Are public sector personnel managers the professions poor relations?

Ben Lupton and Sue Shaw, Manchester Metropolitan University Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 11 No 3, 2001, pages 23-38

This article is concerned with differences between personnel practitioners in the private and public sectors. Drawing on survey and interview data from practitioners in both sectors, the authors report that public sector practitioners are less well-quali ed and are paid less than their private sector counterparts. Very few practitioners move between the sectors, suggesting the existence of separate and self-contained career structures. It is argued that this is not a separation of equals, and is maintained partly by the existence of a system of myths and stereotypes which have the effect of discouraging able professionals from entering the public sector. The article considers the reasons for the continuing differences and the separation, particularly in the light of public sector reforms which might have been expected to have diminished them. The implications for personnel management in the public sector and for the personnel profession in general are then discussed. Contact: Ben Lupton, Department of Management, Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, Aytoun Building, Aytoun Street, Manchester M1 3GH. Email: b.lupton@mmu.ac.uk

his article is concerned with diffe rences between personnel practitioners in the public sector and their counterparts in the private sector. While there is an extensive literature around the practice of HRM, much less has been written about the practitioners themselves, and the focus within this area has tended to be more on the nature of the roles they undertake (Legge, 1978; Tyson and Fell, 1986; Kelly and Gennard, 1996) than on their background and characteristics. Yet those writers who have considered the biography of personnel specialists have made signi ca n t connections between who they are, what they do and the context in which they practise. For example, there has been an important strand of literature considering the impact of the gendered nature of the profession on its status and in uence (Legge, 1987; Gooch and Ledwith, 1996). Others have considered the relationship between the level of educational and professional quali cations of practitioners and their ability to champion people issues on the management agenda (Collinson, 1991; Sisson, 1995; Lupton and Shaw, 1999; Lupton, 2000). Taking this connection between context, characteristics and role as its starting point, we seek to establish whether there are differences between personnel specialists in the private and public sectors, and, if so, to re ect on the causes and consequences of these d iffe rences. We propose that diffe rences in the context and practice of personnel management between the public and private sectors are re ected in the diffe rences in the background and careers of personnel practitioners. It is argued that homogeneity of personnel practice is expressed in the greater similarity of personnel specialists across sectors. One would expect to nd practitioners with similar backgrounds undertaking similar roles, moving easily between sectors and taking with them readily transferable
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001 23

Are public sector personnel managers the professions poor relations?

skills into similar environments. Conversely, continuing diffe rences in the approach to people management might be re ected in the different characteristics of practitioners in each sector and the existence of different and separate careers. We present empirical evidence to test the proposition that there are diff e re n c e s between personnel practitioners in the private and public sectors. Drawing on survey and interview data from practitioners in both sectors, we show that the public sector respondents are distinctive in some important respects; for example, they are less welleducated and less well-paid. We also suggest that public and private sector personnel management appear to operate almost entirely separate and self-contained career structu res, with very few practitioners moving between the two. The article concludes by considering the reasons for this and the implications for both personnel management practice in the public sector and the personnel profession in general. PUBLIC SECTOR DISTINCTIVENESS We explore two related ideas about public sector personnel practitioners, namely that they might be `diffe rent to and `separate from their counterparts in the private sector: d iffe rent because they might be more likely to exhibit characterist ics historically associated with low-status, low-in uence personnel roles, and separate because they might rep resent an `enclave within the personnel profession. These do not represent our own assumptions about public sector managers, nor would we argue that they are necessarily correct. However, they are useful ideas in that they give rise to testable propositions about the characteristics of public sector practitioners. The notion that public sector personnel managers are distinctive rests on the premise that low-status, low-influence personnel roles are more prev alent in the public sector, and that occupants of low-status personnel roles are distinctive. From this we derive the idea that personnel management in the public sector rep resents an enclave in the pro fession, relying here on the premise that the distinctive characteristics of roles and practitioners inhibit s movement of practitioners in or out o f the public sector. We begin by considering these premises. The argument that the role and function of personnel practitioners in the public sector differs from those in the private sector derives ultimately from notions of the distinctive nature of public sector organisations and, particularly, their approach to managing the employment relationship. There are a number of features of public sector organisations that distinguish them from those in the private sector: for example, their complex and conflicting objectives, their exposure to direct political influence and c o n trol, the influence of numerous stakeholders with diffe rent agendas and the presence of powerful and autonomous professional groups with control over resources (Lawler and Hearn, 1995). It has been argued that these features have placed limits on the strategic autonomy of managers in public organisations and have an impact on the way in which people work and are managed and, consequentl y, on the role of personnel practitioners. First, the traditional role of people management in the public services was in uenced by a long-standing public policy re qui rement for organisations to be both `good employers in their own right and `model employers in setting an example for private sector practice (Farnham and Horton, 1992). There was, for instance, an emphasis on providing job security, generous pensions, negotiated and formalised employment policies and equality of opportunity (Winchester and Bach, 1995). Secondly, the approach to employee relations was characterised by a pluralist philosophy and collective bargaining at national level. Employm ent terms and conditions, policies and pro ce d ures were agreed nationally through Whitley Council
24 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001

