Review of Public Personnel Administration

30(1) 20­–43
A Strategic Agenda for © 2010 SAGE Publications
Reprints and permission: http://www.
Public Human Resource sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0734371X09351821
Management Research http://roppa.sagepub.com

James L. Perry1,2

Abstract
This article develops a strategic research agenda for public human resource management.
The agenda originates from the perception that research about public human resources
has matured during the Review of Public Personnel Administration’s 30 years of publication
and now is an appropriate juncture to initiate an intentional and strategic agenda.
The author identifies criteria for developing a strategic research agenda that seeks to
advance useable knowledge about public human resource management, build theory,
and mark out content distinctive to public institutions. The article inventories research
as reported by the Review of Public Personnel Administration and two other leading human
resource management journals. These inventories help to anchor the agenda in timely
issues and to triangulate on distinctively public issues. The article concludes with five
priority research agenda based on the criteria the author developed and the inventory
of research: direct compensation, motivation, culture and political context, efficacy and
effectiveness, and training and development.

Keywords
human resource management, strategic research agenda, public administration theory

As we recognize the 30th anniversary of the Review of Public Personnel Administra-

tion (ROPPA), this is an appropriate time not only to reflect on the journal’s past but
also to look ahead. What research is strategic for development of public human
resource management? By “strategic” I essentially mean “important.” What research

1
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
2
Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea

Corresponding Author:
James L. Perry, Distinguished Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs, School of Public and
Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Room 410E, 1315 E. Tenth Street Bloomington, IN 47405-1701,
USA
Email: perry@indiana.edu
Perry 21

questions are most important for building theory about the field? What research ques­
tions are most important for uncovering information practitioners need to know? What
research is most important for identifying what is public, what is distinctive, about the
institutional contexts that we study? Having answers for these questions would go a
long way toward enhancing the value of public human resource management research
in years to come.
Although ROPPA has published a good deal of important research in its first 30
years, much of it has been in reaction to developments unfolding in public adminis­
tration and policy arenas. During its first decade, much of ROPPA was occupied by
attention to civil service reform, public sector labor relations, and equal employment
opportunity. Similar to adolescents, we experimented widely, but were not necessarily
intentional about our choices. But just as adolescents develop a sense of their identities
in early adulthood, I believe ROPPA and its contributors today have a stronger sense
of their identities. Now is an appropriate time for a call to developing knowledge that
will have broad and enduring value for the 21st century. The time has come for being
more intentional about our agenda and the goals we pursue from public human reso­
urce management research.
I will build a strategic research agenda in three steps. First, I identify criteria for
developing a strategic research agenda. These criteria are attentive not only to the
subject matter of human resource management but also to building theory and identi­
fying public institutional ties. Second, I inventory what research has been conducted,
as reported by the ROPPA and two other leading human resource management jour­
nals. These inventories help both to anchor the agenda in timely issues and triangulate
on distinctively public issues. Finally, I present five priority research agenda based on
the criteria I develop and the inventory of research.

Criteria for a Strategic Research Agenda

With regard to developing criteria, I draw on ideas I first developed in “Strategies
for Building Public Administration Theory,” which appeared in the 1991 volume of
Research in Public Administration (Perry, 1991). The criteria I developed in the 1991
article are relevant today and can be applied for research about public human resource
management. In somewhat modified form they include (a) focus on research questions
that promote developing middle-range theories, (b) pay attention to issues grounded in
the history of public personnel administration, and (c) select phenomena that have
good prospects of making meaningful theoretical connections to the concept of
“public.” These criteria can be helpful for framing questions and providing guidance
for what types of questions should be included and excluded from a strategic research
agenda.
Probably the two most important of the criteria above involve focusing on research
questions to promote middle-range theory and selecting phenomena that enhance our
theoretical understanding of what is public. Middle-range theory is a form of theory
midway between unified theories that seek to explain all uniformities at one end of the
22 Review of Public Personnel Administration 30(1)

theory spectrum and working hypotheses at the other end (Merton, 1967). Among
middle-range theory’s attributes are that it represents clearly formulated, verifiable
statements of relationships among variables, is derived from data, but is more abstract
than empirical generalizations (Gilfillian, 1980).
One reason for originally developing the criteria was my argument that public
administration needed not only to import theory and knowledge from other disciplines,
but also export theory and knowledge. I view contributions to middle-range theory as a
vehicle for facilitating the import–export relationships between our field (i.e., public
administration broadly or public human resource management more specifically) and
allied disciplines. More importantly, middle-range theories also have some advantage
for helping public administration scholars to articulate what is distinctive about the
field. The extent to which we can identify attributes of public institutions (e.g., trans­
parency) that influence relationships in theories spanning disciplines, for example,
increases the prospects for building a body of knowledge distinctive to “public” admin­
istration or “public” human resource management.

Trends in Human Resource Management Research

The criteria described in the preceding section provides heuristics for selecting research
questions and issues with good prospects for building theory, informing practice, and
framing a distinctively public research agenda. What the criteria do not provide is a
substantive and concrete agenda that deserves our attention. What issues are timely
from the perspective of theory development and practical need? Are there timely issues
whose study is likely to inform us about the meaning and distinctiveness of “public”?
Although framing an agenda entails a variety of subjective judgments, patterns of
past human resource management research can be helpful for guiding agenda forma­
tion and anchoring an agenda in objective details. I pursue this goal in the present
study by inventorying issues that have been studied in public, business and generic
human resource management journals in recent years. I inventory research published
during the past 30 years in ROPPA, Human Resource Management (HRM), and Inter-
national Journal of Human Resource Management (IJHRM). The inventory provides
insights into what is topical, what issues have appeared most frequently in ROPPA,
and how research issues vary across journals and sectors. The inventory will be help­
ful not only for establishing what topics have been addressed in ROPPA in the past, but
also what issues are being addressed in other journals and not in ROPPA. The inven­
tory facilitates asking and answering questions relevant for developing systematically
a strategic research agenda.

