” of mutually compatible
HR practices have a positive effect on organisational performance (Farnham
2010; Lengnick-Hall et al. 2009). Giving best-management practices from the
universalistic perspective tends to ignore different contexts in which strategic
HRM operates. The main problems of both the contingency and the
configurational perspectives, however, are related to the static, top-down and
managerialist approach to defining strategies (Millmore et al. 2007; Van Buren
8
et al. 2011). As pointed out by Mintzberg (1994), strategy formulation is not
necessarily a rational or continuous process.
Considering the chronological development of strategic HRM literature, it could
be argued that during the 1980s, research was mainly conceptual – several
theoretical foundations were established (Lengnick-Hall et al. 2009). The 1990s
were characterised by a number of advances in theoretical research (e.g.
application of the resource-based view), but also by important accomplishments
in empirical research. For instance, broader perspectives of measuring the
impact of HR on organisational performance came forward during this period
(Guest 1997). In the 2000s, research on strategic HRM was expanded along
many fronts. How leadership styles, investments in human capital and HR
systems potentially affect organisational effectiveness was further examined.
Moreover, some special features of introducing strategic HRM in international
companies, in emerging markets, in different types of organisations and in
different sectors were identified. Current trends in strategic HRM research
involve further examination of the established ideas. Issues, such as how human
capital or HR systems affect organisational performance and what kind of
implementation issues of strategic HRM arise, continue to grab the attention of
researchers.
There are, however, problems that have been largely overlooked in the current
academic debate, namely what kind of tensions and challenges arise with HRM
strategic positioning in the public service in the context of the newly democratic
countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania,
Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia) of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE),
which have acceded to the European Union (EU). On the one hand, much of the
HRM research so far has focused on private-sector organisations rather than on
the public sector (Daley 2006). Therefore, the question of whether HRM
contributes to a more professional and better-performing public service remains
highly relevant. On the other hand, public management reforms in new European
democracies have already been studied by a number of researchers (e.g. Ridley
1995; Hesse 1996; Verheijen 1998; Drechsler 2000; Beblavy 2002; Boussaert
and Demmke 2003; Lucking 2003; Meyer-Sahling 2004, 2008 and 2011;
Randma-Liiv et al. 2011). Yet the HRM component of these reform attempts has
not received sufficient academic attention so far. The thesis proposes to make up
for both of these deficits by highlighting and exploring strategic HRM and some
key HR practices within the public services of CEE. Thus, the purpose of this
thesis is to extend the strategic HRM argument to the public service context and
conceptualise the mechanisms through which strategic HRM could create value
for the public services of CEE.
The main research questions of the thesis are: first, what are the main features
and challenges that arise with HRM strategic positioning in the public service, as
9
experienced in Estonia and other CEE countries? What are the main ideas
behind strategic HRM both on the micro and macro levels of public service and
how do they appear in HRM practice in CEE? Second, how has strategic HRM
evolved in CEE over time – during the post-communist transition and during the
Europeanisation process both before and after the accession? Third, what could
be the implications for other countries that aspire to join the EU in the future?
Are there lessons to be learned from the experience of Estonia and other CEE
countries?
Taking into account the developments of the concept of HRM, the thesis
suggests three main pillars that constitute strategic HRM. First, HRM
emphasises the necessity of integrating HR activities with organisational strategy
and with each other (Legge 2005). Second, managers play a crucial role in
implementing strategic HRM (Storey 1989; Boxall and Purcell 2011). HR
professionals are supposed to design strategically aligned HR systems, which the
line managers are expected to carry out. Third, the link between HRM and
organisational performance is emphasised (Guest 1997). This is based on the
assumptions that HRM elicits commitment from employees and that committed
persons perform better and are also more loyal to the organisation (Storey 1989;
Boxall and Purcell 2011).
This originally private-sector strategic HRM model can also be adapted to the
public service. However, in the context of the public service, it is necessary to
make a distinction between the micro and macro levels. The micro level is
related to a single public service organisation, whereas the macro level
incorporates the entire public service, which in many countries is considered to
be one entity and which is often also regulated by a specific public service law.
The private sector analogue to that would be a large corporation consisting of
more or less autonomous units (Christensen 2006). The above-mentioned
strategic HRM model will apply to the micro level of the public service without
considerable modification, but it needs to be modified for the macro level. The
three pillars of a strategic HRM model on the macro level (see also Table 2)
would then include:
(1) Vertical and horizontal integration of HRM assumes the presence of a
public-service-wide HRM strategy (and a respective coordinating institution) as
a framework for designing, steering and coordinating micro-level HRM
strategies in individual public service organisations.
(2) Whereas the micro-level approach postulates line manager ownership of
HRM, the respective macro-level approach assumes ownership and
implementation of a central HR strategy by individual public organisations and
their leaders.
10
(3) In order to improve performance in the public service as a whole, the macrolevel commitment needs to be enhanced. It does not only mean commitment to a
particular organisation and its objectives but it also entails an overall public
service motivation including public ethics, a desire to serve the public interest
and loyalty to the government as a whole (Perry and Wise 1990).
Table 2. Strategic HRM model on micro and macro levels of public service
Strategic fit
Role of managers
Micro level
(a public
service
organisation)
- Integration of
organisational and
HR strategy
- Link between
organisational
strategy and external
context
- Integration and
coherence of HR
policies and practices
- Line managers’
ownership of HRM
- HR professionals as
strategic partners to
managers
- Top executives’
ownership of HRM
- Support of political
leaders to public
service HR strategy
- Strategic role of the
coordinating institution
Macro level
(public
service)
- Fit between public
service HR strategy
and external
environment
- Presence of publicservice-wide HR
strategy and
coordinating
institution
- Coherence of
micro-level HR
policies and practices
- Fit between public
service HR strategy
and internal resources
- Shared values of
public service
Organisational
performance
- Importance of public
servants’ commitment
to organisation
- Emphasis on
individual and
organisational
productivity and
performance
- Importance of public
service motivation,
including public ethics
and loyalty
- Importance of public
trust in the public
service
- Emphasis on public
sector performance
These three pillars of the strategic HRM model constitute the analytical
framework of the thesis. The main body of arguments is developed in the four
original articles, dedicated to several central issues of the topic – “Strategic
HRM in the Public Service: Evidence from Estonia and Other CEE Countries”.
The article “Public Personnel Policies and Problems in the New Democracies of
Central and Eastern Europe” (I) (co-authored with Tiina Randma-Liiv) analyses
the development of selected HR policies in CEE over the periods of institution
building in the 1990s and Europeanisation before and after acceding to the EU.
The second article “Public Sector HRM: The Case of no Central Human
Resource Strategy” (II) (co-authored with Tiina Randma-Liiv) studies the main
problems and opportunities related to the decentralisation and the absence of a
sector-wide HR strategy in the public service of a CEE country, namely Estonia.
The third article “Career Management in Transition: HRD Themes from the
11
Estonian Civil Service” (III) (co-authored with Christopher J. Rees and
Beverley Metcalfe) deals with the institutional perspective of career
management, a key area of strategic HRM, in the small transitional
administration of Estonia. The fourth article “Starting from Scratch: Rewards for
High Public Office in Estonia” (IV) (co-authored with Tiina Randma-Liiv) gives
an in-depth look into another key area of strategic HRM, reward management,
analysing the development of rewards of Estonian high public officials.
Methodological note and the structure of the thesis
The thesis is a combination of independently published articles. The theoretical
perspective has been a work in progress throughout the research period;
therefore, each of the articles has applied a slightly different angle within the
theoretical framework, summarised in II and in sections 1-3 of the introduction
below. The structure and methods of empirical study have also somewhat
differed. The thesis combines a qualitative case-study method with the
interpretation of existing literature and public service HR policies and practices
in CEE. First, the differences of the empirical research are related to the scope of
analysis – from a CEE region-wide study (I) to country case studies (II, III, IV).
Second, the methods of information gathering also vary across the publications.
The articles draw on existing reports and surveys on public service reforms and
on HRM (I, II), but also on semi-structured interviews with policy-makers and
stakeholders (III). Where possible, the above-mentioned material has been
expanded by considering applicable legislation as well as official documents and
websites (I, II, IV), previous country studies (I), existing scholarly literature (I,
II, III, IV) and personal communications with top public servants and HR
professionals (II, IV). Third, differences in the empirical analysis also concern
the scope of the research topics – within the theoretical framework, the research
issues extend from general public service HR strategy and policies (I, II) to
single key HRM activities, such as career management (III) or reward
management (IV). The common feature of the research, however, has been to
describe and explore, through the use of in-depth case studies, some of the key
issues of strategic HRM in the public services of CEE, particularly in Estonia.
Employing a broad range of information sources has allowed the author to gain
insights into dynamic decades of fundamental administrative reforms and an
opportunity for some generalisation regarding HR issues in the public services of
new democracies.
The research focuses on three distinctive periods of HR policy development in
the public services of CEE: (1) institution building and the introduction of
modern HRM during the post-communist transition years of the 1990s; (2)
efforts to reform HR policies before accession to the EU in 2004 or 2007; and
(3) post-accession developments up to the start of the global financial crisis in
12
2008. It is yet to be seen if the effects of the crisis and the various responses to it
across the region lead to more fundamental changes in public service HRM.
Based on the three pillars of the strategic HRM model, the following sections of
this introductory part give an overview of the main findings of the thesis.
Section one discusses the strategic integration of HRM. Both the vertical and
horizontal “fit” are examined on the micro and macro levels. In order to draw
conclusions on HRM alignment with broader strategies in the public sector, the
external context for strategic HR is analysed in this section, with a particular
focus on the specifics of CEE. The internal fit between different HR strategies,
policies and practices is also explored. Section two elaborates on the role of
managers in delivering HR. Top and line managers’ ownership of HRM and
their cooperation with HR professionals are the key issues to be analysed. The
delegation of HR responsibility to managers also raises the dilemma of
decentralisation vs. centralisation in the public service, which is further
examined. Section three takes an in-depth look into the connection between
strategic HRM and organisational performance. How HR policies and practices
could contribute to higher public service motivation and thereby to performance
is discussed. Sections one and two, which deal with the strategic integration of
HRM and with the role of managers, are based on the empirical research
presented in the four articles, whereas section three on organisational
performance provides a more theoretical approach. The concluding section
summarises the main findings of the dissertation and proposes future avenues for
academic research and policy analysis. It also makes some policy
recommendations for designing and implementing personnel reforms in
countries which are undergoing processes of transition and Europeanisation
similar to those experienced by CEE states.
1. Strategic integration of HRM
The first pillar of the strategic HRM model (presented in Table 2) – strategic
integration of HRM – refers to the organisation’s ability to integrate HRM into
its strategic plans (vertical integration) and to ensure that the various aspects of
HRM cohere (horizontal integration) (Storey 1989; Armstrong 2000). In other
words, it is assumed that there is a close link between HR and wider
organisational strategies and the external forces shaping them. Additionally, in
order to maximise the HR contribution to realising the “grand plan”, recruitment
and career management, training and development, performance appraisals,
reward systems and other HR matters need to be coordinated (Delery 1998).
This contingency approach suggests that for any organisational strategy on the
micro level, there will be a matching HR strategy and a corresponding “bundle”
of HR policies (Holbeche 2001). Although there is still a lack of evidence that
this strategic integration will automatically lead to improved performance, a key
finding in the research appears to be that implemented HR policies and practices
13
depend on the context and need to be internally consistent and complementary in
order to obtain the best effect (Holbeche 2001).
