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37 7 Finding the Right Help; or, with a Little Help from My Friends Chandler’s job was made easier and she made more successful because she was able to hire an excellent private secretary.That tells us how important support positions are. It also tells us that, in this sense, she may have gotten lucky. Secretarial positions were exempt (not civil service), so technically they were open to anyone, regardless of previous employment, experience, or qualifications. (Coming from the university, she had no secretary of her own to bring along.) She was introduced to only two potential candidates. Both had experience in the department and were supported by the previous director and deputy director.They were presented to her as loyal people requesting placement in the new administration.Hiring from the outside would have added to the challenges posed by Chandler’s inexperience. Chandler searched for and recognized different skills in her staff.The idea people were valuable in helping her think through sticky problems and devise solutions. However, these people tended not to be the same ones who were the most effective in getting the day-to-day work done.The idea people were more creative and were risk takers; other staff members were more conservative and risk adverse.This difference raises an interesting question about what kind of employee we want in our public agencies. Should we select the innovators and adventurers or those who focus on consistency and detail?The adventurers will appeal to reformers looking for more flexible, responsive organizations; the steady implementers will appeal to staff concerned about the public’s need for predictability and accountability. Each type will produce a different kind of organizational culture. In the end, as Chandler points out, we must balance our desire for public organizations that are flexible and adaptive with our need for organizations that are consistent and equitable. The challenge of putting together a team is accentuated by constraints on hiring new employees. Exempt positions may be filled outside of the civil service system.These positions do not have minimum qualifications, experience requirements , seniority protections, or the benefits and protections of civil service jobs. Under the rules in place at that time, employees within the department who met a position’s minimum qualifications, as set by the personnel office, had first option for an in-house job. Why is there such a rule? These bureaucracies are what is referred to as merit based: people who serve in them are highly qualified for this work because the hiring, retention, and promotion system is based on merit.The meritbased system replaced the patronage system in the late nineteenth century as a way to create a professional and impartial public bureaucracy. It is also a way of creating incentives for people to remain in positions that often pay less than their counterparts in the private sector, and preserves stability and experience in a public agency when elections cause changes in leadership. Describing these systems as merit based is of course questionable.Public bureaucracies have succeeded in providing protection from dismissal for partisan reasons and have made it more difficult (though far from impossible) for elected officials to burrow their loyal followers into the system. Moreover, hiring procedures must objectively differentiate the applicants.Nevertheless,over time public sector bureaucracies have come to be more seniority oriented than merit based. Almost without regard to the quality of a person’s work,seat time plays a major role in promotions and makes it difficult to get the best people into available positions.This has the effect of giving employees a predictable career ladder and assuring them a high degree of job security,but it also means they are supervised by managers who may have gotten into their positions for the wrong reasons, making it more difficult for them to effectively fulfill their responsibilities. Given this history, and the expectation there would be a pool of qualified persons to select from, the situation raises the following questions.Would the work of public employees, and the public orientation of their organizations, be enhanced if the recruitment process was open to competition from public, private , and nonprofit sector applicants?Would better persons be found to do the job? Or would this change undermine public service professionalism, and perhaps even introduce a new form of patronage? There is a need for two types of employees in public sector agencies:people who have not worked in government, who see the issues differently, and who can bring fresh...

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