Public Sector Human Resource Practices to Drive Performance

Manning, Nick ; Hasnain, Zahid ; Pierskalla, Jan Henryk

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: SKILLS;    EMPLOYMENT;    RISKS;    PROFESSIONAL STAFF;    MOTIVATION;   

RP-ID  :  98810

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Many Governments wrestle with the issueof designing an appropriate set of human resource practicesto motivate public servants to perform. Identifying theright set of practices for the public sector is a source ofsome controversy, and passions run high particularly inrelation to the use of monetary incentives, often referredto as performance-related pay or performance based pay. ThisGET note reviews recent research on a range of practicesGovernments utilize to drive employee performance, whichrest on the assumptions that public servants are motivatedin two ways: (i) ‘intrinsically’ (i.e. internal factorsmotivated by ‘the right thing to do’), and (ii)‘extrinsically’ (i.e., external validation from rewardsoffered by others). Generally, a Human Resource Management(HRM) system designed to motivate employee performance willutilize practices in two broad categories related to: (i)‘external incentives’ (e.g., financial incentives), and (ii)‘opportunities to perform’ focusing on ‘intrinsic’ factors(i.e. self-directed work). Within ‘external incentives,’ afinancial incentive may either act over the long term (e.g.,deferred compensation) or in the short term (e.g.,performance-related pay). This note applies this conceptualframework to more clearly understand the range of practicesGovernments are using to improve staff performance, as wellas the pre-conditions for their success. Given the recentattention on performance-related pay, we take a deeper lookat the evidence underlying the shorter termperformance-related pay, reviewing evidence from both OECDand middle income countries. Annex one provides a briefoverview on the theories of motivation for those interestedin the theoretical underpinnings of the work, and annex twopresents’ experiences of performance pay in practice. ThisNote draws heavily from performance-related pay in thepublic sector: A review of theory and evidence (Hasnain andothers 2012), a recent review of the literature in fieldsincluding political science, public administration, businessmanagement, and psychology.