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Public
Personnel Policy System in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Seven
European Countries, (1998), Ministry of Finance, EDITA, Helsinki, ISBN
951-804-049-4.
Focus:
The main focuses of the study was to analyse to what extent one
important factor, personnel development, that is public personnel
management reforms and the relevant structural, and some functional
changes in the central implementing organisations tuned to the overall
development of public management. The evaluative
focus of the study was to explore the extent of public personnel
management policies and reforms in Finland,
France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and United Kingdom
Findings:
The book explains that the structure and boundaries of the governments
are changing in all countries and they are putting emphasis on outputs
and outcomes in different personnel-related matters. The focus on
performance has also many different aspects in which policy making is
approached and public sectors are organised, challenges and changed.
The book also explains how, many governments are
re-examining their role in every aspect of public programmes. Some
countries are focusing on service quality initiative and reviewing
critically various systems and sub-systems of an organisation. Many
Nordic countries and United Kingdom have also focused on budgeting for
results in various fields, i.e. devolution, flexibility for managers,
accountability for performance, and market-type mechanisms.
It is indicated in the book that the recent trends
of decentralisation in the salary system and strong trend of personnel
mobility in the public organisations. There is also growing trend in
each country to decentralise their personnel policy system. Personnel
policy matters are gradually taken over by individual agencies and there
are mounted pressures for flexibility, i.e. pay-flexibility, staff
flexibility, contractual flexibility etc. The growing importance of
evaluation and emphasis on personnel evaluation in many countries are
also indicated in the book.
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