Ben Lupton and Sue Shaw

mechanisms which `re inforced the `institutional position of trade unions (Wi nchester and Bach, 1995: 308). Thirdly, public sector employers needed to take into account the p resence and influence of a range of powerful professional groups. These gro up s controlled the appointment and progression of people within their profession (Winchester and Bach, 1995) and had been successful in marginalising management in uence, tending to prioritise a professional over an organisational agenda (Lupton, 2000). The impact on the personnel function and practitioners was clear. The potential for in uence and change by personnel practitioners at local level was highly pros cribed, rst by the fact that the key decisions around the management of people were being taken at national level, and secondly by the power de cit with key local players. These conditions fostered the continuing existence of an `under-developed management function (Winchester and Bach, 1995: 309), with personnel management roles focused a round implementation of policy rather than creating it, and the provision of administrative services and procedural advice. However, it has been necessary to revisit this notion of distinctiveness in the context of the reform of public services in the UK in the last 20 years, which removed some from the public domain altogether and introduced a philosophy of `managerialism into what remained (Ferlie et al, 1996; Lawler and Hearn, 1995; Wilson and Doig, 1996; Dunleavy and Hood, 1994; Dixon et al, 1998). First, there have been fundamental changes to the management of the employment relationship. For example, there has been a movement of some staff groups out of the collective bargaining arena, and the decentralisation of b a rgaining to local leve l (Farnham and Horton, 1992). Secondly, a range of new employment practices has been introduced re p resenting a broadening of `industrial relations preoccupations beyond traditional concerns with bargaining structures and processes to an emphasis on ensuring improved individual performance and work effort at a local level (Winchester and Bach, 1995: 316). As Farnham and Horton observe, `many of these [initiatives] originated in the large, corporate private sector (1992: 53) and are consistent with a normative version of HRM which was, arguably, gaining ground there. It might be expected that these changes would be re ected in an enhanced role for personnel practitioners. There is some quali ed support for this position. Kelly and Gennard (1996) found that, in some public sector organisations, personnel directors had a strategic role in managing the consequences of government changes although, in others, the role had declined in parallel with the decline in the prominence of industrial relations (IR) concerns. Stock et al (1994) found that the NHS had been employing more specialist personnel staff and more senior specialists since the reforms began, and that the personnel function was moving away from a support role to `providing a wider range of options to managers keen to achieve greater workforce exibility and productivity (1994: 1). We need to be cautious in interpreting this as an erosion of the distinctiveness of public sector organisations, their approach to personne l management and the roles of practitioners. There is a body of literature suggesting that the adoption of managerialism in the public sector has neither elevated people management considerations to the top of the agenda nor enhanced the in uence of specialists to the expected extent. Two main reasons have been advanced to support this argument. First, it has been suggested that the changes have been less comprehensive than has sometimes been portrayed (Keen and Vickerstaff, 1997; Oswick and Grant, 1996). The adoption of HRM-style initiatives has been piecemeal and opportunist, and the emphasis has been to cut costs in the short term rather than to develop HRM over the longer term. Indeed, this is consistent with the tenor of public sector reforms which have emphasised short-term financial control. One interpretation might be that the public sector has borrowed from industry a `hard model of HRM rather than a `soft developmental model (Storey, 1989; Legge, 1995; Truss et al,
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001 25

Are public sector personnel managers the professions poor relations?

1997). Furthermore, HR strategies often require signi cant investment with little prospect of an immediate return and, as Winchester and Bach point out, these are dif cult to contemplate and sustain for managers who are `struggling to meet tight and unpredictable short-term budget constraints (1995: 331). Secondly, it has been argued that the personnel function in the public sector was not in a good position to take advantage of opportunities afforded by the reforms because of a lack of quali ed specialists (Farnham and Horton, 1992) and the highly proscribed roles that they were undertaking (Kessler and Purcell, 1996). A number of changes inherent in the public sector reforms have had a direct and negative impact on the personnel function. The function itself became a cost to be accounted for, leading to a streamlined role and outsourcing of specialist functions. Some roles, such as those associated with IR, declined in parallel with the changing IR climate (Oswick and Grant, 1996). It has also been argued that the increased role of line management as re source user in the managerial reforms, c o n g ruent with HRM-style initiatives, threatened the specialist personnel ro l e . Furthermore, the personnel function may have become associated with the less pleasant consequences of cost-cutting public sector reforms such as redundancy or outsourcing programmes, and were seen as problem-solvers rather than proactive strategists, suffering as it were from the public sectors adoption of the hard half of the HRM model without the developmental soft side. These points led Oswick and Grant to conclude that the reforms have resulted in a challenge to the power of the personnel specialist. Personnel power is in `irrevocable decline and personnel practitioners are playing an `increasingly subservient role (1996: 16; see also Kessler and Purcell, 1996; Lilley, 1997). There are grounds, therefore, for expecting public sector personnel management and the roles of practitioners to continue to be distinctive. The existence of a distinctive a pproach is supported by the most recent empirical evidence presented by Boyne et al (1999). They report that `in the area of HRM at least organisational policies and practice in the public and private sectors remain diffe rent in many important respects (1999: 17). They refer particularly to the continued re ection of the `good employer ethos in public sector approaches to HRM and to a lower emphasis on `rationalist and individualist HRM policies (1999: 13) than is found in the private sector. This need not necessarily be inte rpreted as a failure by the public sector to adopt a more sophisticated employment model `typical of the private sector. A strategic, coherent and sophisticated approach to people management is only one of the approaches evident in the private sector (Sisson, 1993; Guest and Hoque, 1994). Distinctiveness is at least as likely to be a continuing re ection of the different context in which people management takes place in the public sector and the values of public sector managers (Boyne et al, 1999). The picture relating to the rst premise, the distinctiveness of public sector personnel roles, is a complex one. The balance of the evidence supports a view that such distinctiveness remains and, to the extent to which this re ects a traditional model of public sector personnel management, we would tentatively expect to nd low-in uence personnel roles in the public sector. If this is the case, how is it reflected in the characteristics of personnel practitioners? Our second premise is that practitioners in such roles exhibit distinctive characteristics. Commentators on the `weakness of personnel management have drawn attention to a number of distinctive attributes of role occupants, in particular the low level of educational and professional quali cations of practitioners (Sisson,1995). The high proportion of women in personnel management has also been taken as indicative of its lack of status and in uence (Legge, 1987). In a labour market segregated by gender, occupations which lack access to power, status and rewards tend to be populated by women. Furthermore, within the personnel profession, women tend to be found in lower-status, lower-paid jobs than men (Long, 1984; Legge, 1987). It might be
26 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001