The Journals Inventoried

The choice of journals to inventory was relatively straightforward. Because this arti­
cle is about a strategic agenda for public human resource management research on
the 30th anniversary of Review of Public Personnel Administration, ROPPA was
Perry 23

obviously included in the inventory, representing public sector scholarship. The jour­
nal’s publisher, Sage (2008), describes the journal as presenting

[T]imely, rigorous scholarship on human resource management in public ser­

vice organizations. The journal provides research for scholars and professionals
to stay abreast of advancements and innovations in the field. The journal pub­
lishes articles that reflect the varied approaches used in the study and practice of
human resource management in the public sector. (http://www.sagepub.com/
journalsProdDesc.nav?prodId=Journal201617)

A second journal was selected to represent content in a generic or non–public

sector journal. HRM, published by Wiley, has appeared quarterly since 1972. HRM is
described by Wiley (2008) as

Covering the broad spectrum of contemporary human resource management, this

journal provides practicing managers and academics with the latest concepts,
tools, and information for effective problem solving and decision making in this
field. Broad in scope, it explores issues of societal, organizational, and individual
relevance. Journal articles discuss new theories, new techniques, case studies,
models, and research trends of particular significance to practicing managers.
(http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/32249/home/ProductInformation
.html?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0)

Although HRM does not target particular sectors, most of its articles and contri­
butors are affiliated with businesses, and schools of management or business.
The third and final journal inventoried is the IJHRM, which has been published
quarterly by Routledge of the Taylor & Francis group since 1990 and monthly since
2005. IJHRM (Taylor & Francis, 2008) is

[T]he forum for HRM scholars and professionals worldwide. Concerned with
the expanding role of strategic human resource management in a fast-changing
global environment, the journal focuses on future trends in human resource
management, drawing on empirical research in the areas of strategic manage­
ment, international business, organizational behaviour, personnel management
and industrial relations. (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/09585192.asp)

The international focus of IJHRM adds another dimension to the variety of the
research inventoried.
The three journals collectively provide breadth in research inventoried. They rep­
resent human resource management research conducted in the business and government
sectors. The three journals also offer a good range of research in the United States and
other countries.
24 Review of Public Personnel Administration 30(1)

Methods
The three-journal inventory was developed in two steps. First, we created an EndNote
database composed of the title, abstract, and keywords1 for all articles published in the
three journals since the founding of ROPPA. This resulted in a database on 2,456
entries. Articles from ROPPA and HRM covered the period 1978 to fall 2008. Because
IJHRM initiated publication in 1990, the database for it began in 1990. IJHRM’s pub­
lication on a monthly basis since 2005 meant that it accounted for 1,229 records in the
database. ROPPA had the smallest number of records, 432; HRM accounted for 795.
To facilitate comparisons across the journals, the individual records were aggre­
gated in two ways, one by time period and another by search terms included in titles,
abstracts, and keywords. These aggregations of the individual records for each journal
by time period and search terms are presented in Table 1. Keywords were grouped
together under major themes as shown in the appendix. Searching titles, abstracts, and
keywords alone overlooks detailed, within-article content, but omissions are likely to
be very modest. A few keywords overlapped categories (e.g., supervision was included
in both the “leadership” and “management structure” categories) to reflect its rele­
vance to both categories. The time periods used to aggregate records coincided with
the first (1979-1988), second (1989-1998), and third decades (1999-2008) of ROP-
PA’s publication. IJHRM did not begin publication until 1990 so it appears in only the
second and third decades aggregated in Table 1.

Results
The information in Table 1 was used to explore three general sets of questions
intended to inform development of a strategic research agenda for public human resource
management. The three sets of questions are

• What topics gets the most attention? What topics get the least attention?
• How similar are the topics addressed by the three journals? How different are
they?
• Can “leading” and “lagging” relationships be identified in research reported
across the journals?

What research gets the most and least attention? A wide disparity exists between the
most and least popular topics in the three journals. Training and development, which
includes content about training, education, and career development, is the largest
grouping at 56%. Culture (36%), effectiveness (28%), motivation (27%), recruitment
and selection (19%), accountability (19%), and communication (18%) are the next
most frequent research topics. At the opposite end of the spectrum, ethics, attendance,
and human resource management policy appear in only 2% of the total articles. Cre­
ativity and postemployment benefits appear in only 1% of the articles.
 Table 1. Comparisons of the Content of Three Human Resource Journals by Main Search Categories and Time Period

