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The County Employees Retirement Law of 1937 paved the way for employer‐sponsored retirement programmes to be created. One such programme is the Orange County Employees Retirement System. It was implemented in 1945 to provide retirement benefits for public service employees. Since that time, many new developments have resulted in changing the system to better service the members. Those new developments include SB 558, the cancer presumptive bill, AB 1817 affecting disability retirement, AB2841 increasing employer contributions, and AB1937 increasing retirement allowances. Using Orange County as an example, these developments are analysed according to their affects upon employees. The significance of these developments for employers and employees of all companies is to encourage the appropriate action necessary to implement change in a positive way for all members of a retirement scheme.

Government is a very labour intensive enterprise. Public organisations provide services, enforce laws and regulations, solve problems, and have varied missions. Their varied missions include protection of the environment, food safety, elderly and disabled assistance, education of our children, and civil rights enforcement. All of these activities require the use of human resources. The quality of employees in the county directly relates to how well the county performs. Essential tasks of human resource managers are to find qualified employees for these government positions, as well as to promote an attractive work environment for these employees. Failure to use effective human resource management risks low productivity and a lack of commitment to the community. County managers have the challenge of meeting multiple objectives including productivity, staffing and many more.

The purpose of the article is to examine the factors that either foster or impede adoption of supply-chain management processes by public sector organizations, as well as to identify the potential benefits that can be achieved by local governments through the use of the supply chain framework. Case study findings suggest that in order for supply chain management innovation to occur in the public sector a number of factors must be addressed, including the willingness to invest in information technology; identifying opportunities for procurement to transition from a control to a support function; seeking to partner organizational expertise with vendor expertise; the ability to identify crucial supplies and strategic issues that add value to the organization; and to innovate incrementally. Results suggest that the adoption of a supply chain perspective can yield innovative procurement techniques.

This article looks at attempts made by a case study organization, Surrey County Council, to evaluate and restructure the employment relationship in the context of a range of financial, managerial and political pressures for change. The notion of the psychological contract is used to conduct this evaluation and restructuring. A survey eliciting the views of some 6,000 Surrey employees highlights major gaps in terms of what employees expect and receive from their employer as well as discrepencies in what employees feel they owe the employer and actually give. Consideration is given to how the authority has sought to address these concerns through a new deal with employees. The article provides insights into the contingent circumstances leading to changes in the employment relationship, information on the state of the psychological contract in local government and an illustrative case of how one local authority went about addressing employee concerns in the light of major constraints.

The relationship between the local option sales tax (LOST) and property taxes and own source revenue is not well documented in the literature. This may be due in part to the aggregated nature of the data, which fails to capture different motivations for adoption of LOSTs. Using county-level data from 35 states, this study finds that LOSTs increase own source revenue and in some circumstances decrease property tax burdens. The primary contribution of this research is that it uses a policy variable, the LOST rate, to distinguish between the two types of counties that use their LOST revenues differently. This research represents the first step in bridging the gap between the LOST literature and the tax mix choice literature.

The expansion of computer and information technology firms combined with the simultaneous decline in traditional manufacturing firms in the 1990s argues for a re‐examination of economic base models in light of changing basic sectors within the economy. This paper reviews the literature and employs an in‐depth survey to describe the differences in the pattern of employment for traditional manufacturing firms and the “new economy” firms in Larimer County, Colorado, USA. This study indicates that traditional economic base analysis is not easily applied to communities with “new economy” firms and maintains that a more inclusive and comprehensive survey method remains the best way to adequately capture the essential makeup of a region's economic base.

The purpose of this paper is to examine relations between five individual differences variables (positive affectivity, negative affectivity, reciprocation wariness, equity sensitivity, and Protestant work ethic) and the perception of psychological contract breach (PCB), and whether those relations are mediated by perceived organizational support (POS).

A survey was administered to 234 professional (i.e. white‐collar) employees in the USA. Regression analyses were conducted to test the proposed relations and mediating hypotheses.

In line with the hypothesized predictions, the findings indicate that POS fully mediated the relations between four out of the five individual difference variables examined (i.e. positive affectivity, reciprocation wariness, equity sensitivity, Protestant work ethic) and perceived PCB. In addition, POS partially mediated the relation between negative affectivity and perceived PCB.