Ben Lupton and Sue Shaw

expected that better quali ed entrants to the profession would seek to avoid the kinds of roles available in the public sector, leaving those to people less advantaged, or less privileged, in the labour market those with lower educational and pro f e s s i on a l quali cations, and women. The higher salaries available to personnel practitioners in the private sector (Flather, 1998) would be expected to reinforce this. Our third premise is that the distinctive nature of personnel practice in the public sector should be expected to inhibit the movement between sectors. On the demand side, employer re q u i rements for sector-specific skills and experience would be expected to limit propensity to hire across sectors. On the supply side, an association between public sector personnel management and a lack of practitioner status and in uence would, along with the lower salaries, limit the attractiveness of the public sector to existing private sector practitioners. Similarly, such an association may serve to limit the marketability of public sector personnel management skills and experience outside the public sector. We began by suggesting that public sector personnel practitioners might be different and separate from their private sector counterparts. Having explained how these ideas w ere derived, and having explored the premises on which they rest, we offer two p ropositions to be tested: Proposition 1 Public sector personnel practitioners are more likely than those in the private sector to exhibit features historically associated with low status, low in uence roles. We would expect that they are, on average, less well educated and less likely to be professionally quali ed than their private sector counterparts, and that a higher proportion are female. Proposition 2 Public sector personnel practitioners are likely to rep resent an `enclave within the profession. We would expect to nd little movement of practitioners between sectors. In the remainder of the article we explain how these propositions were empirically tested and present and discuss the re sults. M ETHODOLOGY AND SAM PLE The data reported here are drawn from a wider survey into the careers of personnel specialists and a follow-up study focusing on practitioners in the public and private sectors. A total of 309 HR practitioners were surveyed, between April and June 1998, using a questionnaire issued to them via employees of their organisations who were attending a range of part-time management programmes at a large university in the N or th- West of England. One hundred and eighty six responses were received: a response rate of 60.2 per cent. The public and private sectors were equally re presented in the responses, with 90 identifying themselves as being in each category, although given the respective sizes of these sectors in the economy this re presents a bias towards the public sector (the remainder of respondents worked in the voluntary sector). Male and female respondents were evenly distributed between the sectors in proportion to their distribution in the sample as a whole. Within the public sector response there was a broadly equivalent number of responses from the NHS (n = 43) and local government (n = 35), with eight respondent s from the education sector and four describ ing 1 themselves as working for `other public sector organisations. All major sectors of the economy were re presented in the responses: for example, 25 (13 per cent of the total response) described themselves as working in retail, 21 (11 per cent) in manufacturing and 15 (8 per cent) in nance. The sample and the resulting data are not presented as
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001 27

Are public sector personnel managers the professions poor relations?

being re presentative of the population of HR practitioners in the UK; the size and geographical bias of the sample preclude such a claim. There are two other important f ea tu res of the sample to consider in interpreting the ndings. First, there is a high re presentation of practitioners working in large organisations: 68 per cent of public sector respondents and 63 per cent of those in the private sector reported working in organisations employing more than 1,000 people. This is likely to be a re ection of the way in which the sample was accessed; larger organisations are more likely to have the reso urces to release and pay for their employees to undertake management education, and it was practitioners in these organisations that were surveyed. Given that the litera ture, implicitly or explicitly, draws comparisons between public bodies with larg e private concerns, and that it is appropriate to compare like with like, this feature of the sample is not considered problematic. The second issue is the predominance of respondents from local government and the NHS among public sector respondents. The numbers of respondents from other public bodies is too small for us to draw meaningful conclusions about practitioners in these organisations, and this needs to be borne in mind when drawing conclusions from our ndings. The aim of the survey was to `identify personnel practitioners, to understand the ways in which their jobs and careers varied and the factors contributing to these variations. The questionnaire was designed to elicit detailed biographical (eg gender, ethnic origin) and organisational (sector, job title, description of role, organisation of the personnel function) information. It comprised 61 items, most of which re qui red a `tickbox response to factual questions, although some questions were designed to elicit a response on a Likert scale or in the form of a short written answer. The questionnaire was speci cally designed to elicit data which would allow comparisons between public and private sector practitioners in relation to the key issues pertinent to exploring the p ropositions advanced above. Issues relating to the professionalisation of the personnel function were addressed through questions on the educational and prof e s s i on a l quali cations of specialists, and issues around the portability of careers were examined th rough questions concerning the frequency and direction of job moves. The follow-up study was designed to investigate the diffe rences in public and private sector careers which emerged from the quantitative data. Nine personnel practitioners were interviewed between July and October 1998. Senior practitioners we re selected all were working at senior manager or director level, and all had at least 15 years experience in the personnel roles in order to draw not only on their extensive life and career histories but on their informed views and perspectives of the wider profession. The interviewees were also re c ruited with a view to achieving a balance of perspectives from people with careers wholly in the private sector, wholly in the public sector and careers that had spanned both. Three practitioners were recruited from each category. In-depth interviews were employed to explore respondents career experiences and the factors that had had an impact on them, to elicit their views on the unique features of careers in each sector and factors that may be similar, and to seek their re ections on how these differences had in uenced and constrained their career choices and career paths. DIFFERENT PEOPLE, SEPARATE CAREERS? Here, we report the results of the survey and interviews to provide an empirical test of the proposed diffe rences between practitioners in the private and public sectors. The quantitative data from the questionnaire survey are presented, supported by dire ct quotations from the interviewees in the follow-up study. As reported above, many
28 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001