1979-1988 1989-1998 1999-2008 Overall

ROPPA HRM IJHRM Total ROPPA HRM IJHRM Total ROPPA HRM IJHRM Total Total

No. of articles 80 210 — 290 171 282 349 802 181 303 880 1364 2456
Accountability 16 40 — 56 20 74 68 162 32 65 152 249 467
20% 19% — 19% 12% 26% 19% 20% 18% 21% 17% 18% 19%
At-will employment — 0 0 7 7
— 4%
Attendance 1 3 — 4 3 7 8 18 5 8 14 27 49
1% 1% — 1% 2% 2% 2% 2% 3% 3% 2% 2% 2%
Benefits (indirect) 4 19 — 23 11 20 16 47 17 28 64 109 179
5% 9% — 8% 6% 7% 5% 6% 9% 9% 7% 8% 7%
Benefits (postemployment) 1 7 — 8 6 2 3 11 5 2 7 14 33
1% 3% — 3% 4% 1% 1% 1% 3% 1% 1% 1% 1%
Best Practice 2 15 — 17 5 17 41 63 19 49 96 164 244
3% 7% — 6% 3% 6% 12% 8% 10% 16% 11% 12% 10%
Bureaucracy — 0 14 24 34 72 25 19 57 101 173
— 8% 9% 10% 9% 14% 6% 6% 7% 7%
Careers 0 8 — 8 4 6 10 20 5 11 40 56 84
0% 4% — 3% 2% 2% 3% 2% 3% 4% 5% 4% 3%
Communication 5 52 — 57 7 62 72 141 20 64 150 234 432
6% 25% — 20% 4% 22% 21% 18% 11% 21% 17% 17% 18%
Compensation (direct)/ 18 18 — 36 17 25 30 72 25 32 92 149 257
   pay/wages
23% 9% — 12% 10% 9% 9% 9% 14% 11% 10% 11% 10%
Conflict 5 16 — 21 15 18 20 53 20 16 39 75 149
6% 8% — 7% 9% 6% 6% 7% 11% 5% 4% 5% 6%
Creativity 0 3 — 3 0 2 2 4 1 2 4 7 14
0% 1% — 1% 0% 1% 1% 0% 1% 1% 0% 1% 1%

25
(continued)
26
Table 1. (continued)

1979-1988 1989-1998 1999-2008 Overall

ROPPA HRM IJHRM Total ROPPA HRM IJHRM Total ROPPA HRM IJHRM Total Total

Culture 9 82 — 91 20 118 160 298 41 98 358 497 886

11% 39% — 31% 12% 42% 46% 37% 23% 32% 41% 36% 36%
Diversity 6 25 — 31 28 37 57 122 35 55 180 270 423
8% 12% — 11% 16% 13% 16% 15% 19% 18% 20% 20% 17%
Effectiveness 13 64 — 77 26 106 96 228 37 91 253 381 686
16% 30% — 27% 15% 38% 28% 28% 20% 30% 29% 28% 28%
Equal employment/ 11 13 — 24 30 12 18 60 30 21 55 106 190
   Affirmative Action
14% 6% — 8% 18% 4% 5% 7% 17% 7% 6% 8% 8%
Ethics 0 5 — 5 2 6 8 16 2 11 21 34 55
0% 2% — 2% 1% 2% 2% 2% 1% 4% 2% 2% 2%
Human resource 0 1 — 1 0 2 7 9 4 3 25 32 42
   management policy
0% 0% — 0% 0% 1% 2% 1% 2% 1% 3% 2% 2%
Job design 5 32 — 37 8 41 31 80 13 43 139 195 312
6% 15% — 13% 5% 15% 9% 10% 7% 14% 16% 14% 13%
Leadership 0 26 — 26 2 61 33 96 11 86 95 192 314
0% 12% — 9% 1% 22% 9% 12% 6% 28% 11% 14% 13%
Management structure 5 11 — 16 12 17 21 50 21 62 116 199 265
6% 5% — 6% 7% 6% 6% 6% 12% 20% 13% 15% 11%
Motivation 15 55 — 70 18 76 105 199 46 72 265 383 652
19% 26% — 24% 11% 27% 30% 25% 25% 24% 30% 28% 27%
Organizational 22 23 — 45 12 28 46 86 45 28 93 166 297
   development
28% 11% — 16% 7% 10% 13% 11% 25% 9% 11% 12% 12%

(continued)
 Table 1. (continued)

1979-1988 1989-1998 1999-2008 Overall

ROPPA HRM IJHRM Total ROPPA HRM IJHRM Total ROPPA HRM IJHRM Total Total

Outsourcing 0 1 — 1 2 6 7 15 9 12 29 50 66
0% 0% — 0% 1% 2% 2% 2% 5% 4% 3% 4% 3%
Performance appraisal 10 14 — 24 12 48 32 92 17 58 85 160 276
13% 7% — 8% 7% 17% 9% 11% 9% 19% 10% 12% 11%
Politics 18 6 — 24 36 14 33 83 45 11 90 146 253
23% 3% — 8% 21% 5% 9% 10% 25% 4% 10% 11% 10%
Recruitment and selection 9 41 — 50 22 51 58 131 48 71 174 293 474
11% 20% — 17% 13% 18% 17% 16% 27% 23% 20% 21% 19%
Risk 1 5 — 6 1 2 2 5 5 13 19 37 48
1% 2% — 2% 1% 1% 1% 1% 3% 4% 2% 3% 2%
Teamwork 0 6 — 6 0 25 21 46 5 19 45 69 121
0% 3% — 2% 0% 9% 6% 6% 3% 6% 5% 5% 5%
Technology 0 22 — 22 2 33 32 67 10 50 91 151 240
0% 10% — 8% 1% 12% 9% 8% 6% 17% 10% 11% 10%
Training and development 27 135 — 162 52 186 218 456 76 201 477 754 1372
34% 64% — 56% 30% 66% 62% 57% 42% 66% 54% 55% 56%
Turnover 1 17 — 18 8 22 23 53 18 31 75 124 195
1% 8% — 6% 5% 8% 7% 7% 10% 10% 9% 9% 8%
Unions 8 16 — 24 9 5 55 69 15 9 83 107 200
10% 8% — 8% 5% 2% 16% 9% 8% 3% 9% 8% 8%
Note: ROPPA = Review of Public Personnel Administration; HRM = Human Resource Management; IJHRM = International Journal of Human Resource Management.

