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For public organizations, municipalities in particular, the issue of personnel costs has taken on more significance as administrators are faced with diminishing sources of revenue and an overall loss in purchasing power. Public managers must therefore face the challenge of this new era of government and develop appropriate strategies for effectively utilizing their human resources. One such set of strategies is the use of formal management tools.

Personnel management is vitally important to the maintenance and preservation of the administrative state and its democratic institutions. This reaction critically examines the personnel recommendations made by Floyd W. Reeves and Paul T. David in their study Personnel Administration in the Federal Service. It questions the degree to which there is a coherent set of political and constitutional expectations marking the progress of personnel policy that might enable us to forecast the future, both theoretically and practically. The authors highlight how and why the field should pay greater attention to the political ends that our personnel theories serve.

This study analyzes the linkages between misgovernment, administrative environmental challenges, personnel mismanagement dysfunctions and underdevelopment. The work is at the same time descriptive, explanatory and prescriptive, providing blueprints for reforms.

Strategic human resource management (SHRM) is an enhancement in the effectiveness of personnel management which has developed out of pressures for change in the way organizations manage human resources. It consists of common elements found in a variety of public and private employers: recognition that human resources are critical; a shift from position management to work and employees; more innovation; asset development and cost control; and a transition from EEO/AA compliance to work force diversity.