HRM IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Hrm In The Public Sector



HRM IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Culture in organization theory occupied a marginal place relative to dominant rationalist frameworks. Early organizational researchers, whether primarily oriented toward theory (e.g., Weber 1978) or practice, considered the core project of organization theory to be the development of universal laws, sanitized of cultural trappings, that could efficiently govern rational, instrumental organizations (Dobbin 1994). Nonetheless, early organization theorists used bits and pieces of unacknowledged cultural arguments, often as points of departure for creating acultural theory. Beginning in the 1920s, social scientists accidentally "discovered" and then empirically mapped the social psychological contours of shop floor norms and sentiments, thus giving rise to the "human relations" school. As human relations gained momentum in the 1930s and 1940s, scholars included the study of norms and sentiments in mainstream organization theory as variables to be manipulated to increase worker productivity. By the 1950s and 1960s, scholars using ethnographic and case-study methods moved beyond human relations to reveal a complex "underlife" (Goffman 1961) in organizations containing conflicting values and interests that both subverted and facilitated the achievement of formal goals (Selznick 1948). In this context, scholars focused on the institutionalization of social values, as well as the day-to-day negotiation of meaning by organizational members. Reiner (1992) provides a substantial overview of the research in this area. He argues that cop culture is integral both to the ways in which police officers make sense of the social environment in which they work and also to the ways in which they attempt to legitimize any behaviours which might be deemed inappropriate, unauthorized or illegal. Such shared 'knowledge' serves both to instil camaraderie between officers and, simultaneously, to alienate the wider public. The work of Skolnick (1994) highlights the importance of three exclusive core characteristics of police work (danger, authority and the pressure for efficiency) which converge to make the culture of the police a highly distinct guiding framework for social behaviour. Research in the area has generally concentrated upon gathering information from studying serving police officers and by analysing such information in relation to current policing contexts. A typical example of this is the work of Chan (1997) which addressed in detail the problem of racism among police officers in the Australian police and the entrenched cultural norms which need to be tackled to succeed in initiating cultural change. The problems encountered in training police officers about domestic violence and racism are multidimensional and complex. Some of these problems are embedded in the structure of our society, such as institutionalized racism and sexism as well as inadequate federal and state funding for police training on racism and domestic violence. Other problems stem from ideologies and practices within some police departments including increased militarization, police culture (e.g., us-versus-them), lack of racial diversity, and racial profiling. Another dimension of the problem is rooted in the long history of tension between police officers and battered women's advocates. Although all of these problems can negatively affect police training, we will ...