27
28 Review of Public Personnel Administration 30(1)

How similar and different are topics across journals? Although we might expect sig­
nificant differences across three human resource management journals that diverge
by sector and geographic audiences, the journals share striking similarities. Topics
ranging from accountability, attendance, benefits (indirect and postemployment), com­
pensation, diversity, outsourcing, recruitment and selection, turnover, and unions garner
similar amounts of attention across the journals in each of the time periods studied.
A smaller number of topics reflect wide divergence across the journals. Culture, for
example, gets strikingly less attention in ROPPA than in the other two journals. The
pattern is repeated for job design, leadership, and training and development. Effective­
ness, which is grouped with other keywords such as efficiency, productivity, profit,
and quality, also receives far less attention in ROPPA than the other journals.
Can leading and lagging relationships be identified? Information that may have a direct
bearing on future research is whether any leading or lagging relationships can be iden­
tified across journals and time periods. Research on issues may start in one journal and
subsequently diffuse to other journals. For instance, a search of the database indicates
that generic research about strategic human resource management was first published
in HRM in the early 1980s (Devanna, Fombrun, Tichy, & Warren, 1982) and did not
appear in ROPPA until 1993 (Perry, 1993).
An area where ROPPA content leads trends in HRM and IJHRM is the topics of
equal employment and affirmative action. In each of the three time periods, the
portion of ROPPA content related to articles in this group was, on average, about
10% greater than HRM and IJHRM. The fact that the relative differences in content
remained relatively stable over time suggests, however, that the level of emphasis
given to equal employment research in ROPPA is not diffusing to business or inter­
national contexts.
In several areas, ROPPA lags the volume of content given several topics, but the
gap with HRM and IJHRM appears to be closing. Research appearing in the culture
cluster increased across the three time periods in ROPPA, but culture received a higher
portion of attention in the other two journals in each time period. The pattern for
research in the effectiveness group followed a similar, but less pronounced pattern
over time. The percentage content ROPPA devotes to leadership, management struc­
ture, motivation, technology, and training and development also lags the volume of
attention given to these same topics in HRM and IJHRM.
It is important not to draw sweeping conclusions about the volume of attention each
journal gives to different research areas. The fact that ROPPA gives more attention
than the other journals to equal employment may reflect the centrality of social equity
in government contexts. Similarly, the consistently greater attention given to culture in
HRM and IJHRM could reflect editorial dispositions rather than anything fundamental
about business or international human resource management. At the same time, the dif­
ferences across journals and time periods are useful triggers to speculate about reasons
behind variations. To the extent that this speculation informs insights about directions
for future research, it supports the goals of the present study.
Perry 29

An Agenda for Strategic Public Human

Resource Management Research
So what does the preceding indicate about topics ripe for future strategic public human
resource management research? Using both the criteria associated with strategies for
building public administration theory and empirical differences across ROPPA, HRM,
and IJHRM, I propose five research agenda as high priorities for a strategic public
human resource management research. These research questions involve direct com­
pensation, motivation, culture and political context, efficacy and effectiveness, and
training and development. The agenda items I present below are not likely to exhaust
important areas for future research, but they merit priority because of their prospects for
closing gaps in knowledge, leveraging public sector research to inform the broader
understanding of human resource management, and simultaneously contributing to an
understanding of what is public.

Direct Compensation
As the research inventory showed, the volume of attention given to direct compensa­
tion in ROPPA is comparable with generic and international journals. Public sector
research has a good opportunity, however, to inform middle-range theory about both
market-based and contingent pay and identify the role played by public institutions.
Research outside of public administration suggests some theoretical and empirical
puzzles that public human resource management scholars can be instrumental in solv­
ing. An intriguing analysis of wage structures was reported by George Borjas (2003),
a labor economist at Harvard University. Borjas suggests that as public–private
wage structures have evolved, the relative skills of “marginal” persons who moved
across sectors also changed significantly. Increasing compression of wages in the
public sector has made it progressively harder for the public sector to attract and retain
high-skill workers. Widening wage inequality in the private sector coupled with a rela­
tively more stable wage distribution in the public sector “created magnetic effects that
altered the sorting of workers across sectors, with high-skill workers becoming more
likely to end up in the private sector” (p. 52). Quite obviously, macro–wage structures
are consequential for the public sector’s ability to attract and retain a quality work­
force. The effects of macro-structures, however, are poorly understood and have had
little or no influence on public policy, especially the dispersion and structure of gov­
ernment wages.
Intriguing puzzles also surround contingent pay. Both economists and organi­
zational behavior scholars have begun to question conventional wisdom about pay
structures (Frey & Osterloh, 2005), compensation and contingent pay (Frey, 1997;
Pfeffer, 1998). These arguments from disciplines outside the public human resource
management field lend credibility to what public administration scholars have argued
for some time—performance-related pay is less likely to work in government and
quasi-governmental organizations (Kellough & Nigro, 2002; Perry, Engbers, & Jun,
30 Review of Public Personnel Administration 30(1)