On the macro or public service level, vertical integration of HRM does not only
assume the presence of a public-service-wide HRM strategy (and a respective
coordinating institution), but also a close fit between public service HR strategy
and its external environment. Both the external fit and the fit between macroand micro-level HRM are further discussed in separate subsections below. The
notion of horizontal integration or internal fit of HRM needs to be expanded to
the macro level, as well. It refers to the coherence of HR policies and to the need
for shared values across public service and emphasises that internal resources
have to be taken into account when developing public service HR strategies. The
internal fit of HRM, as experienced in the public services of CEE, is presented in
the third subsection.
1.1 External fit
The external context of HRM is crucial because HR practices, in any country,
are socially embedded in their wider, institutional, external contexts (Farnham
2010). Thus, vertical strategic fit also means that an organisation needs to match
its capabilities and resources to the opportunities in the external environment
(McCourt and Ramgutty-Wong 2003). The strategic HRM model can succeed if
the limits of the legal and political environment are taken into account and the
influence of political, socio-economic and cultural factors in a particular country
is considered on both micro and macro levels.
Major political-legal, economic and socio-cultural developments have affected
HR strategies and practices in CEE countries for more than two decades.
Although there are important differences among the countries, they still appear
to share a number of common developments, opportunities and risks (I;
Randma-Liiv et al. 2011). CEE countries started out their state-building efforts
with a firm demand to be like the West. The Europeanisation process as well as
the worldwide NPM fashion of the 1990s both left their footprints on the HR
policies of CEE countries. As the new EU member states are gradually changing
from policy searchers to policy providers, the analysis of the external context of
HRM in CEE may help other new democracies to modernise their public
services and HR policies.
HRM in the public service depends very much on its legal and political
environment (I; IV). There are a number of factors specific to the public service
that might affect the implementation of a full-fledged strategic HRM approach
(II). First, strategic management in the public sector is specific in nature
(Allison 1992). The multiplicity of its goals, the complexity of measuring
performance and a tendency for conflicts to arise between its different objectives
14
and stakeholders make strategic HRM, and thus the achievement of both a
vertical and a horizontal integration, more difficult. Second, by the legislature,
public managers are subject to close scrutiny, which often limits the autonomy to
apply the strategic approach. There are more constraints on procedures and a
greater tendency to formalisation and control compared to the private sector. The
complexity and the legal framework may make both public managers and HR
professionals passive followers of the rules rather than proactive developers of
HRM tools. Third, successful HRM in the public service requires not only
backing from top managers but also political support (Storey 1989; I). The
limited time horizon of political leaders, however, may cause them to fail to
address strategic HR issues profoundly (IV). Although there are problems and
constraints in implementing strategic HRM in the public service, public
organisations could still benefit from the strategic approach (Stewart 2004; II).
The political environment in the newly democratic countries has been anything
but stable in the last two decades, particularly during the periods of institution
building and Europeanisation before the accession (I). This has demanded quick
decisions and fast changes, often without serious analysis preceding the adoption
of new regulation or policy. As the societies in CEE have been undergoing
sweeping changes, it has been relatively easy to accept new initiatives without
major opposition or public debate (IV). A key challenge faced by governments
in transitional environments has been one of having and maintaining a strategic
view both on macro and micro levels in the context of constantly changing
political frameworks. Instability, caused by the reshuffling of cabinets, top
officials and priorities, has resulted in a lack of consensus in the direction of
public service reforms and a lack of continuity (I; Randma-Liiv et al. 2011). It
has also made trust-building, commitment and cooperation difficult in the public
service (I). This was pointed out by OECD (1997), for example in the case of
Bulgaria, where the highly-politicised and therefore instable environment
complicated the creation of professional public service.
During the early years of transition, CEE countries had to cope with the different
tradition of doing HR (I; III). One of the problems resulted from the practice of
not regarding public servants as a category apart from any other group of
employees. Moreover, the countries in question had to contend with a
communist legacy that included patronage networks and considerable
ideological influence (III). Contrary to the developments in many old
democracies, which in the 1990s took steps to reduce differences in the general
employment conditions applicable in the public and private sectors, the CEE
countries passed public service laws, granting public servants a special status
and deliberately emphasising the merit principle (I). The dilemma between
continuity and change in the public service also became an important issue
during the early years of transition. In most CEE countries, including Romania
and Bulgaria and Hungary, a majority of the old cadre remained in office as
15
governments did not initiate the replacement of public servants (Drechsler 2003;
Meyer-Sahling 2004). However, in other countries, the old nomenklatura
problems were not so severe. For example in Estonia, the changes in personnel
were remarkable in 1992-1993, when 37 per cent of public servants were
replaced (Drechsler 2003).
Since the late 1990s, European integration was one of the few stable strategic
goals and a significant factor behind administrative reforms in CEE countries,
also creating an important motive for the systematic development of HR policies
(Viks and Randma-Liiv 2005; Meyer-Sahling 2011). However, the
Europeanisation process mainly focused on changes in the legal framework and
less on the “softer” European values of personnel reforms. At the same time, the
implementation gap between the adoption of formal acts and their realisation has
been a serious problem in most CEE countries (Meyer-Sahling 2008). Poland
and Slovenia represent the examples of countries which had reached quite high a
fit with EU standards for public service by the time they joined the EU (MeyerSahling 2011). However, the developments shortly after the accession, such as
politicisation in Poland and reform efforts creating a legal vacuum in Slovenia,
demonstrate that not all the principles of the European administrative space were
deeply rooted in the region during the Europeanisation process (ibid.). Romania
was no exception to this rule, as a number of EU-induced laws that were passed
there remained dead (Ioni?? 2007; Michalak 2012). Political instability can also
affect different HR subfields. The Estonian example from the pre-accession
period demonstrated that no long-term promises about career opportunities were
made by managers because this would have obliged them to take responsibility
for acting on those agreements, which may not have been feasible in the
changing environment (III).
After joining the EU, the sustainability of public service reforms and strategic
HRM in CEE has essentially been dependent on domestic factors, namely the
commitment of government coalitions to continue with the public service
developments pursued before EU accession (I; Meyer-Sahling 2011). The
importance of domestic factors has resulted in somewhat different pathways of
different countries. The changes of government in Slovenia, Poland, the Czech
Republic and Slovakia meant a change in the direction of public service
developments, which from the EU perspective could be classified as reform
reversals (Meyer-Sahling 2011). In other cases, e.g. in Estonia and Latvia, the
political environment has been more stable after the accession, but the political
forces have been rather reluctant to conduct reforms going beyond a cosmetic
treatment of the underlying issues (I). In general, the political consent (or the
long-term stability of one political power) and consistency in public service
reform policies has been missing in CEE countries during the last few decades
(Verheijen 2003; Randma-Liiv et al. 2011).
16
In the legal-political environment of CEE, the positive role of public servants
could not be taken for granted neither during the post-transition nor during the
pre- and post-accession periods. In terms of public service HRM, the missing
positive concept of the state has continued to be a fundamental challenge,
leading to serious problems, including a lack of interest in public service careers,
an absence of common administrative culture and public discontent with high
public office rewards (I; IV). Such “anti-state” attitudes have also fostered the
popularity of ideas related to minimal state and NPM. Although the rhetoric of
NPM coincides with the concept of HRM, over-idealisation of the private sector
and “marketisation” of the state have led to sketchy HR practices in reality in a
number of cases in CEE. For example in Slovakia, both pre- and post-accession
amendments, initiated by the advocates of NPM in power, have led to the
deregulation of the salary system, the introduction of highly discretionary bonus
system and the abolishment of the central public service office (Meyer-Sahling
2011). The examples of NPM-inspired flexibility and discretion in reward
management can also be found in the Estonian and Hungarian public service (I;
IV; Meyer-Sahling 2011). It has been argued that contrary to Western Europe,
the popularity of NPM has even grown in CEE countries, especially after their
accession to the EU (Meyer-Sahling and Yesilkagit 2011).
Another fundamental challenge that stems from the legal-political context is the
politicisation of public service in CEE. In order to ensure principles of
impartiality, political neutrality, fairness and merit as well as to contribute to the
stabilisation of public services in CEE, EU has paid particular attention to
depoliticisation and professionalisation (Meyer-Sahling 2011). However, despite
the efforts, these principles are not met in the selection and promotion processes
of senior public servants in most of the CEE countries, except for the three
Baltic states (World Bank 2006; Meyer-Sahling 2008). Poland, Slovakia and
Hungary have, in fact, continued to politicise their public services even more
after the accession to the EU (Meyer-Sahling 2011).
In addition to the legal and political environment, economic factors have played
an important role in shaping HR policies and practices in the public services of
CEE. It was already emphasised in the context of political factors that the NPM
ideology sat well with countries that were abolishing their one-sector economies
and carrying out large-scale privatisations. Fast and radical economic transition
brought along organisational changes, such as downsizing, delayering,
decentralisation and reorganisation. These changes were more distinct in the
case of newly independent CEE countries, which had to be built up from scratch
in the 1990s (Randma-Liiv et al. 2011; IV). In the “old states” of the region,
however, the organisational changes were more evolutionary and path-dependent
(Randma-Liiv et al. 2011; Michalak 2012). Article III summarises some effects
of these changes on public service jobs in Estonia, one of the newly independent
states. On the one hand, organisational restructuring led to shortened and blurred
17
career paths, decreased job security, work intensification, multi-functional jobs,
an increased managerial span of control and sometimes to excessive competitive
behaviour (III). On the other hand, the changes provided opportunities for
“winners” of transition, such as greater functional flexibility, increased external
market recruitment and bigger jumps in responsibility in case of promotion (III).
Chronic resource shortage, be it financial, organisational or human, is another
economic factor that has been pointed out as an obstacle to the effective
implementation of public service reforms even before the financial downturn of
2008 (World Bank 2006). It could be argued that shortage of economic resources
might be a possible constraint on the pace of reforms in the public service but
should not prevent a strategic approach to HR (Lucking 2003). Still, the
economic changes have created many opportunities and therefore, a high
turnover of competencies and side-employment among top officials can be
noticed. It has been a problem particularly in the public sectors of CEE where
there have been no resources to value and reward competencies sufficiently
compared to the private-sector competitors or international institutions
(Boussaert and Demmke 2003; III; IV; Meyer-Sahling et al. 2012). In Bulgaria,
employment conditions hardly allowed for recruiting qualified personnel to the
public service in the 1990s (Verheijen 1999). In the case of Romania, the low
level of salaries has been considered a major factor leading to bribe-taking in the
public service not only during the transition years, but also during later stages of
democratic development (Michalak 2012).
Although the global financial crisis, which started in 2008, is not in the focus of
the current research, the consequences of the crisis on public services need to be
emphasised. The crisis as an external factor raises a number of questions in CEE
which remain to be answered in future research. As Peters et al. (2010) have put
the questions: do the governments maintain their paths of governing or does the
crisis become the source of change; where does the pendulum swing between
centralisation and decentralisation; does it require further politicisation or more
reliance on the expertise of bureaucracy to tackle the crisis; could governments
be expected to respond to the crisis with increased levels of coordination; and
does the crisis create short-term responses or generate long-term solutions and
provide opportunities to undertake major reforms?
Public organisations are also affected by the socio-cultural context and need to
develop appropriate HR strategies and practices (Farnham 2010). In the social
sphere, demographic trends are a key driver. In the first decade of transition, the
growth of young officials characterised the public services of several newly
independent countries of CEE (I; III; IV). Based on the Estonian example, it
could be argued that it resulted in greater adaptability to changes and provided
many career opportunities for the younger generation (III). But it also caused
accelerated turnover, loss of institutional memory, conflicts between different
18
generations at the workplace and unfulfilled career hopes for the “losers” of
transition (III). The impact of EU on public organisations, employees and the
HR function needs to be pointed out not only as a political factor, but also as a
social factor. The major freedoms and the greater labour market within the EU
have made international careers appealing and put the rewards in public services
of CEE into wider perspective (III; IV; Ioni?? 2007). Migration to Western
Europe and elsewhere, whether due to the search for a higher living standard and
more socio-economic equality or due to better career prospects, decreases the
potential labour force in the newly democratic countries.
