Equality of Opportunity? Sex, Race, and Occupational Advantages in Promotion to Top-Level Management

We examine how occupation, race, and sex interact to affect employees’ probability of promotion to the upper reaches of federal agencies’ personnel hierarchies. Three interrelated questions draw our attention. First, we are interested in whether employees who are members of an agency’s dominant occupational group are more likely to be promoted to Senior Executive Service (SES) positions than employees who are members of non-dominant occupational groups. Second, we are interested in whether any such occupational advantage, if it exists, is enjoyed equally by white men, white women, men of color, and women of color. Third, we examine whether the magnitude of dominant occupational advantages varies between agencies. We use rich, micro-level personnel data that span the years 1979–2013 to address these questions. Our results suggest that members of dominant occupations are more likely to be promoted than members of non-dominant occupations; that white men, white women, men of color, and women of color tend to benefit from this advantage equally; and that occupational advantages vary considerably between agencies.

Shedding New Light on Strategic Human Resource Management: The Impact of Human Resource Management Practices and Human Resources on the Perception of Federal Agency Mission Accomplishment

We assess the resource-based view in the study of strategic human resource management in public agencies. We mainly examine the impact of both human resource management (HRM) practices and actual human resources on the perception of federal agency mission accomplishment. We show that all types of goal-aligned and performance-based HRM practices (including rewards, training, appraisal, and recruitment) positively affect perceived agency mission accomplishment. In addition, certain types of human resources (including the percentage of career senior executive service members and organizational size) contribute to perceived agency mission accomplishment although others (including the percentage of professionals and noncareer senior executive service members) make negative contributions. Strategic knowledge, regarding an organization’s valuable, rare, inimitable, and nontradable resources—in both HRM practices and human resources—can help improve perceived federal agency mission accomplishment.

Race and Gender Representation in Presidential Appointments, SES, and GS Levels, During Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations

Achieving a representative bureaucracy that reflects the attitudes, values, and policy choices of women and racial minorities is imperative, as the gap in the representation of those groups in the federal workforce is growing. We examine to what extent female and minority representation in political appointments, Senior Executive Service (SES), and General Schedule (GS) 1-15 levels reflect presidents’ commitment to diversity. We use data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to compare the tenures of presidents William J. Clinton (1993 to 2000), George W. Bush (2001-2008), and Barack H. Obama (2009-2013), and examine the employment trends from 1993 to 2013.