2009; Perry, Mesch, & Paarlberg, 2006). High-quality research on public compensation
could help to clarify existing puzzles and contribute to theory development.
Two recent studies provide ancillary support for the importance of compensation
research. Whitford (2006) calls attention to a fundamental question that has received
little attention in debates about public performance-related pay. The two main com­
ponents of pay—namely, base pay and contingent pay—jointly contribute to signaling
the importance of, and create incentives for, high performance. Thus, base pay is
an integral part of “performance pay” and merits future research attention. Both the
market competitiveness of an organization’s salaries and the ways in which it rewards
promotions send important signals about how performance is rewarded. Based on his
research on tournaments, Whitford (2006) argues that promotion tournaments in
public organization hierarchies might be more efficient than contingent pay systems.
Another intriguing prospect is raised by Colella, Paetzold, Zardkoohi, and Wesson
(2007) in a review of research on pay secrecy. The transparency constraint that public
institutions face contrasts with the secrecy (Colella et al., 2007) that prevails in many
private organizations. Research on pay secrecy is inconclusive, but it does suggest
private organizations that successfully use performance-related pay rely on secrecy
to sustain their systems (Colella et al., 2007). The transparency–secrecy continuum is
conceivably a critical mediating variable affecting the efficacy of performance-related
pay. Pay transparency, therefore, could threaten the efficacy of performance-related
pay and explain differential success rates across sectors.
One symbol of direct compensation’s strategic role in future public human resource
management research is that the December 2008 issue of ROPPA was devoted to public-
sector compensation. The special issue was the outgrowth of a large number of recent
manuscript submissions about compensation (Ledvinka, 2008), which led the editorial
board of the journal to conclude “that compensation issues are becoming increasingly
important in the public sector” (p. 304). I agree with this assessment.

Strategic agenda #1: Direct compensation, encompassing wages, salaries, and

contingent pay, deserves high priority to assess effects of public institu­
tions and pay policies, how pay structures influence attraction, retention,
and motivation, and how pay openness affects the efficacy of performance-
related pay.

Motivation
A theme closely related to compensation is motivation. Salary and wages affects moti­
vations to join and stay with an organization, and contingent pay is linked theoretically
to the motivation to perform. Financial remuneration, however, is just one of many
factors affecting motivation—and perhaps not the most important in public settings.
Although I noted above that research on motivation in ROPPA has been increasing, the
volume of attention lags what is given by HRM and IJHRM. Similar to compensation
research, public motivation research has a good prospect of informing middle-range
Perry 31

theory development about intrinsic rewards, altruism, prosocial behavior, and other-
regarding behavior.
Two factors make motivation strategic for a public human resource manage­
ment research agenda. First, several prominent middle-range theories, including self-
determination (Deci & Ryan, 2004) and job-design theory (Grant, 2007, 2008),
incorporate concepts such as intrinsic motivation and task or social significance of
work that have long been salient to both public practitioners and scholars. These
middle-range theories serve as bridges between scholars in organizational behavior,
social psychology, and public human resource management. Quality research by
public human resource management scholars has the prospect for informing both the
base of empirical knowledge about public settings and the wider development of
theory.
The second factor is the recent explosion in other-regarding motivation research that
has occurred across several fields. Within public administration, the volume of rese­
arch on public service motivation has increased significantly in the last decade (Perry
& Hondeghem, 2008a, 2008b). Complementary research emanates from economics,
organizational behavior, sociology, sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, develop­
mental psychology, social psychology, and political science (see Koehler & Rainey,
2008, for a review of this literature).
Job and work design. Although job design has long been recognized as an important
mediator of employee motivation and performance, it has not received the scholarly
attention it merits (Grant, 2007, 2008), particularly among public human resource
management scholars (Perry et al., 2006; Perry & Porter, 1982). As Table 1 shows,
job-design research, which occupies an entry in the table independent of the motiva­
tion entry, accounts for 13% of the content of the three journals, but only 6% to 7% of
the content of ROPPA.
Several recent and ongoing research and professional developments bear on the
need for greater attention to job design as a factor in the motivation equation. One is
the increasing attention being given to research on emotional labor (Guy, Newman,
& Mastracci, 2008), a theoretical perspective that closely touches on job-design
research. A practical development is the growth of outsourcing and how this growth
affects the nature of the work that is left “behind” in public organizations (Coggburn,
2007; Light, 1999). Two other longer term developments, government reform and
technological innovation, also have significant consequences for motivation in gen­
eral and work design specifically (Donahue, 2008; Perry, 1994; Perry & Kraemer,
1993). Moynihan (2008) argues, for instance, that new public management reforms
have had the effect of substituting weaker extrinsic rewards for more powerful intrin­
sic motivators.

Strategic agenda #2: Motivation research, including job and work design
research, deserves high priority to more clearly link individual dispositions
to institutional context and exploit opportunities to tie public human resource
management to well-developed motivational theories of the middle range.
32 Review of Public Personnel Administration 30(1)

Culture and Political Context

The keyword comparisons across journals reveal that one area where ROPPA content
has consistently lagged in comparison journals is culture. Although culture has been
given increasing attention in ROPPA in each of the three decades tracked in the data­
base, HRM and IJHRM have consistently devoted greater percentages of their content
to culture-related themes. The lag may be the product of the keywords we grouped
with culture, but several of the culture-related keywords, such as participation, values,
and responsibility, have strong traditions in public administration. An aspect of culture
that was grouped independently of culture was “politics,” an important cultural and
contextual element of public organizations. Thus, the disparities across the journals
are less than they appear initially.
An irony associated with the results is that culture research, broadly construed, has
historically made important contributions to public administration and public human
resource management research. Herbert Kaufman’s The Forest Ranger (1960) is a
classic case study highly influential in subsequent research (Luton, 2007). Culture
plays a prominent role in James Q. Wilson’s (1989) widely cited Bureaucracy. John
DiIulio’s (1994) analysis of culture in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons makes a central point
that rational choice models may explain and predict certain behaviors quite success­
fully, but they are unable to explain many behaviors with which we are familiar from
public service.
Job security and at-will employment. In the early 1980s, many American scholars and
business leaders looked with envy at the success of Japanese enterprises (Ouchi, 1981;
Pascale & Athos, 1981). One of the hallmarks of the Japanese system of management
was lifetime employment. At the same time that lifetime employment was touted as
key to high performance in Japan, the system of job security in U.S. governments was
being attacked as contrary to both high performance and democratic accountability
(Campbell, 1978; Savas & Ginsburg, 1973).
Turning the clock forward to today, we know that, judging by subsequent per­
formance of their economy, too much may have been made of the Japanese system
of management and implicit lifetime employment contracts. The attack on the job
security of government employees continues unabated, with states such as Georgia
and Florida and federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security,
leading the way in promoting at-will employment as an alternative to traditional
job tenure systems (Kellough & Nigro, 2006; Williams & Bowman, 2007). Reviews
of at-will employment systems have been largely negative. Williams and Bowman
(2007) write,