The groundbreaking political and economic developments have also had a
powerful impact on cultural values. When a country is undergoing rapid
changes, economic and physical security is emphasised above other goals
(Inglehart and Baker 2000). Thus, in the 1990s, the importance of materialist
values increased in Estonia and many other CEE countries (ibid.). The Estonian
case demonstrates that although at the beginning of the transition period, many
of the nation’s best and brightest joined public service for mainly altruistic
reasons, this motive receded in the mid-1990s, and the materialist values became
more dominant (Lauristin 1997). Increased individualism and reduced
collectivism at home, at work and in society has also been underpinning these
trends (Farnham 2010). It could be argued that the cultural shift from the
supremacy of collectivism toward more individualistic and achievement
orientation has had an impact on career- and reward-related behaviour (Lauristin
1997; Realo 2002; III; IV). After the “building up the state” motive started to
recede in the Estonian public service, it was soon compensated by a certain
euphoria of looming EU accession and higher personal rewards (III; IV).
Moreover, increasing individualism has also resulted in a rising demand for
flexible working arrangements, more individually oriented HR policies and
practices and more job mobility within the workforce not only in CEE, but also
in the rest of Europe (Farnham 2010).
One of the main prerequisites for developing strategies for effective HRM is a
common understanding about the public service values in democratic societies.
Several democratic goals such as transparency, openness, equal opportunities,
access to public services, fair procedures, accountability and citizen
participation in decision-making may conflict with the more “technocratic” or
“rational” goals such as efficiency, value-for-money and fast decision-making
(Peters 2001; Diefenbach 2009). This contradiction has been especially hard to
solve in countries where the above-mentioned democratic principles are not as
deeply held as in countries with long democratic traditions (I; II). The situation
has been even more complicated as limited resources have brought pressure on
governments to adopt a cost-concerned and efficiency-oriented approach.
Finding a healthy balance between democratic and technocratic goals has
implications for the development of a variety of HR policies and tools (I; II;
19
IV), which is the reason why this field has become one of the greatest
challenges in the public services of CEE, particularly in the context of sharply
decreasing economic growth.
When focusing on Estonia, there is yet another social aspect that has to be taken
into account, namely the notion of the “small state”. In small societies, with
population figures around one million, where “everybody knows everyone else”,
relationships tend to be personal and consequently, situations and decisions are
likely to be more personalised (Benedict 1966; Sutton 1987). In this state of
affairs, people use informal means of communication, personal connections and
networking for career-related purposes (III). Yet this may reduce the value of
the merit principle in the public service and makes it difficult to develop
“hierarchical” values. Furthermore, the limits of a small labour market influence
the public service of Estonia. The shortage of high-level manpower has been
listed among the most serious problems of small societies (Bennell and
Oxenham 1983). This has contributed to the individualisation of rewards in the
public service and cross-sectoral mobility (IV). The small scale also requires
multiple roles, duties and a high degree of flexibility on the part of its officials
(III). Last, but not least, in small and flat organisations, it is difficult to design
smooth individual career paths (III; IV).
The legal-political, economic and socio-cultural factors have shaped the public
services and the respective HR policies in CEE to a large extent. For illustrative
purposes, a summary of these contexts as well as some key drivers within them
and their main implications on HRM in CEE are provided in Table 3.
20
Table 3. The external context of public organisations: some key drivers of
strategy and implications on HRM in CEE
Factor
Legalpolitical
Examples of key drivers of strategy
“Nature” of public sector
Communist legacy, consequently missing
positive concept of state
Institution building in the 1990s
Europeanisation before accession to EU
Post-accession developments due to
domestic factors
Politicisation
Political instability
Economic
Organisational changes (downsizing,
delayering etc.)
Chronic resource shortage
Sociocultural
“Marketisation” of state
Demographic changes (increased number of
young officials, migration)
Dominance of materialist and individualist
values
Public service values
Small-state factor
Sources: Farnham 2010; I; II; III; IV
21
Implications on HRM
Multiplicity of strategic goals; complexity
of measuring performance; tendency
towards formalisation and control; limited
managerial autonomy due to legal
framework
Lack of interest in public service careers;
absence of a common administrative
culture; public discontent with public
service rewards
Introduction of modern HR practices
Establishment of legal frameworks for
HRM; application of EU standards of public
service policy
Different pathways of public service
reforms
Importance of political criteria in public
service selection and promotion process
Lack of consensus and continuity in public
service reforms
Shift towards open job systems; decreased
job security and work intensification;
blurred career paths and functional
flexibility; bigger jumps in responsibility in
case of promotion
Turnover of competencies; increased sideemployment; uncompetitiveness of public
service rewards
Individualisation of rewards
Career opportunities for younger
generation; dilemma between continuity
and change
Flexible working arrangements; focus on
monetary rewards in motivating public
servants
Dilemma between democratic and
technocratic values; pressure for
transparency of rewards; merit principle in
recruitment and career management; focus
on performance management
Informal networks for career-related
purposes; shortage of high-level
competencies; cross-sectoral mobility;
individualisation of rewards; multiple roles
and duties
1.2 Fit between macro- and micro-level HRM
On the micro level, vertical integration of HRM refers not only to the external
forces helping to shape HR, but also to the links between HR and wider
organisational strategy and the management of an organisation as a whole
(Farnham 2010). On the macro level, vertical fit assumes the presence of a
public-service-wide HR strategy and a respective (central) institution to provide
a framework for designing, steering and coordinating micro-level HRM policies
and practices in individual public service organisations. As discussed below, the
piecemeal public service developments in the CEE region tend to take place
without comprehensive public-service-wide strategies and with decreased levels
of coordination.
Several authors (Ridley 1995; Hesse 1996; Verheijen 1998; Drechsler 2000;
Goetz 2001) have noted that the absorption of decision-makers in burning
economic, political and social problems of post-communist transition tends to
downgrade administrative reforms and the development of public service HR
strategies to a lesser priority. Although public service reform is usually ranked
among the “second generation” reforms of transition (Verheijen 2003), the
governments of CEE countries understood that an underdeveloped public service
shaped by inconsistent and inadequate HR policies was likely to put the political
and economic reforms at risk (Beblavy 2002). Whereas some countries (e.g.
Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovakia) started major organisational reforms
of public service in the early 1990s, these reforms were somewhat delayed in
other cases (e.g. Romania and Bulgaria) (Verheijen 1999; Randma-Liiv et al.
2011). The example of Estonia demonstrates that the creation of many new
functions, procedures, organisations, units and individual jobs during a short
period of time in the 1990s led to unclear hierarchical relationships, overlapping
functions, a duplication of duties and a lack of consensus on the principal
questions of public service (Randma-Liiv 2005a; II).
One of the strategic steps taken in CEE in the 1990s, as a result of the
Europeanisation process, was passing public service laws, thereby granting
public servants a special status (I). Although this legislation was not fully
implemented in all countries (World Bank 2006; Meyer-Sahling 2011), the
endorsement created a basis for the development of the merit principle. Through
that, sub-fields of HR policies (for example, recruitment, training, career and
reward systems) in the public service were fundamentally challenged (I).
Although the need for developing public service HR strategy was recognised,
the actual history of public service development in CEE tells a mixed story of
piecemeal attempts to reform existing systems (Verheijen 2003; Meyer-Sahling
2011). As already mentioned earlier, legislation continued to be in focus during
22
the Europeanisation process in particular. The European Commission was more
successful in pushing through formal instruments, but less successful in
influencing the actual content of change in the public services of candidate
countries (Meyer-Sahling 2008). After joining the EU, there has been a need for
thorough attention to structural defects in HR policies, which may have been
neglected during the rush of transition and accession. However, the actual postaccession and pre-crisis behaviour of the CEE countries shows either some
backsliding of public service reforms (e.g. Slovenia, Poland, Slovakia and the
Czech Republic) or only partial continuation of the reforms (e.g. Hungary,
Latvia, Lithuania) (Meyer-Sahling 2011).
One of the main challenges in assuring the strategic fit between macro- and
micro-level HRM stems from the poor coordination mechanisms characteristic
of CEE public services (World Bank 2006). Better co-ordination could help to
prevent the introduction of conflicting regulations and policies by different
public organisations. In reality, however, horizontal management systems such
as central public service agencies or departments have in several cases been
weakened or removed – most noticeably in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech
Republic (Meyer-Sahling 2011). Hungary and Estonia also lack a strong central
authority to coordinate their HR policies (World Bank 2006; II). This, in turn,
has brought about the risk of politicisation, fragmentation, problems with equal
opportunities and the decreasing transparency of HR policies (Lucking 2003;
Meyer-Sahling 2004, Randma-Liiv 2005b; Meyer-Sahling 2011).
In the Czech Republic, the absence of coordinated public service development
and the lack of coherent HR policies for two decades has led to the
differentiation and the emergence of “many public services” within the country
(Meyer-Sahling 2011). The Estonian central government also represents an
interesting case of an absent strategic HRM on the macro level, and only partial
strategic HRM on the micro level (II). There are several institutions with certain
coordinating responsibilities in HRM, but there is no institution at the central
government level with legitimate powers to develop the government’s HR
policies. Every ministry and executive agency is responsible for recruitment,
training, performance appraisal, promotion and setting of pay levels of its staff.
Consequently, there is no top-down steering of the development of strategic
HRM, and well-designed strategic HRM systems are seldom found even at the
micro level. HR issues are often, particularly in executive agencies, dealt with in
an ad-hoc manner, human resources are not approached coherently and HR
managers have little say in designing longer-term prospects in their
organisations (Riigikantselei 2006; Rahandusministeerium 2010). Thus, the
Estonian institutional framework does not guarantee the fulfilment of the
functions that a central coordinator is expected to perform, such as taking the
lead in creating an overall HR strategy, making the necessary interventions, or
mobilising the political will for required changes (Meyer-Sahling 2008; II). As a
23
result, the development of public service HRM has been fickle with gaps in both
the vertical and the horizontal coherence of different HR practices (II).
There are a number of limitations, but, in fact, also some opportunities to this
kind of decentralised HRM system, some of them particular to new democracies
(II). A lack of central HRM strategy and weakness of central coordination make
it possible for government units to flexibly consider specific environmental
factors surrounding each public organisation. This has been particularly
important in the highly dynamic context of post-communist transition and
Europeanisation, which inevitably required considerable institutional and HR
flexibility to adapt rapidly to changing tasks, environment and mobile workforce
(Meyer-Sahling 2008; I; II). Another reason why a poor central HRM
framework can still produce relatively good results is that organisations can
develop their own innovative initiatives in HRM, tailor-made to their own needs.
On the one hand, the heterogeneity of HR policies can help single public
organisations to become more competitive and attractive as employers (II). On
the other hand, different approaches and new ideas can be tested on a smaller
scale, and the best practices can then be allowed to spill over to other institutions
(Meyer-Sahling 2008; II).
Based on the Estonian example, it could be argued that decentralisation does not
mean absence of strategic HRM (II). However, in a decentralised system, the
role of the central coordinator becomes crucial to guarantee a more integrated
and holistic approach towards HRM. If this function is not carried out well,
individual ministries and agencies may partly fill up the resulting strategic
vacuum by developing strategic HRM on the micro level, but it might not lead to
the strategic approach to the development of the public service as a whole (II).
Then again, the centralisation of the HRM function does not automatically
signify the existence of strategic HRM, since even in highly centralised systems,
HRM may not be sufficiently integrated into strategic governance mechanisms.