The use of a cross‐sectional, non‐experimental, design does not allow for conclusions to be drawn regarding causality and it is possible that the reported results may have been influenced by common method variance. Future research should examine additional individual differences and workplace contextual features.

Managers need to realize that some determinants of perceived PCB, and POS for that matter, are likely to be unrelated to organizational actions. Rather, perceived PCB and POS may result, in part, from an employee's individual characteristics.

This is the first study to provide empirical evidence that positive affectivity, negative affectivity, reciprocation wariness, equity sensitivity, and Protestant work ethic may predict the perception of PCB and that POS may mediate these relations.

Over the past 12 years scores of reports and articles have been written about occupational, workforce, or workplace literacy (Workforce 2000 – economic and labour force changes, and skills requirements, impacting on America). Research and published materials have failed to address the impact of these issues for the vast local public sector work‐force. Reports on exploratory research on issues of occupational literacy in a large metropolitan US county government workforce. All of the 32 county departments were surveyed regarding Workforce 2000 and occupational literacy in order to assess employee skills and workplace requirements, literacy issues, leadership awareness and policies and planning. Results show a well intentioned, but poorly prepared, (and preparing) county leadership and workforce, which may well impact on the quality of future service delivery. Makes recommendations for policy and programme changes, and for continuing research.

While several studies have indicated the critical role played by the ability of countries to exploit knowledge as an economic resource, it would appear that there have been very few studies conducted on understanding the practices adopted by governments in relation to exploring knowledge, particularly in Africa. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevailing knowledge management practices and technological solutions used by governments to support knowledge management.

To address the research objective of this study, semi-structured interviews and document analysis were used. The interviews were conducted with both senior and junior county officials from five counties in Kenya, with a total of 31 county officials participating. Further, various county documents were analysed both to seek convergence and corroborate the interview findings.

The study findings revealed that no systematic knowledge management practices existed in the county governments in Kenya, which were investigated. On the few occasions that the study did find evidence of knowledge management practices, these practices were isolated, informal, uncoordinated and rarely documented and/or communicated. Furthermore, the study found that there were inadequate policy frameworks in place to support knowledge management practices. The study also revealed a scarcity of relevant technological solutions tailored to support knowledge management practices.

It was, thus, hoped that this research would promote an understanding of the prevailing local circumstances that hinder the effective utilisation of knowledge management practices and systems. The study recommends that county governments develop the capabilities required for creating and sustaining an enabling knowledge management environment through frameworks and policies that foster knowledge management practices and systems. The findings have practical implications for the way in which county governments in Kenya and other developing countries may improve their knowledge management practices and adopt appropriate technological solutions to support such practices.

Much of the existing literature on knowledge management is focussed on exploring such practices in large businesses. Studies centred specifically on the analysis of knowledge management practices in county governments in Africa, and how technological solutions may be used to build such practices are conspicuously lacking in the relevant literature.

We present the results of one of the only in-depth studies of a police agency’s internal and external response to the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 (COVID-19). This study emphasizes the importance of law enforcement agencies conducting comprehensive case studies and after-action assessments to prepare, prevent and respond to prolonged public health crises and showcases the profound (and lingering) effects of COVID-19 on police organizations.

This multi-method case study combines document analysis, a workforce survey, a community survey, interviews and analysis of administrative data to detail and assess the agency’s internal and operational responses to the pandemic and the reactions of employees and community members to those responses.

Despite agency strategies to mitigate the pandemic’s effects, employees cited very high stress levels one year after the pandemic and a third of sworn officers considered leaving the policing profession altogether during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several policies intended by the agency to protect employee health and maintain staffing needs kept workforce levels steady but may have increased feelings of organizational injustice in both sworn and non-sworn individuals, with variation across racial and gender groups. A jurisdiction-wide community survey indicated general support for the police department’s responses but a preference for in-person rather than telephone-based responses to service calls. Officers, however, preferred continuing remote responses even after the pandemic subsided.

To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the only in-depth case studies that examine a police agency’s internal and external responses to COVID-19 and the sworn, non-sworn and community reactions to those responses.