Enduring Challenges and New Developments in Public Human Resource Management

Abstract

Australia has its own unique institutional arrangements within which its civil services operate, yet its experience in public sector human resource management over the last 40 years or so has much in common with that of many other Western democracies, including the United States. It faces enduring challenges such as the relationship between politics and administration while its approach to public management has evolved from traditional Weberian administration through new public management to a much more complex, open and networked system. While the role of government in society has not radically changed, the way in which that role has been exercised has changed significantly. Government employees represent a smaller proportion of the workforce, what they do and their skills have changed dramatically, internal arrangements to foster ethics and to manage staff are different today, new approaches have been adopted to compensate and motivate employees, the diversity of employees has widened, and the place of human resource management (HRM) in agencies’ strategic management processes has ebbed and waned. In each of these areas, human resource (HR) managers in Australia today face difficult questions about future directions. Most of these will be familiar to HR managers in other countries.