Ben Lupton and Sue Shaw

but not all of the public secto r resp ondent s worked in the NHS or in local government. Given this, it is not appropriate to draw direct conclusions about those parts of the public sector less well-re presented in the response. In reporting the survey data we draw comparisons between those respondents who identi ed themselves in response to a speci c question as working in the private sector and those recording that they worked in the public sector. In presenting the data in this way we re ect most d irectly the survey responses. Neither heading should be taken as indicating that these respondents are re presentative of the broader population of practitioners in each sector, and this will be re ected in the conclusions that we draw. We begin with the data relating to the characteristics of practitioners before moving on to consider those concerning the nature of careers in each sector. Characteristics, background and education It was proposed that personnel practitioners in the public sector, in comparison with their private sector counterparts, would exhibit personal characteristics historically associated with low status personnel roles. This received mixed support from the data; we found some similarities and some interesting diffe rences between sectors in the b a ck g round of personnel practitioners. First, there was no significant diff e re n c e between the proportion of women in each sector (Table 1). TABLE 1 Gender of respondent by sector Public sector Female Male 66 23 (74%) (26%) Private sector 66 22 (75%) (25%)

In the highly gendered UK labour market, women have occupied lower status roles in most occupational areas, and there is an extensive literature which has discussed the high proportion of women working in personnel management as both a cause and a consequence of the lack of status and in uence of the function (eg Legge, 1987). On this basis, higher female occupancy in the public sector could, regrettably, be advanced as an indicator of the `health of the function. As expected on the basis of earlier studies (Long, 1984; Legge, 1987; Monks, 1993; Lupton and Shaw, 1999), women outnumbered men in both sectors, but were under-represented at higher levels in each (this nding is discussed elsewhere: see Lupton and Shaw, 1999). The equal distribution of women a cross sectors is dif cult to evaluate. It could be conjectured that the forces contributing to the gendering of the profession as a whole are stronger than those contributing to an in creased re presentation of men in higher status roles in the private sector, but it is not possible to draw a conclusion on the basis of the available data. As with gender, the education and professionalisation of practitioners has historically been linked to issues around the in uence and effectiveness of the function (Sisson, 1995). The scarcity of highly educated practitioners (Sisson, 1995) and the lack of professional qualificatio ns, particularly in the public sector (Farnham and Horton,1992), has been a long-standing concern in the profession. We found no signi cant diffe rence between the proportions of practitioners holding a professional quali cation in personnel/HRM (see Table 2, overleaf). Again, this is dif cult to explain without further investigation, although a possible explanation might be that a commitment to professional education in public sector employers is an intervening variable in the hypothesised relationship between the ro l e
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001 29

Are public sector personnel managers the professions poor relations?

TABLE 2 P rofessional quali cation (CIPD) by sector Public sector Professional quali c ation No professional quali cation 46 42 (52%) (48%) Private sector 39 49 (44%) (56%)

TABLE 3 Deg ree class by sector Public sector 2:1 or above 2:2 or below
* (p< 0.05)

Private sector 36 37 (49%) (51%)

20 43

(32%) (68%)

of practitioners and their level of professionalisation. However, an important n ding which is consistent with our hypothesis is that public sector respondents were less 2 likely to have a degree than their private sector counterparts. They were also less likely to have a degree at class 2:1 or above (see Table 3). This is an interesting nding that merits further investigation. It would be unwise to take graduate status or class of degree as absolute indicators of the `quality itself a slippery concept of personnel practitioners; however, one interpretation would be that the private sector is able to attract and retain people of higher `ability. The interview data reveal that there was a perception by people who had worked in the public sector that they were reg arded as less able by their private sector counterparts:
When Ive met [personnel] people from the private sector...[they] tend to look down on us, which I found quite disturbing... There is this stereotype view that...were not very innovative; it could be that they think you are a bit of the dregs, rather than the go-getters. Personnel manager, local government I think that they think you [as a public sector practitioner] are sort of a bit `in the box sort of thing, not able to think outside it. HR manager, blue chip, formerly NHS

Not unnaturally, public sector respondents felt that these perceptions, if held, were un f a i r. A number reported having formed a view from contact with private sector practitioners on training courses and so on that they (the public sector practitioners) we re at least as able and had equivalent or superior professional knowledge. In fact, this was a perception shared by practitioners with private sector experience, who had a high re g a rd for the theoretical and technical competence of their public sector equivalents. Nevertheless, it is interesting that more graduates in general, and high quality ones in particular, found their way into the larger private sector org anisations re presented in the survey than into public sector bodies. There is evidence from the survey data that pay may be a factor enabling private sector organisations to attract the more able graduates interested in pursuing an HR career. Respondents in the private sector reported higher salaries, even though they w e re no more likely to be working at more senior levels, nor to have had longer ca reers; for example, private sector practitioners were signi cantly more likely to be 3 earning more than 20,000 per annum. This is consistent with other personnel salary
30 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001

Ben Lupton and Sue Shaw

surveys which show NHS personnel salaries to be 23 per cent below the median for practitioners, those in education 10 per cent below and those in public administration 3 per cent below (Flather, 1998). The interview data provided some support for the suggestion that salary differences may be involved in in uencing early decisions on which sector to enter:
[The general view] isnt my view, but it would probably wrap a lot of it up [that] the better people in the professions are those who attract a higher wage and that is nearly, nearly always the case in the private sector. Those who are not good enough to achieve higher-paid jobs end up where v e r they end up and that is almost always local authority and the public sector.