Examples of vertical fit in practice indicate that integrating HRM with wider
strategies appears to be a highly complex process, which is very dependent upon
the interplay and resources of different stakeholders (Farnham 2010).
1.3 Internal fit
Whereas vertical integration of strategic HRM emphasises the importance of
HRM alignment with an organisation’s priorities and its external context,
horizontal integration underlines the “fit” between different HR policies and
practices and the degrees to which they support or contradict each other
(Farnham 2010). On the macro level, internal fit implies the adoption of a
holistic approach to the development of HR policies and the coherence of microlevel HR practices across public organisations. Horizontal integration also
24
assumes HRM fit to organisations’ internal resources, both on the micro and
macro levels (Armstrong 2000).
The absence of a central HR strategy and the weakness of horizontal
coordinating units, which is the case in a number of CEE countries (World Bank
2006; Meyer-Sahling 2008), pose significant disadvantages for public services.
If central government forms a number of loosely connected internal labour
markets, every unit is likely to develop its own particular culture and work
habits and reach very different development levels in the long run. Instead of cooperation, public organisations may find themselves in a situation where they
compete with each other. For example, in Estonia, individual salaries of public
servants vary to a large extent due to the effects of pay differentiation and “addons”, negotiated separately for each organisation and individual (II; IV).
Differences in rewards are also seen as an obstacle to mobility in the public
service (III). Another example of incoherence in the Estonian public service
HRM can be found in the field of training and development. The absence of a
central training institution and the consequent variety of development practices
across the public service has led to very different professional knowledge, skills
and values of public servants (Riigikantselei 2008). While public organisations
with better HRM systems and more generous working conditions attract highly
qualified people, this tends to raise the pressure on other government units as
recruiting and retaining good professionals becomes more difficult for them.
Such a “winner takes it all” practice worsens conditions for co-operation across
departmental boundaries, since public servants in different organisations tend to
perceive themselves as belonging to different “leagues” (II).
The implementation of strategic human resource practices, such as recruitment
and career management, training and development, performance management
and reward management, has a mixed record in CEE. Certain achievements have
been reported in creating merit-based systems in recruitment by institutionalising
open competitions and fair treatment of applicants (I; Meyer-Sahling 2008).
There is also evidence that CEE countries (e.g. Hungary and Slovenia)
increasingly provide systematic training programmes for new public servants.
However, several authors (Lucking 2003; Verheijen 2003; Randma-Liiv 2005b)
have noted that the training programmes have at times been rather random,
fragmented and unlinked to organisational or public service goals. A positive
exception to this practice was the pre-accession period when systematic trainings
were organised to improve the knowledge of public servants on the EU
institutions and policies (Lucking 2003). Diverse evidence of success is also
related to another key area of HRM, namely career management in CEE. None
of the countries have been able to develop a classical career system of public
service (Drechsler 2003), although the governments of Poland, Hungary and
Slovenia have tried to boost systematic career management. Thus, in the
changing circumstances and in the overall context of uncertainty, most CEE
25
governments have taken the ad-hoc approach to public-service careers. As the
Estonian case study demonstrates, this sporadic and incoherent approach on the
macro level has not prevented individual organisations from implementing
several on-the-job career management practices on the micro level (III).
Horizontal integration or internal fit may be achieved by the use of shared
processes such as competence management or performance management, which
provide a common framework for different HR practices (Armstrong 2000). The
use of competency models as an integrative force between HR planning,
recruitment, development and appraisals has been used, for example, in Estonia
(Järvalt 2007; I). In the absence of a broad underlying consensus on the direction
of reforms, the development of senior managers has been seen as a means to fill
this strategic vacuum and bring about necessary changes at the senior publicservice level via the development of competency frameworks. Thus, following
the example of some high-income countries, expectations to senior public
servants have logically found expression in a more structured approach in some
CEE countries, as well (e.g. Estonia and Lithuania) (I; Meyer-Sahling 2011).
Although there are a few achievements in some sub-fields of HRM across public
organisations in CEE, efforts of reforming the reward systems and using
performance-based management tools have mostly failed or remained
insufficient (Randma-Liiv 2005b; World Bank 2006; IV). Performanceorientation has been a central value in the rhetoric of HR reforms in CEE due to
the general popularity of NPM ideas. However, CEE countries generally have no
success stories of performance management so far, and it has not turned out to
be a linking process in HRM. Hungary and Latvia have made some progress and
Lithuania the most progress in this area by introducing performance evaluation
systems. This has not occurred without problems, which include cases of
perceived lack of fairness, resentment among public servants and weak links
between strategic goals and evaluation (Meyer-Sahling 2008). The Estonian
example of pay-for-performance has also received criticism, mostly because of
the poor management experience of public service leaders (Randma-Liiv
2005b). In reward management, a growing number of countries (for example the
Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia) have opted for broadbanding,
that is, grouping jobs into job families and salary brackets to achieve more
flexibility and discretion (World Bank 2006; Meyer-Sahling 2008). Estonia and
Poland have decentralised their public service salary systems to a large extent,
leaving a considerable degree of discretion to individual organisations and
managers. It has been expected that a high level of discretion makes it possible
to flexibly consider specific environmental factors surrounding each
organisation, but in reality, it has led to uneven development, cross-sectoral
differences and harsh competition across public service (I). It could be argued
that the reward systems have remained the weakest link despite reform
investments (Meyer-Sahling 2008).
26
Strategic horizontal integration does not only mean coherence between HR
policies and practices, but also fit between internal resources and opportunities.
The resource-based approach focuses on an organisation’s existing resources and
capabilities, through which it is able to attain and sustain a competitive
advantage (Maatman et al. 2010). HRM can play a major role in achieving it by
assuring better people and better ways of working (Lengnick-Hall et al. 2009;
Farnham 2010). When the external environment is in a state of flux, the
organisation’s own resources and capabilities may offer a more durable basis for
strategy than search for unsatisfied “market” needs or catch-up with latest
fashions (Armstrong 2000).
The failure to ensure that internal resources are available may also be a barrier to
the implementation of HR strategy. These internal resources include the
capabilities of the HR professionals, both on the macro and micro levels, who
are the key to the effective development and implementation of HR policies.
Another crucial resource in terms of implementing strategic HRM in the public
service is the managerial competence. Top officials are expected to adopt more
holistic perspectives in HR, to look more widely and across the network as well
as within departmental and national boundaries, to obtain greater management
and leadership responsibilities (Mountfield 1997). Middle managers play a
substantial role in carrying out HR practices on the micro level. The roles and
responsibilities of these key internal resources are further discussed in section
two.
Due to the lack of headway in developing public-service-wide HR strategies and
the absence of adequate cohesion-building tools on the macro level, it is hard to
talk about the coherence of HR policies across public organisations or
consistency between different HR practices themselves in CEE countries. The
promising examples of internal fit found in some individual organisations tend to
co-exist with incoherent HR policies in other organisations and on the macro
level. It could be argued that there is little evidence of a comprehensive and
successful attempt to achieve internal fit on the macro level of public service in
CEE. The problems could be related to the complexity of public organisations
and their strategies, which make it hard to achieve any coherence across a
diverse range of plans and practices. Obstacles to horizontal integration may also
arise due to management pressure for rapid changes and financial constraints
leading to “quick fixes” and incremental approaches to the development of HR
practices. The most common example of this could be the introduction of payfor-performance in the public services of CEE (Randma-Liiv 2005b; I).
Moreover, implementation difficulties are likely to jeopardise the achievement
of strategic fit. Grand plans may fail because either HR or line managers are
incapable of playing their part (Armstrong 2000; II).
27
2. Role of managers in strategic HRM
The second element of the strategic HRM model is represented in the idea that
effective implementation of HR strategies depends on the involvement,
commitment and cooperation of managers (Armstrong 2000). Strategic
integration implies that HR professionals are supposed to design the HR systems
that will align with strategic objectives, while managers are supposed to carry
them out (McCourt and Ramgutty-Wong 2003). According to the model, every
manager at any level of the organisation is a people manager having an
important role in building up the strategic role of the HR function and
contributing to the commitment of employees. Given these expectations, the
move from centralised to decentralised decision-making and control has become
a prominent issue (Meyer and Hammerschmid 2010). On the micro level of
public service, it refers to the degree of line managers’ ownership of HRM and
to the division of roles between HR professionals and managers in individual
organisations. On the macro level, however, the second pillar of strategic HRM
includes the top officials’ ownership of HRM and their commitment to publicservice-wide HR strategy, support of political leaders to public service HR
strategy and the strategic role of the coordinating institution.
The design of the public service HRM systems has been influenced by the ideas
of NPM, which have been attractive to a number of governments in CEE. The
well-known NPM slogans “let the managers manage” and “make them manage”
fit well with the concept of strategic HRM, which highlights the managers’
ownership of people management. However, following the ideas of NPM and
HRM may lead to considerable autonomy and to a high degree of discretion of
individual public sector organisations and managers. Thus, one of the main
questions in implementing strategic HRM in the public service is related to
finding an optimal balance between centralisation and decentralisation, i.e. to
how the roles and responsibilities are divided between the central HRM
institution and individual organisations. On the one hand, decentralisation forces
managers to deal with HRM matters and to build corresponding competences. It
also increases the probability that HR managers in each organisation are given a
more strategic role and wider responsibilities (II). On the other hand,
decentralisation may create an opportunity for abuse by individual public
organisations and their leaders. It may enhance instability and increase
politicisation as well as levels of corruption (Verheijen 1998; Meyer-Sahling
2004; Meyer-Sahling 2011). In post-communist countries, decentralisation may
prove risky because of an insufficiently developed legal framework, a high
incidence of corruption, a lack of democratic values in administrative culture,
inexperienced top and middle managers, and the general insufficiency of control
mechanisms (I; II). For instance, in a situation where the recruitment, selection
and appointment of public servants remains the exclusive responsibility of
individual organisations, a conflict can easily develop between HR practices and
28
the principles of openness and transparency if such a risk is not counterbalanced
by the use of open competitions.
A decision to decentralise or centralise is driven by the wish to either increase
responsibility and flexibility of individual organisations, or to centralise control
over support functions (Maatman et al. 2010). There are a number of benefits
and risks of both decentralised and centralised public service, the advantages of
one system often being the shortcomings of the other, as presented in Table 4.
While initiatives to decentralise HRM have been reported by many EU countries
and seem to have high symbolic appeal, a recent study demonstrates that the
administrative practice throughout Europe, including in CEE, is still rather
centralised (Meyer and Hammerschmid 2010). There has been more reform
rhetoric than actual reform itself. Meyer and Hammerschmid (2010) argue that
managers possess individual decision-making power to a limited degree, and
many HR issues are a shared responsibility of different actors within
administration. According to Ingraham (2005), after extensive devolution in the
reform process, many governments now seek a movement back towards some
central frameworks and value statements. The question is how to back up the
decentralisation efforts by other cohesion-building tools on the macro level (III).
Finding the right balance between too much of either in terms of HRM is a
major challenge for all governments (Meyer and Hammerschmid 2010).
