« Taiwan Journal of Political Science No.32Publish: 2007/06

How Public Managers Manage Their Poor Performers: A Comparison and Analysis of Taiwan and the United States

Author: Hsiu-Chuan Tsai

Abstract / Chinese PDF Download

Based  on  the  traditional  expectation  that  governments  should  be  exemplaryemployers, most governments initiate many protective personnel policies and lawsto  manage  their  employees.  Those  protective  policies  include  permanent  careeropportunities,  job  security  and  motivational  mechanisms.  At  the  same  time,governments don’t have many effective programs to manage their poor performers.Faced  with  high  performance  requirements  from  the  public,  governments  can  nolonger  passively  manage  their  poor  performers.  Governments  need  to  strengthenmanagement  of  poor  performers  in  the  public  sector  more  than  ever  before.  Thispaper  attempts  to  analyze  and  compare  the  attitudes  of  public  managers  towardspoor  performers  in  Taiwan  and  United  States.  Through  literature  review  andsecondary analysis, it is found that public managers of the two governments havesimilar attitudes on this topic. The remainder of this paper therefore discusses twoissues.  Firstly,  implications  of  the  study  findings.  Secondly,  this  paper  articulatessome suggestions to the Taiwan government.

Keywords:civil servant、performance management、poor performer、public manager、strategic human resource management