Public Personnel Management

Governments forward the welfare of a society with their rules and policies, and citizens are entitled to have them accountable. To achieve the desired impacts, governments need to properly manage their employees. Public personnel management (also known as public human resource management, HRM) studies how government employees are managed by personnel policies and HR processes, and it is therefore essential for effective government. In this entry, we first introduce the basics of public personnel management: definition, historical overview and international differences. After this, we present the main topics currently researched by public personnel management scholars. We cover issues directly linked to the HR-cycle such as rewards structure, diversity or collective bargaining, and other broader topics like HR in times of crises, union memberships or cybersecurity.