Promotion of public administration personnel

Like other human beings, civil servants should have opportunities to realize their full potential. They should be able to attain higher positions commensurate with their capabilities and demonstrated achievements.

Promotion remains a controversial aspect of public personnel management. In hierarchical organizations there are fewer positions at the top than at the bottom. The competition can be fierce and can lead to discord among employees. Thus a written promotional examination has certain virtues and helps to avoid favoritism. Trade unions often stress the principle of seniority. However, seniority is not necessarily the best indicator of productivity. Sometimes merit-oriented promotion and seniority are combined.

INCOMPETENCE AS PROMOTION MISTAKES,

Or the Peter Principle

Occupational incompetence is everywhere. Every organization contains a number of persons who could not do their job. Limitless are the public servants who are indolent and insolent, and governors whose innate servility prevents their actually governing. In our sophistication, we virtually shrug aside the immortal cleric, corrupt judge, incoherent attorney, author who cannot write. Seeing incompetence at all levels of every hierarchy – political, legal, educational and industrial – I hypothesized that the cause was some inherent feature of the rules governing the placement of employees. The employee had been promoted from a position of competence to a position of incompetence. Sooner or later, this could happen to every employee in every hierarchy – an organization whose members are arranged in order of rank, grade or class. For each individual the final promotion is from a level of competence to a level of incompetence. In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties. But you will rarely find a system in which every employee has reached his or her level of incompetence. And work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

(On the basis of “The Peter Principle” by Lawrence J. Peter & Raymond Hull // Rethinking of Public Administration, pp. 15-16)

Elements and models of a Decision-making Process

We all make decisions all the time. Sometimes we make snap judgments that in retrospect seem wise. Other times

we carefully weigh the pros and cons but are betrayed by fate. Often the most important decisions are nondecisions: we put things off and later discover that inaction has consequences just as important as those resulting from action.

Four processes of decision-making

Whether small or large, short- or long-term, studied or impulsive, decision-making involves four major elements: problem definition, information search, choice, and evaluation.

Problem definition

The first step in defining a problem is recognizing that it exists.Then, problems are plentiful; attention is scare. Selecting a problem for attention and placing it on the policy agenda is the most important element in policy making. When a problem is given attention, it gains focus and takes shape.The people without home have always been with us. Most often they have been seen as people who because of their own weaknesses could not find work and afford homes. So defined, the homeless remained a problem in the background – a problem for the Salvation Army, not the government. But as their number grew, we began to take a closer look.