ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the effect of personnel processes upon employees who occupy administrative posts. The primary goal of civil service reform has been office-holding according to merit—the appointment to each public position of the candidate best qualified to fill it. The merit principle requires that methods be discovered for selecting employees on the basis of competence. The objective of securing for government competent, competitively selected civil servants is a corollary, of course, of the criterion of efficiency. The assumption that neutrality is either desirable or attainable in the civil service has been challenged on several grounds. Since all administration is concerned with people and their behavior, all administration might properly be described as personnel administration. Because recruitment for the government service must be related to its political setting, it is a far more complicated matter than recruitment for positions in private business.