Table 4. Advantages and disadvantages of centralisation and decentralisation of
the public service
Decentralised
public service
Disadvantages
Higher costs
Variable standards
Various control
environments
Duplication of
effort
Fragmentation
Advantages
Units in control
of decisions
Recognition of
local priorities
Responsive to
specific needs
Pooled experience
Enhanced career
progression
Synergies
Dissemination of
best practices
Centralised
public service
Advantages
Disadvantages
Consistent
standards
Common systems,
support, control
Critical skills mass
and expertise
Economies of
scale
Unresponsive
No unit control
of central
overhead costs
Inflexible to units’
needs
Remote from
“business”
Sources: Maatman et al. 2010; Meyer and Hammerschmid 2010
The role of top public servants, both on the micro and macro levels of public
service, cannot be emphasised enough, especially in the context of fundamental
public service reforms. Top public servants can substantially impact the design
of modern HR policies and, even more importantly, their actual implementation
in individual public organisations (I; OECD 2008). They are the officials who
interact with the politicians and directly influence the development of public
29
service values and common identity (Randma 2001). Without a central strategic
view, which can be provided only by top managers, HRM is likely to remain a
set of independent activities, each guided by its own practice tradition (Purcell
2001). Goldsmith (1997) argues that strategic thinking is more important than
any formal technique, and strategy formulation is often about preferences,
choices and matches rather than a pure exercise of applied logic. By working
through the ideas, sharing intentions and highlighting points of tension amongst
the top officials, consensus over goals can be found (Armstrong 2000). If top
management is all “singing from the same page”, this is more likely to lead to
actions in the public service being exercised on a collective, but at the same time
consistent basis.
The development of the senior public service might prove particularly valuable
for the CEE countries that have been characterised by a high degree of
fragmentation of public administration (Verheijen 1998; World Bank 2006).
However, senior public servants in CEE countries either have long public
service experience from the Communist period, or alternatively, represent
relatively young people who have joined the public service only recently (Järvalt
2007). Politicisation of senior public service has also been pointed out as a
problem in CEE (Meyer-Sahling 2011). In all these cases, the public servants in
question may not have managerial and/or professional qualifications, as well as
experience in democratic governance (Randma 2002; II). If they lack an
understanding of the HR role, they may recruit HR executives who do not have
the strategic knowledge and ability and thus create a vicious circle. Top public
servants play a significant role in initiating and maintaining changes (or resisting
these) and therefore, development of their competence and ethical standards
requires special attention, and probably even a specific HR policy. The critical
role for managers in HRM also means that a great deal of HR activity and
energy is directed at managers themselves (Storey 2001). For instance in CEE,
Estonia and Lithuania have systematically invested in the development of senior
public servants during the post-accession period (Järvalt 2007; Meyer-Sahling
2008). Hungary has also established a separate senior public-service system,
which has, however, been abused by a politicised selection process of senior
officials (Meyer-Sahling 2011).
The development of high-quality managers is a broader task than just providing
them with training programmes. In practice, the effectiveness of management
development is seldom adequately evaluated beyond the short-term and reaction
level. For example in Estonia, the designed and implemented development
programmes have been beneficial in creating a common identity and improved
coordination between institutions, but the long-term return on investment in
terms of enhanced policy development, management of organisations and public
service delivery still remains questionable (Järvalt 2007). As a lot depends on
the key players in the system, it is important not only to recruit and develop the
30
senior public servants, but also to retain their valuable competence (IV). Failure
to recruit and retain suitable managers may constrain public service
performance, a problem that is prevalent in CEE countries that lose managerial
talent as greater opportunities are available in the private sector and in the global
market for executives (IV). Boxall and Purcell (2011) even argue that
constituting and renewing the top team should be regarded as the most strategic
concern of all in HRM.
On the macro level of public service, political support to strategic HRM is of
particular importance. Lack of continuity due to frequently changing
governments and political priorities may contribute to the mixed signals about
the importance of public service HRM efforts. Boxall and Purcell (2011) argue
that a large part of the difficulties experienced in the quality of employee
relations in the public sector occurs because governments change frequently,
introducing new philosophies, policy requirements and senior leaders. The
limited time horizon of political leaders, coupled with a general indifference on
the side of politicians on public service issues, may cause them to address
strategic HR policies less seriously. As emphasised in the analysis of the
political context of HRM, the government changes in Poland, Slovakia, the
Czech Republic and Slovenia between 2004 and 2006 meant that the public
service reforms negotiated and initiated before EU accession were put on the
back-burner (Meyer-Sahling 2011). Indeed, those responsible for drafting
important reform legislation rarely were in office for long enough to keep an eye
on its implementation (I).
In addition to top managers and politicians, line managers have a crucial role in
the concept of strategic HRM in the public service. Line-manager action or
inaction is often responsible for the differences between espoused HR policies
and their enactment (Boxall and Purcell 2011). The global rhetoric and trend
have been clear: to give line managers more responsibility for the management
of their staff and to reduce the extent to which HR professionals control or
restrict their autonomy in this area (Brewster 2001). Devolving HR activities to
line managers, however, is not without its difficulties. As NPM and HRM are
both very much about the establishment of management, there is a danger that
the primacy of management above other functions gets too much emphasis. It
has been argued that particularly in the context of public organisations, which
are based on values, ethical and professional concepts, management ideology
may “colonise” the professional work (Diefenbach 2009). Therefore, public
sector managers not only need broad managerial experience, but also widespread
knowledge and interpersonal competence and an understanding of work and
problems of frontline public servants.
However, line managers do not always have the skills and competencies needed
to manage people. In CEE, even after two decades of democratic development,
31
the features of the previous system (e.g. ambiguous responsibilities) still affect
the role of line managers on the one hand (Meyer-Sahling 2008; III). On the
other hand, inexperienced transition “macho managers” emerged in both the
public and private sectors: ready to make fast and radical decisions with no
hesitation, prior analysis or consultation with other stakeholders (III). The
cultural challenge for all CEE countries in the last decade has been to move from
the management practices of early transition years, where new institutions and
policies had to be adopted immediately, to more careful preparation and
evaluation of initiatives. Despite these efforts, there are still symptoms of illdeveloped management systems and lack of sufficiently skilled and experienced
managers (Randma-Liiv et al. 2011). In Estonia, for example, a study revealed
that top managers’ competence in HR was considered adequate and they were
sufficiently involved in HRM, whereas the role and competence of the line
managers was regarded as less sufficient (Riigikantselei 2006).
In other cases, line mangers tend to have more pressing priorities than managing
and developing people. In CEE, managers’ involvement in burning issues of
post-communist transition and Europeanisation has downgraded HR issues to a
lesser priority (Verheijen 1998). Subjective and discretionary decision-making
can be another consequence of the devolvement of HR activities to line
managers (OECD 2008). The ways in which HR practices are implemented by
them are often inconsistent and contradictory, unless HR support is provided.
For instance, some managers have been found unprepared and unqualified to
conduct performance appraisals as experienced in Estonia (Randma-Liiv 2005b).
The assessments are likely to be undertaken for “statistical purposes”, and in
many cases, nothing is done with the performance information afterwards (III).
Implementation problems of performance management have also occurred in the
Hungarian public service (Meyer-Sahling 2011). Training line managers and
their HR responsibilities and working in partnership with HR professionals
appears to be a key issue here (Farnham 2010).
As the organisations assign more responsibility to front line managers, the role
of HR professionals partly changes (Mayrhofer and Larsen 2006). The strategic
HRM imperative has raised HRM’s positioning in organisational decisionmaking processes: a “seat at the table” is now an expectation rather than an
aspiration for senior HR managers (Van Buren et al. 2011). The function is
assumed to take a prominent position and a more pro-active role in developing
organisations and their human resources. Various studies conducted in the
private sector have even suggested that whether there is an HR professional in
top management team could be a measure for assessing the strategic importance
of HRM (Brewster 2001; Sisson 2001; Kazlauskait? and Bu?i?nien? 2010).
The renewed role of HR professionals also has its implications in the public
service. In order to be full-fledged strategic partners on both the micro and
32
macro levels, HR professionals are expected to address major long-term issues
concerning the management and development of people, to strive to achieve
strategic integration and fit, to ensure top officials’ focus on HR issues, to
facilitate change and to systematically assess the impact and importance of HR
initiatives (Armstrong 2000; Schuler et al. 2001). In becoming a strategic
partner, however, HR is still required to deliver effective services and to provide
expertise and support to managers. If the basic HR processes are not in good
order, no strategic contribution is likely to be considered of value. The
development and implementation of people strategies also depends on the skills
of the HR specialists. Inability to persuade top management to actively support
HR initiatives or achieve ownership among line managers could be barriers to
the implementation of HR strategies.
HR attempts to make itself strategic by seeking to accomplish organisational
goals and by acting as a catalyst for HR efforts have also received some
criticism. Due to the strategic and resource factors in HRM activities, at times it
appears that the “human” element has been neglected (Lengnick-Hall et al.
2009). Strategic HRM, being more organisation-focused and less employeefocused, creates a set of ethical implications for HR professionals as not all
employees may be considered “strategic” (Van Buren et al. 2011). It has been
questioned whether HRM is a case of “the wolf in sheep’s clothing” (Legge
2005). It could be argued that the shift to a strategic mindset has marginalised
employee-focused HRM responsibilities and ethics activities. The latter,
however, are particularly important in the context of public service.
Implementing “hard” HRM in combination with NPM is likely to erode
commitment and shared values in the public service.
In CEE, HR membership of the top management team on the micro level is not
an obvious way of recognising the importance of HRM in strategic decisions.
Even in the private sector, which is usually considered to be the front-runner in
implementing the classical HRM model, the figures of HR departments directly
represented at the top decision-making level tend to be lower in CEE as
compared to some Scandinavian or Western European countries (Brewster
2001). When it comes to the question of HR influence on strategy in public
service organisations, there seems to be much variety: HR departments tend to
be greatly involved in strategy-making in some organisations, but there are also
examples of the HR departments functioning as mere personnel administrators
(Riigikantselei 2006). The Estonian central government represents the case
where the need for a strategic approach is more recognised in ministries and
much less in executive agencies, where HR issues are often dealt with in an adhoc manner and where HR professionals do not have a say in setting longer-term
perspectives for staff in their organisations (II). It could be assumed that in the
Czech Republic, where each ministry has its own HRM system (Meyer-Sahling
2011), the role and influence of HR professionals varies, as well.
33
As regards the competence of HR professionals in CEE, the Estonian case study
reveals that most HR managers have received their HR skills through the trialand-error method of testing various HRM policies and tools rather than from
conscious training and development, particularly during the immediate postcommunist transition (II). The uneven development of public service HRM
implies that there are organisations which do not yet understand the real value of
the strategic approach, and they may need the necessary impulse from outside
(II). For gaining this stimulus to understand the importance of HR function and
also to enhance the capability for creating strategic HR systems, horizontal
cooperation networks of HR professionals and managers could more soundly be
used (Uus 2007; II).
On the macro level, strategic HRM in the public service depends on the role,
mandate and competence of the central coordination institution. It is needed in
order to steer micro-level strategies and provide for their coherence. Better
coordination could also help to prevent the introduction of conflicting
regulations and policies by different public organisations. Moreover, a central
HRM co-ordinating institution is expected to invest time and energy in the
development of horizontal values, cross-departmental partnerships and
knowledge-sharing mechanisms between various government units to widen the
“critical mass” capable of a strategic approach (II). Supportive actions at the
central level can also minimise the problems related to the unequal quality of
HRM. If a high degree of decentralisation is not counterbalanced with
systematic development of coordination mechanisms, strategic HRM will remain
a rarity confined to a handful of organisations (II). In reality, however, central
coordination units have been weakened or abolished in Poland, Slovakia and the
Czech Republic after the EU accession (I; Meyer-Sahling 2011). Hungary and
Estonia also lack a central authority with a strong mandate to coordinate their
HR policies (I). Latvia and Lithuania, on the other hand, have created capable
structures to manage public service HR strategies and policies (Meyer-Sahling
2011).
3. Organisational performance and strategic HRM
The third defining characteristic of modern HRM is its emphasis on the
importance of enhancing high commitment and performance (Armstrong 2000).
