Comparison of Public Human Resource Management Between China and United States

Comparison of Public Human Resource Management between China and United States

In nowadays, people pay more and more attention to the government’s central position in the economy and the society. An effective government, regarding to the economy, the society and even the government development is absolutely necessary. The various countries experience indicated that, an effective government surely is a function limited government, behavior legally achievement government, authority multi- centers disposition government, decision-making highly democratic government, information highly transparent government and naturally also a government has an intelligent, capable and high morale employee team. All of these depend on an advanced modern Public Human Resources Management System (PHRMS) since no matter making policy, providing services or managing contracts, the ability of the government is always decided by their talented employees.

The modern PHRMS has many components, including recruitment, training, promotion, layoff, wages bonus, rights protection and so on. The characteristic of recruitment is that not based on individual relations, as “who do you know”, but based on individual competence by the competitive employment exams such as written exam, interview and so on. According to the position, the exams may be nationwide, regional or just in a department. As same as the recruitment, promotion does not depend on personal relationship either, but competence and performance. Thus, employee can keep paying much more attention on their working performance, not consider a lot to please their superiors. In public sectors, since salaries and wages are generally above average level in society, and there is a suitable disparity between the upper and lower classification, a lot of talented employee are able to congregate in the important administrative and strategic positions. In one word, the core characteristic of modern PHRMS is that not to appoint people by favoritism, but through competitive recruitment, promotion and inspiring system to ensure the employee on duty is most suitable to their positions.

In China, before 1993, PHRMS is executive based on the cadre system. The cadre system basically is one identity system. In other words, the entire society divides into two types of people: one is cadre that in the govern position and the other one is populace that in the position to be governed, including workers and farmers. Once a person is identified as a cadre, he/she will have the relevant reputation, the social viscounty and the welfare treatment to this classification.

Besides this identity characteristic, the cadre system also has the following characteristics.

It is lack of administration. The personnel appointment basically depends upon the nomination by the administrative method. As long as not making any grave mistake, the person who gets appointment as a cadre is able to enjoy the cadre treatment all lifelong. This form of decision-making on employee selection and assignment by the minority leadership and the organization department is only responsible to implement the command, has the very strong subjectivity and the capriciousness. Other than this form, the decision is also possible to be made by the observance of seniority. The cadre assessment only has a qualitative standard, lacks a quantitative standard, thinks much of political standard and neglects service and performance inspection.

The cadre extends widely. Not only it contains national agency's staff except logistic personnel, the state-owned enterprise employees except blue-collar workers, but also includes the political party, institution, demotic organization staffs and even also includes the staff working in the temple. This characteristic fits the integration demand of economy, society and politics in the planned economy time very well since all the employees in the public sectors are all assigned by the state, their wages are all uniform paid by the state and all of them work for the whole state.

On October 1st, 1993, Ministry of Personnel of the People’s Republic of China (MOP) officially declared 《 Public Organization Employee Temporary Regulations 》. That is a milestone for the establishment of PHRMS in China. Later on, based on this regulation, there are more important national laws announced by MOP such as 《 Public Organization Employee Recruitment Temporary Regulations 》, 《 Public Organization Employee Promotion Temporary Regulations 》， 《 Public Organization Employee Resign and Layoff Temporary Regulations 》， 《 Public Organization Employee Training Temporary Regulations 》，《Public Organization Employee Appeal Temporary Regulations 》 and so on. These