HR manager, re tail
I think for HR people earlier in their careers...salary is a very important factor in decisions about where you go next, and immediately that puts the NHS in a difficult position becaus e, by and large, you ll find organisations wholl pay three of four thousand pounds more than youd get in an NHS Trust. HRD director, NHS trust

Howe ve r, the majority of respondents from both sectors felt that remuneration in each sector was broadly comparable, particularly above entry level. Nevertheless, if, as we shall see below, changing sector can be dif cult, entry level remuneration may have a long-term effect. Separate and equal careers? Our second proposition, that there is little movement of personnel practitioners between the public and private sector, received strong support. Only 8 per cent (n = 15) of respondents had worked in both sectors. If we discount those who had only held one personnel position (n = 57), this number still only re presents 11.3 per cent. In other w o rds, less than an eighth of those who had changed jobs had moved between the private and public sectors, in either direction. Furthermore, those practitioners who had worked in another eld before embarking on a personnel career were more likely to have entered the function from within the sector in which they were now working. In short, movement between the private and public sectors was uncommon. This came as no surprise to any of the interviewees. Their attempts to explain it reveal a complicated mesh of factors, perceptions and experiences binding people to the sector that they already work in, or making it dif cult for them to change if they want to. Public sector respondents had all experienced some dif culties in, to use their usual terminology, `getting or `breaking out. This was attributed to perceptions in the private sector about the lack of relevance, or inappropriateness, of their experience:
I tried once or twice [to go into the private sector]...and it was `well, you know its the experience you have got there in the health service thats not helping you, and I even went to an agency at one point early on and again they were saying, `oh well, you know with the health service experience its dif cult to get out. Personnel manager, NHS trust

This respondent was explaining the dif culty she had to overcome in presenting her public sector experience to private sector employers:
I think that the perception [among private sector employers] is that in local government or in education there is still this idea that it is all about 60s-style trade unionism, and that it is not as responsible and cutting edge and its all a bit dowdy and bureaucratic. HR direc tor, education
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001 31

Are public sector personnel managers the professions poor relations?

It was interesting that the public sector respondents perceived that private sector emplo yers not only re g a rded their experienc e as not useful but as positively undesir able. This percept ion was to a large extent borne out by the view s of practitioners who had worked solely in the private sector:
...I certainly had the impression from the few friends who I knew who worked in the public sector that there was a higher or greater emphasis on policies, procedures and, dare I say it, bureaucracy, in the way things are handled. HR manager, retail

The perception of overly bureaucratic roles in the public sector was particularly associated with local government:
I always have great dif cul ty, if Im straight about it, employing people f rom the councils because there I think the systems, the processes, the b u reaucracy gets out of hand and it actually hinders development [of personnel people]. HR directo r, education

The association with public sector trade unions was also seen as experience that was unattractive to private sector employers:
I think that there is a feeling of discomfort that people in the public sector are more compliant with union presence, and I guess a lot of people in the public sector have built their careers and their reputations on the stre ngth of their involvement with trade unions and employment legislation, whe reas I think in the private sector, if we were honest, we would admit that those are encumbrances; they are irrelevant to the way in which we are trying to run our businesses. HR manager, retail

Public sector respondents also encountered a view that personnel in their sector was perhaps easier a `cushy number, to use the words of one respondent:
...They say, `well, you [in the public sector] are in a fortunate position that you have a budget each year, you dont have to see how you are going to make your pro t, you know, that type of thing, and not realising the other constraints you have on the [council] members side and the political side. HR manager, local government

Again, there seemed to be some indication that these views may be held in the private sector:
If all you want is a nine-to- ve job where you can nish at the end of the day and you can go home and forget about it, then these days, to work in the private sector, its increasingly unlikely that you will have that luxury because the jobs are very demanding...whereas I think that, because of the ethos in the public sector, its easier to go in there and, if you like, do a nine-to- ve job. HR manager, retail

To summarise, public sector respondents perceived that they were, or would be, ha m p e red in their attempts to enter the private sector by the perceptions from that quarter that, not only was their experience not relevant, but they had been tarnished by an over-association with bureaucracy, contact with the trade unions and expectation of an easy life. There was considerable evidence that these stereotypical views are indeed held, and that the longer someone remained in the public sector the more they were likely to adopt a public sector mindset. As one respondent put it:
You cant aff ord to stay in the public sector too long if you want to get back out. HR direct or, education
32 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001

Ben Lupton and Sue Shaw

Although there was a clear perception among pubic sector respondents that a move to the private sector would be dif cult to achieve, they also described a number of factors which encouraged them to remain where they were. First, there was a view that, while personnel management in the private sector carried an image of being at the `cutting edge, their own exposure to it had given a rather diffe rent impression:
When you start looking at some of the stuff [HR initiatives] that is going on in the private sector you think, `Bloody hell, Ive done all that. Whats your problem? HR manager, NHS trust I went along to some companies for interviews in manufacturing and I thought, ` ipping heck, thats like the NHS and its 10 times worse, no way thank you. HR manager, blue chip, NHS background

