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This chapter examines one of the most contested issues in Public Administration, namely political–administrative relationships. The first part of the chapter begins with a brief overview of the features of an ideal-type bureaucracy. Next is a literature review of political–administrative relationships. This is followed by an analysis of typologies of political–administrative relationships, with particular reference to developing countries. The second part of the chapter analyses the evolution of political–administrative relationships since the dawn of South African democracy in 1994. It examines the growing politicisation of the public service, the weakening of the powers of public officials vis-a-vis Ministers and the emasculation of the PSC. Data indicate that the government is unable to fill posts at the Senior Management Service (SMS) level and that there are a high number of acting HoDs, an indicator of instability. Finally, it uses Dasandi and Esteve’s typology of political–administrative relationships in developing countries to interpret the South African case.

The public sector is often considered the vanguard in terms of the availability and promotion of flexible working arrangements (FWAs). Despite this, little is known about how senior managers in the public sector engage with FWAs. This paper aims to address this gap, reporting on a number of issues, including the reality of FWAs, the existence of a flexibility stigma and whether this is gendered, and the drivers influencing the uptake of FWAs.

Theoretical insights of flexibility stigma from the literature and data from semi-structured interviews with senior managers in the Northern Ireland Civil Service explore the realities of FWAs at this level.

The findings indicate a decoupling between the rhetoric and reality of FWAs, with few senior managers availing of such arrangements. The authors also identify a complex web of issues that constrain senior managers' agency in shaping a positive culture of FWAs at senior management level in the Civil Service, including an inherent resistance to flexibility, a lack of visible role models and negative perceptions around progression. The findings also indicate deeply held perceptions among senior males and females that availing of FWAs is associated with a flexibility stigma. These perceptions were confirmed by the small number of senior females with caring responsibilities who were availing of FWAs.

The paper provides senior managers and human resource practitioners with insights into the difficulties associated with wide-scale FWA availability and use at senior levels of the Civil Service.

The findings of the study offer valuable insights into the experience of senior managers in the public sector as they engage with FWAs. The study, therefore, contributes to the limited literature in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate senior managers' satisfaction with pay in the Nigerian Civil Service.

A field study was undertaken to test the hypotheses. The sample was drawn from senior managers in the Nigerian Civil Service. A quantitative methodological approach was used based on questionnaire designed to measure the variables that literature review has identified as having relationship with pay satisfaction.

The finding of this research paper shows that pay incentive scheme is a distinctive dimension of pay satisfaction among senior managers in the Nigerian Civil Service; and the perception of pay‐for‐performance determines the level of satisfaction with pay.

The sample size is very small relative to the total federal civil service population. Only senior managers were selected for questioning and may not reflect the general opinion in the Nigerian Civil Service. The sample is limited to the Federal Civil Service and excludes state and local government services in a federally governed country.

The study has important implications for organisations and human resource practitioners in Nigeria to design their compensation and benefit programmes.

This research is one of the few studies that explore pay incentive schemes as a distinct dimension of pay satisfaction relevant to the Nigerian work environment. It adds value to the study of organisational justice by demonstrating that procedural justice, interactional justice, and distributive justice, influence pay satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the politicization of senior civil service (SCS) in Korea from a human resource perspective. To be specific, it is to explore how much the SCS has been politicized after its inception in 2006 and to discover what has strengthened it.

This paper employs the human resource management perspective with five stages, selection, rotation, education, promotion and compensation, which are related with different weights to four causes of politicization: political desire to control, leadership change, public demands and political interest.

This paper argues that politicization of SCS in Korea has gradually increased during the last 10 years. It also found that, while selection and promotion is strongly politicized, education and compensation is weakly politicized.

This paper mainly draws increasing politicization after it was introduced. Little prior literature has explored the politicization of SCS in human resource management processes and its causes for Korea.

Willard A. Hanna's astute observation above about the institutionalization of corruption in Indonesia was published in August 1971, five years after President Soeharto assumed power. The origins of corruption in Indonesia can be traced to the Dutch colonial period as bribery was rife among the lowly paid personnel of the Dutch East India Company (Day, 1966, pp. 100–103). However, corruption became institutionalized during President Soeharto's 32-year reign as his cronies and family “made an art form of creaming off many of Indonesia's most profitable ventures … while being protected by monopoly regulations and their relationship to the president” (Kingsbury, 1998, p. 202). Raymond Bonner (1988, p. 80) has used the euphemism “the family business” to describe “the corruption surrounding members of the Suharto family,” which was “a public secret” in 1988.