It is based on a logical assumption that a committed person shows better results
and adaptability, is willing to “go the extra mile” and is also more loyal to the
organisation (Guest 1987; Storey 1989). According to the HRM model, HR
function is supposed to contribute to the creation of added value by ensuring that
employees with the required competences and levels of motivation are available
through traditional HR services, and by dealing with macro concerns such as
organisational culture and structure that stimulate performance. It is assumed
34
that human capability and commitment distinguish successful organisations from
the rest (Storey 2001). A number of authors (e.g. Delaney and Huselid 1996;
Delery and Doty 1996; Guest 1997; Paauwe 2009; Guest 2011) have conducted
research examining the relationship between HR practices and organisational
performance across a variety of settings. In order to prove the contribution of
HRM, HR activities themselves are also increasingly viewed in economic terms
leading to formal evaluation of HR activities (Mayrhofer and Larsen 2006). This
section, which examines the links between organisational performance and
strategic HRM, is not based on the empirical research from the public services of
CEE, but provides a more theoretical approach and some avenues of discussion
in the CEE context.
A steadily increasing number of studies exists that analyse the effect of HRM on
organisational performance at the conceptual and empirical level. In analysing
the impact, each of the linkage models complements the others by adding
constructs, variables or relationships. Despite different approaches, most studies
conclude that at least under specific conditions and in certain combinations,
HRM has a positive effect on performance, even though the size of the effects
are often relatively small (Mayrhofer and Larsen 2006; Paauwe 2009). Thus,
there is an array of studies which reveal how investment in HRM “pays off”.
Yet, despite such evidence, the task of persuading employers of the wisdom of
adopting such policies and practices appears to be as much of an uphill battle as
ever (Storey 2001). Lengnick-Hall et al. (2009) argue that until the facilitating
and enabling role of HRM is understood and links are made between HRM and
organisational outcomes, HRM will continue to be seen as an administrative
function vulnerable to financial constraints in difficult times.
The performance outcomes of HRM can be captured in a variety of ways. A
distinction could be drawn between financial, organisational and HR-related
outcomes. Financial measures, such as profits, sales, stock price and market
share dominate the research conducted in the private sector, but even there the
distance between the performance indicators and HR interventions is argued to
be too large (Paauwe 2009). So in the public service, there is a need for
performance indicators that are far more proximal in terms of what HR practices
can actually affect, such as changes in public servants’ attitudes (motivation,
commitment, trust) and behaviour (turnover, absence), and subsequent changes
in outcomes at the organisational level (e.g. productivity, quality of services,
organisational learning).
Despite considerable empirical evidence, significant conceptual and
methodological issues remain in the research. The problems are reflected, for
example, in the inadequacy of performance measures and in mixed results with
respect to causality. Diefenbach (2009) argues that the measurement systems
contribute to a further ignorance and devaluation of many intangible assets and
35
traditional values. Moreover, it is widely recognised that little is known about
and little has been done to unlock the “black box” of the processes that link
HRM and organisational performance (Storey 2001; Legge 2005).
Although the relationship between HR policies and organisational performance
has been thoroughly discussed in both academic literature and applied
organisational settings, the question of whether HRM contributes to a more
professional and better-performing public service, and helps to reform the
structure of public administration, remains highly topical – especially in the
countries going through major changes. There is less empirical work regarding
strategic HRM and its promised creation of value in the public sector, where
measures of organisation accomplishments are even vaguer and more
controversial than in the private sector (Goldsmith 1997). Even though it is
harder to measure the link, there is still the recognition that the quality of public
service can make a real difference in terms of both the efficiency and the
effectiveness of the public sector (Meyer-Sahling 2008).
Organisational performance is dependent on commitment and motivation.
According to Armstrong (2000), strategic HRM is “commitment-oriented” – it
stresses both behavioural commitment to pursue agreed goals and attitudinal
commitment reflected in strong identification with the organisation. In public
service organisations, it is expected that public service motivation is positively
related to individual performance and organisational commitment (Perry et al.
2010). The belief is that individuals will be motivated to perform well when they
find their work meaningful and think that they have a responsibility for the
outcomes of their assigned tasks. Among the job characteristics that contribute
to performance motivation are autonomy, task identity and perceived
significance, intellectually challenging work, growth perspective and the
possibility to do good for others and shape the well-being of society (Taylor
2010; III). It can be argued that these are the attributes that individuals with
public service motives derive from public service employment. However, Perry
and Wise (1990) consider the trend of treating the public service as a private
enterprise a great risk as it fails to acknowledge the unique motives underlying
the public service employment and the linkage between the way bureaucracy
operates and the advancement of democratic values.
Regarding the organisational performance in the public services of CEE, it has
been argued that the fact that the countries had to go through early stages of
transition without general HR policy guidelines led to lower efficiency, higher
costs and poorer services (Lucking 2003). During the accession period, EU
compatibility could be seen as the benchmark for evaluating new member states’
administrative arrangements and the quality of public service (I). The
significance of external pressure and expectations shaping the path of reforms
has decreased following accession (Meyer-Sahling 2011). There are no series of
36
clear targets and deadlines to assess the performance of public service (I).
However, wishing to meet the standards of Western administrations and the EU
demands requires constant development and a broad range of competence of the
countries’ administrations. What is crucial for the continuity and sustainability
of the public service and the public administration is, therefore, the commitment
of public servants, not hard-line control mechanisms (Uus 2007).
The fundamental challenge to CEE has been to restore or (re)create the positive
concept of the state and a common understanding about the complex roles
fulfilled by public servants in democratic societies. The missing positive concept
has led to serious problems, such as unattractiveness of public service careers,
lack of loyalty, rivalry between government units and lack of common
administrative culture within the public service (Drechsler 2000). In Estonia, this
has also been indicated in the decreasing degree of popular trust for public
institutions and for the government officials over the last decade (II; IV). Low
levels of public trust have also characterised public services of other CEE
countries (OECD 1997; Verheijen 1999; Ioni?? 2007). Moreover, as experienced
in Estonia, these problems have been reflected in the lower levels of
commitment of public servants, including managers, as compared to the
commitment of employees in the private sector (II; Riigikantselei 2008).
Organisational psychologists also emphasise fairness or equity concerns in the
workplace, including employee concerns with the justice of their rewards
(Boxall and Purcell 2011). The process of building trust and positive motivation
to perform is seen to depend on the track record of fairness in HR decisions. The
discrepancy between public servants’ attitudes towards politicisation and the
actual HRM practices in CEE suggest that political interference with HR
decisions has a negative impact on the satisfaction and motivation of public
servants in the region (Meyer-Sahling 2008). Moreover, the substantial
differentiation of salaries across government institutions in CEE does not fit with
the European principles of administration, which favour the concept of equal pay
for equal work, regardless of the location in the governmental apparatus (MeyerSahling 2008). In the Estonian public service, for instance, the underlying
principles of public servants’ rewards are neither transparent nor consistent (IV).
The same applies to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, where the salary systems
have been characterised as fragmented and non-transparent (Meyer-Sahling
2011; Staro?ová and Láštic 2012). It could be assumed that such unfairness of
rewards in Estonia and elsewhere in CEE has its implications on performance.
Relatively high employee turnover could be another consequence of low
motivation. This represents a serious challenge for decentralised systems which
are dependent on cooperation and common values among various government
units. As trust builds after repeated interactions between the same partners, a
constant change of partners creates a rather unfavourable context for
37
collaborative action and poses a considerable obstacle to developing a common
public service culture which forms a basis for any macro-level strategy. (II)
It has been argued that there has been too much focus on measuring the strategic
contribution of HRM to organisational success. In the context of NPM, a whole
range of additional systems and tools of control, monitoring and evaluation have
been introduced (Diefenbach 2009). As a result, many public organisations
appear to be overwhelmed by forms of performance monitoring. Too much
focus on performance criteria of HRM can be also an issue in CEE, where public
managers often have insufficient managerial experience (II). Inexperienced
managers tend to over-quantify performance indicators that are easy to measure
and that may look more “objective” and understandable than qualitative data
(Mintzberg 1994; Randma-Liiv 2005b).
Organisational performance depends on the actual implementation of strategic
HRM. As several authors have noted, there is often a gap between the rhetoric of
strategic HRM and the reality (Legge 2005, Lengnick-Hall et al. 2009). There is
a growing recognition that intended strategic HRM practices may be different
from realised and perceived HRM practices. Lengnick-Hall et al. (2009) argue
that to simply rely on what is stated rather than what is actually in place may
lead to ineffective implementation as well as ambiguous results in studies.
Additionally, if there are different perceptions of strategic HRM among top
management and line managers, mixed or ambiguous messages may be
communicated downward in the implementation of HRM. The consistency
between intentions and actions is much harder to achieve when organisations are
subject to frequent changes. As the implementation gap has been and is likely to
remain a problem in CEE, as well, future modernisation efforts are expected to
pay particular attention to implementation issues as well as policy evaluation (I).
Summary and conclusions
The three-pillar model of HRM, which emphasises the strategic integration of
HRM, the role of managers and the impact of HRM on organisational
performance, is the dominating paradigm in theory and organisational practice.
The thesis has contributed to the field by extending the model to the context of
public service. On the macro level, strategic integration assumes the presence of
a public-service-wide HR strategy and a respective central coordinating
institution. Managers’ ownership on the public service level refers to the crucial
role of both senior officials and politicians in developing and implementing HR
policies. The link between HRM and public service performance is expected to
be made by enhancing macro-level commitment, i.e. public service motivation.
The strategic model of HRM may be desirable on the macro level, but there are
no straightforward ways of applying it successfully, as experienced in the public
38
services of CEE countries which joined the EU in 2004 and 2007. However, this
thesis is based on the evidence that, although there are many difficulties and
challenges with strategic HRM, a strategic approach in itself is a positive
development in order to give a sense of direction and a basis for the
establishment of relevant and coherent HR policies. For the public service, a
strategic HRM model can provide a unifying and analytical framework which is
broad, integrative and contingency-based.
Drawing on the literature and the CEE experience with strategic HRM in the
public service, it is demonstrated in the thesis that Western HRM practices have
become increasingly relevant in these newly democratic countries. Political,
economic and cultural changes during the post-communist transition and
Europeanisation have provided a fertile ground for an expansion of the modern
Western ideas and the concept of strategic HRM. However, the findings of this
research suggest that the general problems of the HRM model are complicated
by specific issues related to the developing phase of the countries, such as the
poor reputation of the state, political instability, profound institutional changes,
chronic resource shortage, sustained materialistic values, deficient coordination
mechanisms and insufficient management experience. Thus, HRM is not merely
another set of rules but reflects certain fundamental features of the persisting
political and administrative system.
CEE provides a unique mixture of unifying and dividing elements. The
communist legacy, the immediate post-communist transition process and preaccession Europeanisation have provided a more unified context for public
service organisations to operate in. Nevertheless, national institutions and
individual countries still play an important role in HRM practice. Somewhat
different pathways of different countries have appeared particularly during the
post-accession period, when public service development and the implementation
of strategic HRM have been essentially dependent on the domestic factors. The
public service development in the region, however, has not been linear
throughout the three distinguished periods of post-communist transition, preaccession Europeanisation and post-accession modification. During the
immediate post-communist transition, institution building and introduction of
modern HRM took place in CEE, even though there were some variations in the
fundamentality and pace of the reforms between the newly independent states
and the “old states”. The Europeanisation of HR policies before the accession to
the EU could be seen as a period of “project management” in the region, aimed
at meeting the EU standards of public service policy. After the accession, CEE
countries have chosen more and more divergent ways of public service
development – there are cases of reform continuation and reorientation, but also
examples of reform reversals. Therefore, in the future, it could be more difficult
to define a common “CEE trajectory” of public service developments and
implementation of strategic HRM.
