ABSTRACT
In this chapter, personnel management is based on a number of public values and is charged with the pursuit of a number of policy objectives. It discusses techniques and processes, but always in the context of policies. Changes in the workforce and in the scope of government activity and nonprofit organizations made the clerical features of public personnel management increasingly inappropriate and irrelevant. The emphasis at the beginning of the twentieth century was on making administration, including personnel management, in and outside of government, scientific in order to maximize productivity. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, personnel management experienced another surge of reform. Civil service laws were modified to recognize that personnel management is policy-oriented and that it is an art as well as a science. Whereas the blend of values and objectives is basic, the configuration of personnel management is dynamic.