In December 1999, the UK Civil Service Management Board in Whitehall agreed upon a reform program focusing on six themes, all connected with improved managerial processes internal to the civil service and intended to complement the more externally oriented Modernising Government agenda set out in a white paper earlier that year. The purpose was to achieve major changes in the way in which the civil service was run – “step change” rather than continuous improvement. In May 2002, the Cabinet Office commissioned a research project to provide an evaluation of the Civil Service Reform program through four case studies. This chapter draws upon the findings of that study to discuss the extent to which cultural differences affected the outcomes of this ambitious reform program. In addition, it draws upon a set of interviews in 2005 which updated the findings of the research. The chapter suggests that four very different types of culture had important impacts on the way in which the case study organizations went about the process of addressing the Cabinet Office reform program, namely national cultures which differed greatly between the case studies, although they were all UK-based organizations; organizational cultures which differed greatly within each of the case study organizations; occupational cultures which crossed the four case studies, but usually with significant differences in each context; and sectoral cultures which in several cases provided particular barriers to change. The chapter shows how these different dimensions of culture were interwoven in the change programs of the four cases and explores the extent to which their progress on the reform agenda was affected by their particular cultural mix. It suggests that some “cultural stances” within these overall cultures were more difficult to change than others, so that reforms had to be re-activated on several occasions and through a variety of mechanisms. Finally, the chapter illustrates how, in the case study organizations which were most successful, a deliberate strategy was adopted by top management of highlighting the clashing internal cultures, in order to challenge the traditional positions of internal and external stakeholders, in spite of the risks involved.

This chapter discusses reforms to increase customer-centredness, public consultation (including professional, business and community associations), whole-of-government approaches (a case of trafficking in persons), increased budget, personnel and procurement delegation to departments and increased role of statutory boards (autonomous agencies). According to the author the driving force behind public sector reforms emanates from the inner core of ministers, most particularly the prime minister and deputy prime minister, working in close conjunction with senior permanent secretaries, directors of boards and government-linked companies. In Singapore, power is concentrated in the hands of political executives and senior levels of civil service. Ministers set the policy agenda and make final policy decisions on important issues. The administrative service is the elite service (of about 250 persons) within the civil service that shapes policy, especially permanent secretaries and deputy secretaries. Objections to reforms are often avoided through inputs to the reform process by key stakeholders and experts of relevant fields from inter-ministerial and inter-agency committees and through public consultations. Singapore has achieved an exceptional level of prosperity, and according to the author civil service is guided by practices of meritocracy (e.g., in promotion) and strict accountability through audits and anti-corruption steps.

Many relationships between politicians and bureaucrats are based on an energy‐equilibrium model where the politicians provide energy and the bureaucrats, equilibrium. According to this model, conflicts occur when one partner does not adequately fulfill his or her expected role. This model may be fruitfully used to study the relationship between the politician, the career bureaucrat, and the political appointee. The division of roles among this “ménage à trois” is particularly difficult and often generates tension. The situation is most prone to conflict when the government is in a period of change. At such times, the newly elected politicians have a tendency to mistrust the established bureaucracy and to depend almost exclusively on their political appointees. The dysfunctions induced by this phenomenon, in regard to the capacity of the bureaucracy to adequately fulfill its equilibrium role, are very clearly illustrated by the Canadian political transition of 1984, when the federal government was handed over to the Progressive Conservative Party. A series of interviews with ministers, senior civil servants, and senior policy advisors, all of whom had ringside seats to this transition, shows how the extensive power granted to ministerial offices aggravated the difficulties usually associated with a period of transition. This particular transition illustrates how important it is for the newly elected to ensure that their partisan policy advisors play their roles without getting in the way of the indispensable cooperation which must be established between ministers and senior civil servants.

How do top bureaucrats define, in their own words, their professional identity and the norms they work by? Do they define them in line with a Weberian ideal type of the bureaucrat and bureaucratic norms? Or rather by a modernised entrepreneurial ideal type, often associated with New Public Management reforms? Further, what can such self-presentations tell us about professional norms operating in top bureaucrats’ daily work, and about institutional or wider societal logics guiding the non-elected, administrative side of contemporary government? The top officials, the senior civil servants in central ministries, who take part in policy-making and serve the political leadership, have a specific role distinct from that of the politicians and are guided by professional norms. Scholars focusing on this level of top bureaucrats have described their professional norms as being about serving the elected politicians loyally, but also contributing technical and thematic expertise independent of political considerations and ensuring that policy is developed according to legal standards. This chapter investigates how top bureaucrats themselves define those norms and that role – is it in line with an ideal close to Weberian ideal type characteristics, or not?

This paper critically examines the Irish Government’s commitment to “Delivering better government”, in the context of achieving gender equality. The strategic management initiative (SMI) seeks highest quality of service delivery to customers in a modern flexible and professional manner. This necessitates the fullest development of human resources. To achieve this end a study was undertaken to investigate gender imbalance at managerial grades. The report highlighted continuing gender imbalance at all grades and a prevailing culture that is less than conducive to women and many men. The authors called for a new strategic approach to gender equality in which specific targets are set over a specific time frame. The Irish Civil Service is now faced with a combined need to address a new equality agenda in order to deliver its strategic vision of quality in serving the public, thereby underpinning the need to pursue quality, equality and diversity as core values in a fast‐growing Irish economy.