39
As demonstrated in the thesis, a piecemeal approach to public service
development has characterised the region. In the rapidly and radically changing
context, organisations tend to deal with HR issues as they emerge, choosing the
ad-hoc development of HR policies both at the organisational level and across
public service. HRM has been generally perceived as an evolving process rather
than a conscious design of an effective framework for managing people. The
lack or weakness of public-service-wide HR strategies and respective central
coordinating institutions has led to a rather fragmented setup of public service
HRM in Estonia and elsewhere in CEE. On the one hand, this setup has made it
possible to consider specific external factors surrounding each public service
organisation and to carry out major organisational reforms, which required
considerable institutional and HR flexibility in the highly dynamic context of
post-communist transition and EU accession. On the other hand, the setup has
caused an uneven capacity of HRM. Although some public organisations in CEE
countries might have a strategic approach to HRM, their adherents can still at
best be viewed as “islands of success”, which do not have a substantial effect on
the public service as a whole. The failure to understand the strategic needs of
public service on the central level has often had the consequence that HR
strategic initiatives have been seen as irrelevant.
The thesis also reveals that implementation of the strategic HRM model requires
sufficient capacity and competences of different key players of HRM both at the
micro and macro levels. The role of top public servants in designing and
implementing HR policies cannot be emphasised enough, particularly in the
context of fundamental reforms. As a lot depends on the particular persons in
HRM systems, it is important to attract and retain the necessary competence.
Another critical issue is to develop the competences of HR professionals, not
only at the micro level, but also at the public service level, and to provide the
coordinating authority with sufficient capacity and mandate. Moreover, the
strategic approach makes new demands on the skills of line managers, who play
a major role in implementing it. Last, but not least, political leadership and
support to strategic HRM remains the key condition for progress to be made in
the region.
The assessment of strategic HRM in the public services of CEE has implications
for the countries that aspire to EU membership in the future. The study provides
an opportunity to draw lessons from the transition, pre-accession and postaccession experience of the post-communist countries. Although there are limits
to the extent to which findings of the thesis may be generalised to other
countries and settings, there are still several practical recommendations and
lessons to be learned from the CEE experience.
40
The first lesson concerns the applicability of the strategic HRM model on the
macro level of public service. Based on the experience in Estonia and in other
CEE countries, it could be suggested that a strategic framework for managing
public servants at the central level is needed. The strategic HRM model is not a
panacea, but it may help to address some common issues, such as a lack of
shared values, fragmentation, rivalry and uneven quality of HRM within the
public services. The framework may also offer a positive contribution to meet
the immediate and future challenges of the public services by introducing more
systematic and long-term approach. Although modernisation of the public
services in new democracies is taking place in a challenging context, strategic
HRM is a realistic target also in these settings through careful planning, training
and follow-up.
The second implication concerns the strategic fit between a country’s HRM
model and the wider context in which it is applied. The task for transitional
governments is to respond adequately to the distinctive challenges they face in
people management. While the post-communist transition and the EU accession
process could be seen as “project management” exercises characterised by a
series of clear targets, EU membership and the following more stable
development period brings with it permanent demands for managing complex
processes. This requires systematic attention to be paid to broader HRM
deficiencies that were sometimes neglected during the hasty times of transition
and EU accession. Moreover, with an ongoing global financial crisis, it has
become more obvious that the role of the government in tackling the crisis is
crucial. This requires a professionally managed public service that is based on
effective HRM strategies on both the micro and the macro levels.
The third implication concerns path dependency, which is a particularly relevant
factor in newly democratic states. It means that institutions, social structures and
patterns of behaviour in the present are bounded by what has happened in the
past, even though earlier circumstances may no longer apply (Farnham 2010).
Once a specific way for HRM development has been chosen (often on an
emergency basis and with limited prior analysis), it is very hard to change it
afterwards. For example, continuing to espouse the combination of
decentralisation and insufficient coordination tends to magnify the unevenness
of HR development. Consequently, the “winners” of transition may become
reluctant to give up their flexibility and discretion in HRM. In order to minimise
the problems related to unequal quality and the perceived inner inequity of the
existing HRM systems, strategic public-service-wide HRM is needed. For the
coherent development of the public service, it is necessary to point out more
clearly where the organisations’ practices should be homogeneous and what the
commonly agreed principles of HRM are, building upon a general vision for the
development of the public service. Such a framework would help define HR
priorities, taking into account the specific needs and challenges of individual
41
organisations. Thus, the institutional setup, role, tasks and limitations of central
HR coordinators in public service deserve special attention as they seem to play
a crucial role in strategic HRM.
The fourth implication has to do with the implementation gap. There is often a
mismatch between the rhetoric of strategic HRM and the reality of its impact and
therefore, good intentions can easily be subverted by the harsh realities. The
analysis threw some light on the implementation issues of HR strategies. Some
of the barriers that appeared in CEE provide lessons for other countries:
inadequate assessment of the contextual factors of HRM, the development of
irrelevant initiatives, possibly because they are current fads or because there has
been inadequate analysis, execution of one initiative in isolation without
considering its implications on other areas of HRM and failure to ensure the
availability of resources. Therefore, future modernisation efforts in CEE and
elsewhere are expected to pay particular attention to implementation issues as
well as evaluation.
The thesis also provides a number of avenues for further research. First, while
the micro-level HRM in public service has received sufficient attention in
scientific literature, the HRM model on the macro level deserves further
research. Second, although the relationship between HRM and organisational
performance has been discussed in both academic literature and applied
organisational settings, the question of whether the strategic HRM approach
contributes to a better-performing public service remains highly relevant. The
potential impact of HRM on public service motivation and, hence, on public
service performance that was discussed in the thesis from a theoretical
perspective, offers interesting opportunities for empirical research. And finally,
the effects of the global financial crisis on the public management in general and
on public service HRM in particular, which were not in the focus of the current
research, require further analysis.
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SUMMARY IN ESTONIAN
Strateegiline personalijuhtimine avalikus teenistuses: Eesti ning teiste Keskja Ida-Euroopa riikide kogemus
Strateegiline personalijuhtimine on olnud nii akadeemilise debati keskmes kui
juhtimispraktikute huviorbiidis juba mitukümmend aastat. Vaatamata valdkonna
pikaajalisele ja ulatuslikule uurimisele ning rakendamisele erinevates sektorites
ja riikides, on seni vähem tähelepanu pälvinud strateegilise personalijuhtimise
temaatika avaliku teenistuse kontekstis Eestis ning teistes Kesk- ja Ida-Euroopa
(KIE) riikides. Seetõttu otsib väitekiri vastust järgmistele uurimisküsimustele:
•
•
•
Mis on peamised probleemid ja eripärad, mis ilmnevad strateegilise
personalijuhtimise rakendamisel Eesti ja teiste KIE riikide avalikes
teenistustes? Milles seisneb strateegiline personalijuhtimine nii avaliku
teenistuse mikro- kui makrotasandil ning kuidas see väljendub
erinevates personalijuhtimise praktikates KIE riikides?
Kuidas on strateegiline personalijuhtimine KIEs arenenud aja jooksul –
postkommunistlikul üleminekuperioodil ning europaniseerumise käigus
enne ning peale liitumist Euroopa Liiduga (EL)?
Lähtudes KIE avalike teenistuse kogemustest strateegilise
personalijuhtimise rakendamisel, millised võiksid olla peamised
järeldused ja õppetunnid teistele riikidele, kes liituvad EL-ga tulevikus?
Väitekiri koosneb neljast teadusartiklist (I; II; III; IV) ja sissejuhatusest, mis
annab tervikliku raamistiku artiklitele, sünteesib nende teoreetilise panuse ning
võtab kokku juhtumianalüüsid. Teadusartiklid käsitlevad strateegilist
personalijuhtimist Eesti (II; III; IV) ning teiste KIE riikide (I) avalikes
teenistuses, analüüsides nii personalijuhtimist tervikuna (I; II) kui uurides
konkreetseid personalijuhtimise alavaldkondi (III; IV).
Väitekiri võtab aluseks strateegilise personalijuhtimise võtmeelemendid ning
pakub välja kolmesambalise raamistiku, rõhutades eelkõige personalijuhtimise
orienteeritust organisatsioonilise sidususe ning organisatsiooni eesmärkide
saavutamisele. Esimene sammas – strateegiline sidusus, mis tagab
personalijuhtimise tervikliku ja organisatsiooni strateegiat toetava korralduse, on
mitmesuunaline. Personalijuhtimise väline ehk vertikaalne sidusus tähendab, et
personalijuhtimine kui teatud tegevuste ja põhimõtete komplekt lähtub
organisatsiooni strateegilistest eesmärkidest ning arvestab väliskeskkonnaga.
Personalijuhtimise sisemine ehk horisontaalne sidusus aga eeldab, et
personalijuhtimise erinevad valdkonnad (näiteks värbamine, hindamine,
arendamine ja tasustamine) moodustavad kooskõlalise paketi. Teine sammas
raamistikus keskendub juhtide võtmerollile inimeste juhtimisel ning
50
personalijuhtimise praktikate elluviimisel. Personalijuhtidele omistatakse
seejuures eelkõige strateegilise partneri roll. Raamistiku kolmanda samba
rõhuasetus on töötajate pühendumuse ning seeläbi organisatsiooni
tulemuslikkuse saavutamisel. Eeldatakse, et pikemat perspektiivi arvestava edu
jaoks on vajalik tagada inimeste pühendumus, sest pühendunud inimesed on
produktiivsemad, rahulolevamad ja lojaalsemad.
Väitekirja panuseks on selle algselt erasektorist pärineva strateegilise
personalijuhtimise raamistiku kohandamine avaliku teenistuse konteksti. Kui
avaliku teenistuse mikrotasandil, st üksikutes avaliku teenistuse asutustes saab
nimetatud raamistiku ilma põhjalike muudatusteta üle võtta, siis makrotasandil,
mis hõlmab avalikku teenistust kui tervikut, tähendab raamistiku rakendamine
teatud täiendusi. Seega makrotasandil sisaldab kolmesambaline mudel järgmisi
elemente (Tabel 1):
(1) Vertikaalne ja horisontaalne personalijuhtimise sidusus eeldab avaliku
teenistuse ülese personalistrateegia (ja ka vastava koordineeriva institutsiooni)
olemasolu, et tagada mikrotasandi personalijuhtimise poliitikate ja praktikate
kooskõla ning koordineeritus.
(2) Juhtide võtmeroll strateegilises personalijuhtimises makrotasandil viitab
eelkõige avaliku teenistuse tippjuhtide vastutusele personalijuhtimise eest ning
poliitilise toetuse olulisusele avaliku teenistuse personalistrateegia kujundamisel.
(3) Avaliku teenistuse organisatsioonide tulemuslikkuse saavutamiseks tuleb
makrotasandil tähelepanu pöörata mitte üksnes avalike teenistujate
pühendumusele oma tööle ja organisatsioonile, vaid avaliku teenistuse
motivatsioonile laiemalt.
Strateegilise personalijuhtimise mudel avaliku teenistuse mikro- kui
makrotasandil võib olla soovitav, kuid KIE riikide kogemus, mis ühinesid EL-ga
aastatel 2004 ja 2007, tõendab, et selle rakendamisel ilmneb mitmeid
väljakutseid. Tuginedes akadeemilisele kirjandusele ja läbiviidud uurimustele,
näitab väitekiri, et läänelikud personalijuhtimise praktikad on muutunud järjest
asjakohasemaks ka KIE kontekstis. Poliitilised, majanduslikud ja kultuurilised
muudatused postkommunistliku ülemineku ja europaniseerumise perioodidel on
loonud soodsa pinnase kaasaegsete personalijuhtimise ideede ning strateegilise
personalijuhtimise mudeli ülevõtmiseks. Käesoleva väitekirja raames läbiviidud
uurimused toovad aga esile mudeli rakendamisel ilmnevad probleemid, mis on
seotud KIE riikide eripärase keskkonnaga, näiteks riigi ja avaliku teenistuse
kehva maine, poliitilise ebastabiilsuse, ulatuslike institutsionaalsete muutuste,
pideva ressursinappuse, süvenevate materialistlike väärtuste, ebapiisava
juhtimiskogemuse
ja
-kompetentsi
ning
nõrkade
koordinatsioonimehhanismidega.