In summary, Service First was a poorly conceived initiative that was quickly
pushed through the legislature, a process that yielded “chaos.” It is another
example of an overreaching attempt to solve a perceived government problem
with a simplistic panacea promoted by a well-known public figure. (p. 73)
Perry 33

With as much attention as has been given to the centrality of property rights rules
in organizational culture in both the public and private sectors, theory and empirical
research about this subject is woefully underdeveloped. We tend to rely largely on
anecdote and ideological preferences when assessing how job security contributes to
culture and its role as both an independent and dependent variable in middle-range
theory. High-quality research in this area could advance middle-range theory and our
understanding of the uniqueness of public institutions in American and other societies.
Discretion. Increasing the discretion of public managers is considered a key element
in much of current reform rhetoric, presumed to aid in increasing agency efficiency and
effectiveness. However, many public agencies already allow for a large amount of
discretion to be wielded by managers (Hays & Sowa, 2006). This is another facet of
organizational and public agency culture that is not studied extensively.

Strategic agenda #3: High-quality studies on culture and politics would be

helpful for contextualizing public human resource management research and
would give us better foundations for answering what human resource initia­
tives are most appropriate to a particular context, why they succeed and fail,
and what types of change need to occur to increase probabilities for achiev­
ing intended outcomes.

Efficacy and Effectiveness

The reference in the preceding agenda item to “success” and “failure” triggers atten­
tion to the ancillary issues of effectiveness and performance. As more attention is
given to the output side of public organizations, in contrast to inputs, more research
needs to turn to assessing efficacy, effectiveness, and performance. The field of public
human resource management research has been attentive to evaluating the efficacy
and effectiveness of specific personnel policies (e.g., Rodgers & Hunter, 1992; Perry
et al., 2006; Perry et al., 2009; Thompson, 2008), but lags in making broader connec­
tions to human resource management and organizational strategy and performance.
The shortfall of public human resource management research to establish con­
nections to macro-performance is a deficit shared with the larger field of public
administration. Boyne (2003) acknowledges the research deficit in the theory behind
evaluating public service improvement. Forbes and Lynn (2005) also note the lack of
research on public management in evaluating the contribution it has to governmental
performance both in the American and international contexts.
Research about public human resource management and performance also has the
prospect of contributing to middle-range theory across organizations generally. Fleet­
wood and Hesketh (2006) argue that human resource management–performance research
is undertheorized and understudied. In the same vein, Elling and Thompson (2006) delve
into the relationship between human resources management and public performance.
Despite the dearth of past research, there are some precedents for holistic assess­
ments of human resource management and performance. Perry and Angle (1980)
studied labor relations in the heavily organized mass transit industry in California in
34 Review of Public Personnel Administration 30(1)

the late 1970s. Their study followed protocols for research on private labor relations
dating to the late 1940s and early 1950s. The focus of the mass transit study was to
assess how a range of workplace issues affected overall transit agency effectiveness.
Recently, O’Toole and Meier (2009) formally modeled the relationship between
human resource management practices and Texas school district performance.

Strategic agenda #4: Research is needed that compares the efficacy of human
resource practices across contexts, including sectors, using meta-analysis,
research synthesis, and other appropriate quantitative and qualitative methods.
Rigorous, theory-based research needs to assess human resource management
practices and performance holistically at the agency, organizational, and pro­
gram levels.

Training and Development

Another content area where ROPPA lags HRM and IJHRM is what is grouped in Table 1
as training and development. This category touches on keywords, such as training,
career development, education, and learning. In the first decade of ROPPA’s publica­
tion, 34% of all articles included these and other training and development keywords.
In its third decade of publication, 42% of ROPPA’s content included these keywords.
This contrasts, however, with 66% of HRM and 54% of IJHRM’s content.
The differences across the three journals are not, by themselves, a basis for includ­
ing training and development on the research agenda. Several other considerations,
however, elevate the importance of research about training and development. The first
consideration is sheer demographics—and the imminent wave of retirements and gen­
erational changes in public service. The second consideration is the shifting institutional
rules where more employees are attached to public service in ways quite different
from traditional, lifetime career systems (Perry, 1994, 2007). A third consideration is
the lack of theoretical guidance to help navigate implications of the changing makeup
of the public workforce with human capital development in public organizations.
Although the largest share of the training and development category involves train­
ing, much of this research is instrumental and focuses relatively narrowly on specific
training programs. Other streams of research must be explored to increase both theory
development and likelihood that the research will shed light on what is distinctively
public. Research on emotional labor (Guy et al., 2008), referred to above in conjunc­
tion with motivation, represents one prospective line for future research. Research in
the tradition of Adams and Balfour’s (2004) work on administrative evil, Colby and
Damon’s (1992) analysis of moral exemplars, Moynihan and Pandey’s (2007) analysis
of organizational socialization and public service motivation, and Youniss and col­
leagues studies of service and identity development (Yates & Youniss, 1996; Youniss,
McLellan, & Yates,1997) merit future attention.
Leadership development. Table 1 shows a large deficit between ROPPA, HRM, and
IJHRM in the area of leadership research. The deficit is one piece of evidence suggesting
a need for more research on leadership development. Other compelling reasons for
Perry 35

increasing the volume of research in leadership development are the generational turn­
over in public organizations and the need to better understand executive development
processes. Research on executive and leadership development should therefore be
among the training and development issues given high priority.

