Remit of research group

The research group ‘HRM and leadership for Public Service’ (formerly known as ‘Public Personnel Policies’) focuses on people management and leadership in public organizations or organizations providing public services, with attention to the role of context. The group appreciates original research, diversity of research approaches, and invites theoretical and empirical research papers, based on qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods.

The research group is concerned with three core clusters of research related to HRM and leadership: people management, public service performance, and context. These clusters do not limit or exhaust the range of research questions that papers can address.

People Management

Leadership is both about the design of mission, vision and strategy at the top level of organizations, and the style of leadership that motivates employees to contribute to achieving public service performance. A variety of factors affect how managers at different levels implement HR policies, such as knowledge and abilities, support from HR staff, red tape, and the discretionary room. Recognizing the important role that public managers play at different levels calls for research that focuses on their very implementation of HR policies and leadership, as well as research of the antecedents and consequences of their people management.

Public Service Performance

Public organizations that create value are organizations that perform. Research on public service performance reflects the various dimensions of performance and tensions and trade-offs that may exist between performance outcomes related to different stakeholders, such as employee well-being and organizational efficiency. Attention to the gains and losses to different stakeholders produced by implementing HR policies is important as it may differ between groups of employees of different professions, tenure, and experience, as well as other stakeholders such as service recipients or other managers in the organization.

Context

To better understand the link between people management and public service performance, the role of context is crucial. There are significant differences between countries and sectors, not just in terms of organizational ownership (degree of publicness), but also in terms of the choice/voice position citizens have. Further, societal developments impact public organizations’ capacity to align their HR policies with the meaningful public services they want to provide. Finally, economic, social, and demographic challenges confront public organizations with the need to change, raising the very question again about the importance of people management and leadership to support public service performance.

Organization of the research programme

Abstracts of proposed papers should be uploaded through the submission website. Abstracts should introduce the research question that the paper will address and briefly elaborate on the theoretical framework that informs the paper. In addition, abstracts should account for the research on which the paper is based, including research design and methods of data collection and analysis in the case of empirical research papers. The abstract must not exceed 400 words, excluding references. Please include references as they are not included the word limit.

Next to rigorous quantitative and qualitative research, we encourage researchers to submit theoretical work reflecting on and developing the research themes discussed above. In addition, we encourage (early career) scholars to submit abstracts of research proposals. This makes it possible to receive valuable feedback and input at a very early stage of a research project. Paper proposals that are also submitted to other panels are not accepted for presentations in the research group to ensure equal opportunities for all participants.

Papers that are already undergoing a peer review process in an academic journal orwith a publisher are not welcome for presentation in the research group.

AI declaration

All authors contributing to the research group are expected to adhere to the guidelines for AI-use, provided by Taylor & Francis: https://taylorandfrancis.com/our-policies/ai-policy/