In particular, they drew a distinction between large and small private sector o rganisa tions. A view was expressed that, while personnel practice in larg e r o rganisations might be `leading edge , the approach in smaller firms which they rega rded as more typical of the private sector most certainly was not:
Yo u get the impression with some of t he smaller private sector organisations that its [the personnel function] one person and their dog, if theyve got one at all [a personnel function]. HR director NHS trust I think that sometimes I am afraid that ... youd go back to doing even more `Jack of all trades, because that is just the way theyre set up, and you would be expected to do everything re ally. Personnel manager, local government

Se con dl y, the public sector was seen as providing good terms and conditions and reasonably secure employment, even if salaries tended to be lower:
You do have a good occupational pension scheme, you do have exible working hours, you do have things like domestic leave and...job share. I think those terms and conditions are quite dif cult to beat elsewhere. Personnel manager, local government The NHS, it strikes me over the years, has been a pretty good employer. Ive dealt with redundancies and so on but it strikes me that, when there s been any major change, staff are, by and large, looked after... Theres some comfort in the fact that, if there was any major reorganisational change in six years time or more, then I could re tire and be comfortable. Now, I just dont know with the private sector. HR directo r, NHS trust

Finally, a number of respondents talked of being bound to the public sector by an investment in sector-speci c skills:
Obviously Ive got an investment in the NHS and, while certain things will be the same wherever you are, there are certain NHS things that Ive learnt over the years that I would be mad to throw away. HR director, NHS trust Youd have a very speci c outlook [if you stayed in a sector a long time]; indeed, much of your professional knowledge would have fallen by the wayside because youd be utilising 30-40 per cent of it, and youd start to see every organisation in the way you see your current organisation. HR dire cto r, NHS trust

When respondents discussed movement of practitioners from the private sector to the public sector, there was little mention of there being a barrier to movement in that
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001 33

Are public sector personnel managers the professions poor relations?

d i rection. Rather, the discussion focused around the lack of attractiveness of public sector personnel roles. There was a perception among people in the private sector that the public sector would be a highly constrained environment with little room for manoeuvre:
Some HR professionals might take the view [that] they dont want to swim in that kind of pond; you know, its too rough... I suppose I have heard it said in this way: `It was never this complicated where I worked last time. [In the private sector] managers would make a decision and that would be it. HRD director, NHS trust

Public sector respondents reported that private sector practitioners who did cross over found it to be a dif cult experience:
Maybe they [private sector people] thought that it was going to be an easier touch than it was and they could come in with a bit of a pay inc rease and be able to swan around, and they found it much more d if cult in terms of trying to do what they wanted to do... Some of them made a bit of an impact but it was noticeable that a lot were a bit crap or we rent very good or couldnt adapt and went back out. HR manager, NHS trust

To summarise, the survey re co rded remarkably little movement of practitioners between the public and private sectors. The interviews revealed a number of factors that in uenced practitioners to remain in their existing sector or restricted them from moving if they wished to do so. DISCUSSION At the beginning of the article we suggested that diffe rences between practitioners in the public and private sectors would re ect diffe rences in the context in which they practise. We proposed that two types of diffe rence would be evident and subjected them to empirical test. In interpreting the results we are circumspect, given that our survey respondents are not representative of practitioners in each sector. In particular, the bias in our public sector response towards the NHS and local government means that we cannot draw conc lusions about practitioner s in other public sect or organisations. Our rst proposition, that public sector practitioners would exhibit more of the features historically associated with a low status function, received partial, and quali ed, support from the data. The second, that there would be little movement in or out of public sector personnel management, was strongly supported. The survey revealed some differences in the education and background of practitioners by sector, and most strikingly a lack of movement between public and private which, after 20 years of reform, are dif cult to reconcile with a signi cant convergence of personnel practice over that period. In particular, if public sector personnel management had c on ve rged with practice in large private sector organisations, one might expect 4 personnel careers to be readily portable between sectors. The evidence from our surve y and the comm ents of our interviewee s provide evidence that stro n g l y contradicts this view. One interpretation might be that public sector personnel management is not only an enclave in the profession but remains a `backwater staffed by less able practitioners. This would be an inappropriate conclusion to draw. First, it would not sit easily alongside the ndings of the WERS 1998 survey which suggest that, if anything, the public sector may be `ahead of the game in terms of sophistication of HR practices (Cully et al, 1999). Secondly, it is underpinned by a questionable assumption of a
34 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001