Strategic agenda #5: Future research should give high priority to cognitive,
emotional, and moral development of prospective and incumbent partici­
pants in public service, with particular attention to linkages between this
research and robust theories of the middle range. Although this research can
be directed to all participants in public service, special emphasis needs to be
given to leadership development.

Conclusion
This article has developed a strategic agenda for future public human resource manage­
ment research. I began by presenting several criteria for judging important research for
building the field. These criteria were supplemented by an inventory of the contents of
ROPPA and two other leading human resource management journals. The journals col­
lectively provided broad coverage of human resource management research across
sectors and between domestic and foreign contexts. The process resulted in five stra­
tegic agenda, encompassing direct compensation, motivation, culture and political
context, efficacy and effectiveness, and training and development.
In the strategic research agenda, I resisted the temptation to be all inclusive. I also
tried to avoid dwelling on an instrumental, temporally bound agenda in favor of issues
with longer term relevance. The selection criteria I proposed, however, can be used in
the future to pose questions for a changing agenda. The agenda I presented may not
exhaust all the important areas for future research, but they merit priority because of
their prospects for closing gaps in knowledge, leveraging public sector research to
inform the broader understanding of human resource management, and simultane­
ously contributing to an understanding of what is public.

Appendix
Search Term Results
Category With Search Terms No. of Hits Category With Search Terms No. of Hits

Accountability Total: 467 • Standards 102

• Accountability 21 • Total quality 38
• Cost 154 At-will employment Total: 7
• Evaluation 149 • At will employment 7
• Forecasting 14 Attendance Total: 49
• Shareholders 9 • Absenteeism 13
• Stakeholders 27 • Attendance 1
(continued)
36 Review of Public Personnel Administration 30(1)

Appendix (continued)
Category With Search Terms No. of Hits Category With Search Terms No. of Hits

• Discipline 40 Compensation (direct) Total: 257

• Tardiness 1 /pay/wages
• Time management 7 • Bonuses 6
Benefits (indirect) Total: 179 • Broadbanding 1
• Benefit 160 • Compensation 131
• Cafeteria benefit 2 • Compensation 46
• Child care 6 management
• Defined benefit packages 0 • Equal pay 10
• Dependent care 1 • Increases 31
• Employee benefits 6 • Market-based pay 2
• Family-friendly 11 • Merit pay 42
• Flexible scheduling 3 • New pay 2
• 4-day work week 0 • Pay for performance 13
• Fringe benefits 40 • Performance-based 12
• Health insurance 6 • Overtime 10
• Health plans 2 • Raises 16
• Insurance 19 • Salary 30
Benefits (postemployment) Total: 33 • Skill-based pay 6
• Early retirement 2 • Wage differentials 7
• Retirement 17 Communication Total: 432
• Pension 16 • Communication 166
• Severance pay 5 • Cooperation 36
Best practice Total: 244 • Informal 34
• Best practice 62 • Employee participation 86
• Models 112 • Miscommunication 0
• Paradigm 29 • Oral 150
• Trends 62 • Partnerships 16
• Uniform guidelines 4 Conflict Total: 151
Bureaucracy Total: 206 • Arbitration 17
• Authority 36 • Complaints 12
• Bureaucracy 20 • Conflict 78
• Discipline 40 • Dispute 24
• Hierarchy 16 • Dispute process 1
• Middle managers 26 • Dispute resolution 5
• Organization theory 3 • Grievance procedures 13
• Patronage 4 • Grievance rights 1
• Procedures 59 • Harassment 21
• Representative 2 • Labor disputes 3
bureaucracy • Mediation 17
• Resistance to change 10 • Role conflict 10
Careers Total: 84 • Whistle blowing 2
• Brain drain 2 Creativity Total: 14
• Burn out (psychology) 5 • Creativity 11
• Career advancement 12 • Creative ability 6
• Career plateau 6 Culture Total: 866
• Careers 64 • Behavioral modification 0
(continued)
Perry 37

Appendix (continued)
Category With Search Terms No. of Hits Category With Search Terms No. of Hits
• Competition 106 Diversity Total: 423
• Culture 381 • Ability, influence of age on 2
• Loyalty 61 • Age employment 1
• Intangible assets 3 • Age differences 2
• Interprofessional 3 • Age discrimination in 3
relations employment
• Management styles 110 • Baby boomers 3
• Mentoring 18 • Barriers to diversity 1
• Mission statement 1 • Bisexuals 1
• Office politics 3 • Diversity 117
• Participation 153 • Gay and lesbian 2
• Personality 34 • Gender 124
• Professionalism 9 • Group identity 11
• Responsibility 46 • Individuality 1
• Trust 69 • Integration 88
• Values 162 • Intercultural 12
• Workplace discipline 1 communication
Organizational development Total: 297 • Married women 2
• Administrative reform 5 • Multiculturalism 16
• Civil service reform 41 • Older people 6
• Decentralization 34 • Race 70
• Devolution 6 • Sex 95
• Innovation diffusion 2 • Stereotypes 12
• Organizational 18 • Young workers 4
development Effectiveness Total: 686
• Organization theory 3 • Business metrics 0
• Reform 143 • Effectiveness 290
• Restructuring 51 • Efficiency 76
• Succession planning 19 • Productivity 140
• Trends 62 • Profit 75
• Ambition 4 • Quality 267
• Biofeedback training 0 Equal employment Total: 190
• Business education 22 affirmative action
• Career development 150 • Affirmative action 34
• Certification 11 • Age discrimination 8
• Decision making 127 • Americans with 4
• Educationa 155 Disabilities Act
• Empowerment 55 • Civil rights 15
• Learning 134 • Civil Rights Act 10
• Personalb 70 • Disability 5
• Professional developmenta 13 • Discrimination 97
• Retraining 8 • Equal employment 14
• Self-managed learning 3 • Equal employment 9
• Traininga 343 opportunity
(continued)
38 Review of Public Personnel Administration 30(1)