51
Tabel 1. Strateegilise personalijuhtimise mudel avaliku teenistuse mikro- ja
makrotasandil
Mikrotasand
(avaliku teenistuse
organisatsioon)
Makrotasand
(avalik teenistus)
Strateegiline sidusus
Juhtide roll
- Organisatsiooni- ja
personalistrateegia
sidusus
- Seos organisatsioonistrateegia ja väliskeskkonna vahel
- Personalipoliitikate ja
-praktikate sidusus ning
kooskõla
- Keskastmejuhtide
vastutus inimeste
juhtimisel
- Personalijuhtimise
professionaalid kui
juhtide strateegilised
partnerid
- Avaliku teenistuse
personalistrateegia
vastavus
väliskeskkonnale
- Avaliku teenistuse
ülese personalistrateegia
ja koordineeriva
institutsiooni olemasolu
- Mikrotasandi
personalipoliitikate ja
-praktikate kooskõla
- Avaliku teenistuse
personalistrateegia ja
sisemiste ressursside
vastavus
- Avaliku teenistuse
ühised väärtused
- Avaliku teenistuse
tippjuhtide vastutus
personalijuhtimise
eest
- Poliitiline toetus
avaliku teenistuse
personalistrateegiale
- Koordineeriva
institutsiooni
strateegiline roll
Organisatsiooni
tulemuslikkus
- Avalike teenistujate
pühendumuse olulisus
- Rõhk nii individuaalsel
kui organisatsiooni
tootlikkusel ja
tulemuslikkusel
- Avaliku teenistuse
motivatsiooni, sh avaliku
teenistuse eetika ja
lojaalsuse olulisus
- Avalikkuse usaldus
avaliku teenistuse vastu
- Rõhk avaliku teenistuse
tulemuslikkusel
KIE avaliku teenistuse personalijuhtimise puhul saab välja tuua nii riikidele
sarnaseid kui neid eristavaid jooni. Kui kommunistlik pärand, üleminekuperiood
ja EL-ga liitumisele eelnenud europaniseerumise protsess on loonud üsna
sarnase konteksti avaliku teenistuse organisatsioonidele erinevates riikides, siis
suuremad erisused on ilmnenud peale EL-ga liitumist, mil avaliku teenistuse
arendamine ning strateegilise personalijuhtimise rakendamine on sõltunud
eeskätt siseriiklikest teguritest. Avaliku teenistuse personalijuhtimise arengut
KIEs ei saa pidada lineaarseks, sest peale liitumist on riigid valinud lahknevad
teed – on nii näiteid avaliku teenistuse reformide jätkamisest ja strateegilise
personalijuhtimise rakendamisest kui ka näiteid tagasikäikudest ja
taandarengust. Seetõttu on tulevikus keerulisem leida KIE ühisosa avaliku
teenistuse personalijuhtimise arengutes.
KIE juhtumianalüüside põhjal võib väita, et avalikku teenistust on neis riikides
arendatud n.ö jupi kaupa. Kiiresti ja radikaalselt muutuvas kontekstis on
organisatsioonid tegelenud personaliküsimustega jooksvalt ning valinud
52
personalipoliitikate arendamiseks ad hoc lähenemise nii asutuste tasandil kui
avalikus teenistuses tervikuna. Makrotasandi personalistrateegia ning vastava
keskse koordineeriva institutsiooni puudumise või nõrkuse tõttu on Eesti ja teiste
KIE riikide avaliku teenistuse personalijuhtimine fragmenteeritud. Ühelt poolt
on fragmenteeritus võimaldanud arvesse võtta iga asutuse spetsiifilisi
keskkonnategureid ning viia dünaamilises ülemineku ning EL-ga liitumise
protsessis ellu suuri organisatsioonireforme, mis on nõudnud institutsionaalset ja
ka personalijuhtimise-alast paindlikkust. Teisalt on fragmenteerituse tõttu
strateegilise
personalijuhtimise
rakendamise
võimekus
ebaühtlane
organisatsioonide lõikes.
Väitekiri toob ka esile, et strateegilise personalijuhtimise raamistiku
rakendamine eeldab mitmete oluliste osapoolte suutlikkust ja kompetentsi nii
mikro- kui makrotasandil. Tippametnike roll personalipoliitikate kujundamisel ja
elluviimisel on võtmetähtsusega, eriti fundamentaalsete muutuste kontekstis.
KIE kogemus tõendab ka, et tähelepanu tuleb pöörata personalijuhtimise
valdkonna professionaalide kompetentsile mitte ainult mikrotasandil, vaid ka
avaliku teenistuse tasandil ning tagada koordineeriva institutsiooni piisav
võimekus ja mandaat. Lisaks eeldab strateegiline lähenemine keskastmejuhtide
kompetentsi inimeste juhtimise alal ning poliitilist toetust avaliku teenistuse
arendamisele regioonis.
Strateegilise personalijuhtimise raamistiku rakendamise või mitterakendamise
kogemus KIE avalikes teenistustes annab võimaluse järelduste tegemiseks ning
õppetundide saamiseks ka teistele riikidele, kes liituvad EL-ga tulevikus.
Esimene õppetund on seotud strateegilise personalijuhtimise mudeli
rakendatavusega makrotasandil. Eesti ja teiste KIE riikide kogemus näitab, et
selline strateegiline raamistik avaliku teenistuse juhtimiseks kesksel tasandil on
vajalik. Kuigi tegemist ei ole imerohuga, aitab see siiski tähelepanu pöörata KIE
avalike teenistuste probleemidele, nagu ühiste väärtuste puudumine,
fragmenteeritus, rivaliteet ja ebaühtlane personalijuhtimise kvaliteet. Raamistik
pakub süstemaatilise ja pikaajalise perspektiivi, et toime tulla tänaste ning
tulevaste väljakutsetega avalikus teenistuses.
Teine järeldus puudutab personalijuhtimise ja väliskeskkonna strateegilist
sidusust. Üleminekuperioodi ja EL-ga liitumisele eelset perioodi võib pidada n.ö
projektijuhtimise perioodideks, mida iseloomustasid selged eesmärgid ja
tähtajad muutuste läbiviimiseks. EL-ga liitumisele järgnenud stabiilsem periood
võimaldab aga süstemaatilisemat ja komplekssemat lähenemist avaliku
teenistuse personalijuhtimise kitsaskohtadele, millele ei pööratud piisavat
tähelepanu kiirete muutuste ja pealesuruvate tähtaegade kontekstis varasematel
perioodidel. Strateegilist lähenemist ja professionaalselt juhitud avalikku
teenistust nii mirko- kui makrotasandil eeldab ka finantskriis, mille lahendamisel
on avalikel teenistujatel oluline roll.
53
Kolmas Eesti ja KIE õppetund on seotud arengutrajektoorist sõltumisega (path
dependency). See tähendab, et tänased institutsioonid, sotsiaalsed struktuurid ja
käitumismustrid sõltuvad sellest, mis toimus minevikus, isegi kui kontekst on
tänaseks muutunud. Kui personalijuhtimise arendamiseks on valitud mingi
konkreetne tee (sageli kiirkorras ja ilma eelneva analüüsita), on seda arenguteed
hiljem keeruline muuta. Näiteks Eesti avaliku teenistuse juhtumisanalüüsi põhjal
võib väita, et detsentraliseeritus koostoimes ebapiisavate kesksete
koordinatsioonimehhanismidega süvendab personalijuhtimise ebaühtlast
kvaliteeti ja arengut ning sisemist ebaõiglust. Väitekirjas väljapakutud
strateegilise personalijuhtimise raamistik annab avaliku teenistuse arengutee
valimiseks lähtekoha, rõhutades vajadust kokku leppida teatud ühtsetes
põhimõtetes, kuid jättes võimaluse arvestada ka asutuste spetsiifiliste
vajadustega. Seejuures mängib olulist rolli see, milline on avalikku teenistust
koordineeriva keskse instutsiooni mandaat, ülesanded ja võimekus.
Neljas KIE kogemusel põhinev õppetund on seotud strateegilise
personalijuhtimise elluviimise problemaatikaga. Personalijuhtimise retoorika ja
reaalsus ei pruugi sageli ühtida ning häid kavatsusi võivad õõnestada mitmed
elluviimise probleemid. Need võivad tuleneda näiteks personalijuhtimist
mõjutavate väliste tegurite ebaadekvaatsest hindamisest, avaliku teenistuse
konteksti sobimatute juhtimispraktikate ülevõtmisest või moevooludega
kaasaminemisest, ebapiisavatest ressurssidest või ka üksikute arenduste
läbiviimisest, arvestamata nende kooskõla teiste personalijuhtimise
valdkondadega. Seetõttu tuleb edaspidi nii KIE kui teiste riikide avalike
teenistuste arendamisel pöörata erilist tähelepanu elluviimise ning
personalipoliitikate ning -praktikate hindamisele.
Väitekiri toob välja ka mitmed olulised uurimisvaldkonnad edaspidiseks. Nii
strateegilise personalijuhtimise raamistiku rakendamine avaliku teenistuse
makrotasandil, finantskriisi mõju avaliku teenistuse personalijuhtimisele kui
strateegilise personalijuhtimise roll avalike teenistujate motivatsiooni ja seeläbi
avaliku teenistuse tulemuslikkuse tagamisel väärivad põhjalikumat käsitlemist
tulevikus.
54
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In writing this dissertation, many people have helped me, but I would
particularly like to acknowledge some of them for their support. First of all, I
would like to thank my supervisor and co-author Prof. Tiina Randma-Liiv for
guiding me so helpfully along the lengthy journey towards completing the
dissertation. I have benefitted greatly from her inspiration, her challenging
critique and her insight into the field. Tiina has greatly shaped my ways of
thinking and my professional career.
I would like to thank colleagues in the Department of Public Administration of
Tallinn University of Technology. Prof. Wolfgang Drechsler’s and Prof. Rainer
Kattel’s influence on the success of DPA and their demand for high academic
standards made me finish my PhD studies and this dissertation. Külli Sarapuu
has shaped my professional career and academic development for many years
both in Tartu and Tallinn. I am also grateful to former fellow PhD students in
DPA whose doctoral theses and successful academic careers have encouraged
me and given me the feeling that “it” would be possible.
A part of this thesis has benefited from fruitful cooperation with Christopher J.
Rees, who supervised my Master thesis during my studies at the University of
Manchester. I also thank Beverley Metcalfe for co-authoring a research article.
In addition, I am deeply indebted to a range of colleagues from Nordea, Ministry
of Social Affairs, State Chancellery and PARE who have taught me a lot in
strategic HRM practice over recent years, bringing the touchstone of the “real
world” into the discussions.
I thank my immediate family and friends who must have wondered what I was
doing for several years, while this work was being written. I appreciate the
constructive comments, helpful feedback and personal support provided by
Karsten Staehr. As ever, my heartfelt thanks go to my daughter Amanda, who
helps me to see the world of work from a fresh perspective, and my grandmother
Elve, who has been taking such good care of my child while I was focusing on
the thesis.
55
PUBLICATIONS (Articles I – IV)
Article I
Randma-Liiv, Tiina and Jane Järvalt. 2011. “Public Personnel Policies and
Problems in the New Democracies of Central and Eastern Europe.” Journal of
Comparative Policy Analysis 13 (1), 35-49.
57
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