Ben Lupton and Sue Shaw

superior version of HRM pervading the private sector with which the public sector has failed to converge. An alternative explanation would be that the distinctiveness of public sector personnel management, and managers, merely reflects the diffe re n t history and ethos of commercial and public service organisations. The nding that public sector personnel managers have a lower level of educational quali cations, for example, might be a function of diffe rent re cruitment strategies, with the private sector rec ruiting graduates at entry level to professional posts, and the public sector `growing their own professionals from staff who entered at a more junior level. This is plausible and requires empirical investigation. However, even if this is the case, it is possible that public sector re c ruitment strategies might in part result from a restricted ability of public sector bodies to compete in the graduate labour market. Indeed, data from a subsequent survey (Lupton and Shaw, 2000) indicate a clear pre ference for the private sector among graduates seeking to work in HRM. This prefe rence is more frequently exp ressed by graduates with a higher class of degre e. That a lack of movement between sectors was readily recognise d by all the interview respondents was revealing so were their explanations of it. At one level it was explained in terms of rational decision making; personnel skills, while generic at the abstract level, were sector-speci c in their application. Individuals would acquire human capital, which had a higher investment value in the sector in which it was acquired. Similarly, employers would be interested in hiring practitioners with skills and experience within the relevant sector. As well as human capital, individuals, particularly in the public sector, build up other investments, such as pensions and benefits. These investments would bind individuals to a particular sector, and the longer they remained there the more they would have to lose by moving. There is little doubt from the interview evidence that these considerations have a bearing on peoples behaviour. However, these arguments, as some respondents pointed out, might also be app lied to mov es bet ween personne l job s in ret ail ing and manufacturing or nance and construction. It was clear that there was more to the separation of public and private sector practice in the minds of the interviewees than a rational model based on the acquisition of human capital. It was evident that personnel practitioners carry with them a number of myths that articulate the d i ffe rences between their own experience and that in the other sector. The word `myth is used here in its anthropological sense to mean `a traditional story or allegory containing fundamental human truths (Ginn et al, 1996: 167), rather than its colloquial sense to mean a fallacy. Like all myths, these are mixtures of fact, half-truth and stereotyping. It is important to recognise a central imbalance in the effect of these myths. Despite some of the negative aspects of the public sector perception of it, the private sector is seen as a `promised land by some public sector practitioners, and the discourse of `getting out and `breaking out is constantly used in relation to leaving the public sector. There is no corresponding desire expressed among private sector practitioners to move into the public sector. Public sector experience is seen as a hindrance when applying for private sector jobs, yet there was no feeling that private sector experience would be unwelcome in the public sector. Furthermore, there is no suggestion that the public sector reforms had made a signi cant impact on this. The myths, and the tru ths and half-truths underlying them, ensure that, not only is there little movement between the sectors, but such movement is likely to have a negative impact on the resou rcing of public sector personnel departments. The perpetuation of myths may go some way to explaining why any changes in personnel practice as a result of the public sector reforms are not re ected in portable careers. Inevitably, the myths take time to
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001 35

Are public sector personnel managers the professions poor relations?

catch up with re a l i ty, particularly as they serve the purpose of re i n fo rcing and rationalising existing experience. It is worth considering the implications of the lack of mobility between sectors, both for the personnel profession and for public sector organisations. First, the profession is presented and promoted as a single occupation, based on the deployment of a set of generic competences which form the core of professional education and training. The reality may be rather diff e rent that of two sub-professions separated by a barel y permeable barrier. Yet mobility would provide practitioners in both sectors with an opportunity to gain experience in diffe rent environments, which would both enhance their development and enrich the profession. Secondly, given the established links between investment in HRM and performance (Patterson et al, 1997; Huselid, 1995, Huselid et al, 1997), and between effective HRM and speci c HRM staff capabilities (Ulrich et al, 1995; Becker et al, 1997; Bennett et al, 1998; Warner Burke, 1997), our findings may be of concern to public sector organisations. If able pe rso nnel practitioners are steered away from the public sector early in their careers and are reluctant to re-enter later on, then public sector organisations and their personnel functions will be the poorer. We return to the question we pose in the title. While our study is suggestive of some similarities and some diffe rences between private and public sector personne l specialists, our findings do not warrant a conclusion that public sector personnel practitioners are the poor relations of the profession. The data on the lower educational quali cations of public sector practitioners are of interest, and it would be instructive to know whether these and other ndings would be replicated in a larger survey in which th e re is a broader re presentation of public sector respondents. What emerges more clearly from the study is that personnel practitioners in the public sector, their roles and c areers are perceived as the poor relations of the profession. We therefo re think that t h e re is a pressing need for the various stakeholders to address the causes and consequences of this perc eption. Acknowledgement The authors would like to thank the anonymou s re fe rees for their detailed and extremely helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. We would also like to thank A ndrew Pendleton for his help and guidance during this resea rch proje ct. Notes 1. The national civil service was not represented, given the regional basis of the sample. 2. The proportions of practitioners with at least a rst degree were 72 per cent in the private sector and 58 per cent in the public sector (p < 0.1). Both gu res are higher than in earlier surveys, which is in part likely to be related to the nature of the survey population. 3. ** (p < 0.01). 4. The study is a snapshot and cannot be used to measure the extent and direction of change. In particular, it is not possible to infer the extent to which public and private sector practice might be converging as a result of the public sector reforms. For one thing, existing re s ea rch does not provide a baseline for comparison. Furthermore, as Boyne et al (1999) have recognised, it is possible that a time-lag between the implementation of reforms and their impact on personnel management may obscure , for an observer at a point of time, the true extent of any convergence taking place.
36 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001