Appendix (continued)
Category With Search Terms No. of Hits Category With Search Terms No. of Hits

• Equal protection 3 Leadership Total: 314

• Equality 39 • Catastrophic events 1
• Gender equity 4 • CEOs 15
• Job discrimination 1 • Charismatic authority 1
• Harassment 21 • Delegation 12
• Hostile work 1 • Human capital officers 1
environment • Leader–member exchange 3
• Minorities 17 • Leaders behavior 0
• Minority 30 • Leadership 257
• People with disabilities 5 • Leadership development 1
• Race discrimination 4 programs
• Reverse discrimination 0 • Leadership style 13
• Sex discrimination 30 • Mentoring 18
Ethics Total: 55 • Strategy officers 1
• Corruption 3 • Supervision 105
• Ethical behavior 1 Management structure Total: 265
• Ethical judgment 0 • Credibility 9
• Ethics 36 • First-line supervisors 5
• Moral 14 • Management structure 2
• Social norms 7 • New public management 10
Human resource management Total: 42 • Performance management 26
policy • Supervision 105
• Discipline strategies 1 • Supervisors 70
• Human capital management 2 • Trust 69
• Human resource policy 9 Motivation Total: 652
• Human resource 1 • Achievements 4
management policy • Altruism 3
• Strategic HRM 29 • External 104
Job design Total: 312 • Human-capital 1
• Advancement 39 • Internal 138
• Alternative work 4 • Job satisfaction 173
arrangements • Mission attachment 1
• Expectations 63 • Motivation 180
• Flex time 0 • Needs assessment 9
• Flexible time 0 • Occupational achievement 10
• Job description 24 • Two-factory theory 0
• Job design 7 • Public service motivation 7
• Job rotation 11 • Self-actualization 2
• Occupational segregation 5 • Self-determination 3
• Quality of work life 74 • Values 162
• Roles 105 • Work ethic 13
• Shift work 4 Outsourcing Total: 66
• Upward mobility 2 • Consulting firms 4
• Work design 13 • Contingent employees 1
• Working hours 2 • Contingent employment 3
(continued)
Perry 39

Appendix (continued)
Category With Search Terms No. of Hits Category With Search Terms No. of Hits

• Contract labor 3 • Risk taking 3

• Contracting 30 Teamwork Total: 121
• Outsourcing 21 • Collaboration 12
• Privatization 22 • Collaborative 9
• Temporary workers 4 • Team building 6
Performance appraisal Total: 276 • Teams 95
• 360 degree feedback 0 • Teamwork 30
• Behavioral assessment 2 Technology Total: 240
• Benchmarking 13 • Automation 5
• Competencies 84 • Computers 4
• Evaluation methodology 2 • Cyber-management 1
• Feedback 60 • E-government 1
• Job performance 76 • Human–computer 1
• Measurement 43 interaction
• Performance appraisal 75 • Human error 1
• Self-evaluation 7 • Information technology 49
• Task performance 7 • Internet 12
Politics Total: 253 • Technology 219
• Doctrines 2 • Telecommunication 15
• Political behavior 0 • Video conferencing 0
• Politics 40 • Web portals 1
• Public sector 129 • Web sites 6
• Regulation 90 Turnover Total: 195
Recruitment and selection Total: 474 • Dismissal 28
• Ability 361 • Exit interview 3
• Applicants 21 • Retention 73
• Assessment centers 7 • Termination 29
• Availability 21 • Turnover 97
• Behavioral event interview 1 Unions Total: 200
• Employability 10 • Collective bargaining 50
• Fairness 24 • Labor unions 108
• Hiring 34 • Labor–management 12
• Job description 24 relations
• Job fairs 1 • Labor policy 20
• Job hunting 8 • Public employee unions 3
• Job offers 2 • Trade unions 48
• Merit system 23 • Union growth 3
• Recruitment 85 • Union membership 6
• Recruitment and selection 16 • Union organizing 2
• Screening 9 • Union representation 3
• Selection 173 • Unionization 18
• Workforce planning 3 • Unions 153
Risk Total: 48
• Risk 48 a. Searched in the fields: “abstract,” “keywords,”
• Risk exposure 1 and “title.”
• Risk management 6 b. Searched in the fields: “keywords” and “title.”
40 Review of Public Personnel Administration 30(1)

Author’s Note

This article was prepared for the 30th Anniversary Symposium of the Review of Public Personnel
Administration, Jonathan West (Ed.).

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Mehmet Demircioglu and Ryan Graf for their assistance in the preparation
of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

Note
1. The information downloaded for each journal varied to some extent. For example, ROPPA
did not provide keywords during the early years of its publication so they could not be
included in the database for every ROPPA entry.

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Bio
James L. Perry is a distinguished professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, and World
Class University Distinguished Professor, Department of Public Administration, Yonsei Univer­
sity. He is recipient of the 2008 Dwight Waldo Award and coeditor of Motivation in Public
Management: The Call of Public Service (2008).