Ben Lupton and Sue Shaw

REFERENCES Bec ke r, B., Huselid, M., Pickus, P. and Spratt, M. (1997). `HR as a source of share holder value: resea rch and recommendations. Human Resource Management, 36: 1, 39-47. Bennett, N., Ketchen, D. Jnr and Schultz, E. (1998). `An examination of factors associated with the integration of human re s ou rce management and strategic decision-making. Human Resource Management, 37: 1, 3-16. Boyne, G., Jenkins, G. and Poole, M. (1999). `Human resource management in the public and private sectors: an empirical comparison. Public Administration, 77: 2, 407-420. Collinson, D . (1991). `Are perso nne l manage rs one of the barr ier s to equal opportunities? Human Resource Management Journal, 1: 3, 58-76. Cul l y, M., Wood w ard, S., OReilly, A. and Dix, G. (1999). Britain at Work: As Depicted by 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, London: Routledge. Dixon, J., Kouzmin, A. and Korac-Kakabadse, N. (1998). `Managerialism something old, something borrowed, little new : economic prescription versus effe c ti ve o rganizational change in public agencies. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 11: 2/3, 164-187. D u n l e avy, P. and Hood, C. (1994). `From old public administration to new public management. Public Money and Management, July-September, 9-17. Farnham, D. and Horton, S. (1992). `Human resources management in the new public sector: leading or following p riv ate employer practice? . Pub lic Policy and Administration, 7: 3, 42-55. Ferlie, E., A s h bu r n er, A., Fitzgerald, L. and Pettigre w, A. (1996). The New Pub lic Management in Action, Oxford: Oxford University Pre ss. Fla the r, S. (1998). `Contrasting fortunes. People Management, 10 December, 42-44. Ginn, J., A rbe r, S., Brannen, J., Dale, A., Dex, S., Elia, P., Moss, P., Pahl, J., Roberts, C. and Ru bery, J. (1996). `Feminis t fallacies : a rep ly t o Hakim on women s employment. British Journal of Sociology, 47: 1, 1676-174. Gooch, L. and Ledwith, S. (1996). `Women in personnel management revisioning of a handmaidens role? in Women in Org a n is a ti o n s . S. Ledwith and F. Colgan, (eds). Basingstoke: Macmillan. Guest, D. and Hoque, K. (1994). `The good, the bad and the ugly: employment re lations in new non-union workplaces . Human Resource Management Journal, 5: 1, 1-14. Huselid, M. (1995). `The impact of human re source management practices on turnover, productivity and corporate nancial performance. Academy of Management Journal, 38: 3, 635-672. Huselid, M., Jackson, S. E. and Schuler, R. S. (1997). `Technical and strategic human resource management effectiveness as determinants of rm performance. Academy of Management Journal, 40: 1, 171-188. Keen, L. and Vickers taff, S. (1997). ` We re all human re so urce managers now : local government middle managers. Public Money and Management, July-September, 41-46. K e l l y, J. and Gennard, J. (1996). `The role of personnel directors on the board of di rectors . Personnel Review, 25: 1, 7-24. K e s s le r, I. and Purcell, J. (1996). `Strategic choice and new forms of employment relations in the public service sector: dev eloping an analytical framework . International Journal of Human Resource Management, 7: 1, 206-229. Lawler, J. and Hearn, J. (1995). `UK public sector organisations: the rise of managerialism and the impact of change on social services departments. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 8: 3, 7-16. Legge, K. (1978). P o w er, Innovation and Problem-Solving in Personnel Management ,
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001 37

Are public sector personnel managers the professions poor relations?

London: McGraw-Hill. Legge, K. (1987). `Women in personnel management: uphill climb or downhill slide? in In a Mans World. A. Spencer and D. Podmore (eds). London: Tavis tock . Legge, K. (1995). Human Resource Management: Rhetorics and Realities, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Lil l ey, R. (1997), quoted in Dawe, V. (1997). `Down but not yet out. Personnel To day, 18 September: 27-28. Long, P. (1984). The Personnel Professionals: A Comparative Study of Male and Female Careers, London: IPM. Lupton, B. (2000). `Pouring the coffee at interviews: personnels role in the selection of doctors. Personnel Review, 29: 1, 48-64. Lupton, B. and Shaw, S. (1999). `Who are the HR practitioners (and does it matter)?. Employee Relations Review, 10: August, 10-17. Lupton, B. and Shaw, S. (2000). `Careers in HRM. Do better graduates avoid the public sector?. Working paper presented at the Conference of the British Academy of Management, Edinburgh, September. Monks, K. (1993). `Careers in personnel management. Personnel Review, 22: 1, 55-66. Oswick, C. and Grant, D. (1996). `Personnel management in the public sector: power, roles and relationships. Personnel Review, 25: 2, 4-18. Patterson, M., West, M., Lawthorn, R. and Nickell, S. (1997). The Impact of People Management Practices in Business Performance, London: IPD. Sisson, K. (1993). `In search of HRM. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 31: 201-210. Sisson, K. (1995). `Human res ource management and the personnel function in Human Resou rce Management: A Critical Text. J. Storey (ed). London: Routledge. Stock, J., Seccombe, I. and Kettley, P. (1994). `Personnel services. Health Service Journal, 20 January (special report), 1-3. Store y, J. (1989). New Perspectives on Human Resource Management, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Truss, C., Gratton, L., Hope-Hailey, V., McGovern, P. and Stiles, P. (1997). `Soft and hard models of human re s ou rce management a reappraisal. Journal of Management Studies, 8: 3, 53-73. Tyson, S. and Fell, A. (1986). Evaluating the Personnel Function, London: Hutchinson. Ulrich, D., Bro ckbank,W., Yeung, A. and Lake, D. (1995). `HR competences; an empirical assessment. Human Resource Management, 34: 4, 473-495. Warner Burke, W. (1997). `What human re s ou rce practitioners need to know for the twenty- rst century. Human Resource Management, 30: 1, 71-79. Wilson, E. and Doig, A. (1996). `The shape of ideology: stru ctu re, culture and policy delivery in the new public sector. Public Money and Management, April-June, 53-61. Winchester, D. and Bach, S. (1995). `The state: the public sector in Industrial Relations: Theory and Practice in Britain. P. Edwards (ed). Oxford: Blackwell.

38

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 11 NO 3, 2001