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Doctoral Thesis École d’études politiques/School of Political Studies Programme d’administration publique/Public Administration Program DOCTORAL THESIS Rules, Practices and Narratives: Institutional Change and Canadian Federal Staffing 1908 to 2018 by Darlene Zimmerman A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public Administration © Darlene Zimmerman, Ottawa, Canada, 2019 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Christian Rouillard; his experience, pith and humour were enduringly helpful. I would also like to express my sincere appreciation to my committee members and to all of the public servants who generously agreed to participate. A great number of colleagues and friends are recognized for their kind and continued interest and enthusiastic support. However, I would like to offer my most particular thanks to: Patrick Amyot, Douglas Dempster, Jennifer Hartley, Wellsley Hamilton, Edith Kehoe and Bill Matthews. To Laura who made every part of the PhD better; to my son Gabriel, who makes every part of life better and to Karen, Christine and the whole gang for always being there. This thesis is dedicated with most loving memory to Alan Nymark Extraordinary individual and family member Life-long learner and federal deputy minister ii Abstract Within the Canadian government, studies associated with staffing the federal public service have been endemic for over a century. Despite this, concerns about lack of change and dissatisfaction with staffing (too slow, too complex) remain hallmarks. The Public Service Modernization Act (PSMA) was introduced in 2003 as a means to bring about transformative change and yet, following a nearly two year study, the PSMA Review Report (2011) found that virtually no one was satisfied with changes in key aspects of the human resource and staffing regime. A strong desire for change was noted as existing, however, a diluted sense of ownership and powerlessness to change were also noted, even among the most powerful federal communities – deputy ministers, executives, and central agencies. As Canada’s largest employer, with an annual payroll that has been estimated at $22 billion and, with another era of potential change launched with the Public Service Commission’s 2016 introduction of New Directions in Staffing, federal staffing can be viewed as both timely and warranting academic examination. This dissertation combines the strengths of institutional change literature from political science, sociology and economics to examine the institution of federal staffing in the core public administration. It focuses on an extended period of time in order to identify if any substantive changes have occurred despite popular views of negligible change and to examine why change may not have occurred to advance toward the long expressed goal of simplified, efficient staffing of highly qualified (meritorious) public servants. This mixed methods case study uses documentary, archival, and qualitative and quantitative secondary source material as well as input from 49 semi-structured interviews with a variety of Canadian federal managerial and human resource representatives. It identifies and addresses issues that have only at times been identified and, others not typically detailed in government reports, particularly those associated with culture and path dependent history. Issues examined include power relations and key narratives as well as evolving ideas and logics of appropriateness that shape behaviour, some of which continue to exert pressure on current organizational and institutional choices despite having been in existence for, in some cases, 50 or 100 years. Some ideas for change are offered but this study suggests without attention to long-standing and systemic issues only highly incremental change should be expected. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. ii Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents .................................................................................................................... iv Lists of Acronyms, Tables & Figures ............................................................................... vii 1 INTRODUCTION AND STUDY OVERVIEW .................................................................. 1 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 1 1.2 Staffing Studies Over Time ................................................................................................................... 4 1.3 The Research Question: Why Study Federal Staffing ................................................................ 5 1.4 Federal Staffing: An Overview ............................................................................................................. 9 1.5 The Present Study: Examining Institutional Change and Maintenance ......................... 13 1.6 Concluding Observations ................................................................................................................... 17 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................... 22 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 22 2.2 Varieties of Institutionalism and the Study of Public Management ................................ 22 2.3 Rational Choice Institutionalism (New Institutional Economics – NIE) ........................ 29 2.4 Historical Institutionalism (HI) ....................................................................................................... 38 2.5 Sociological (Organizational) Institutionalism (SI) ................................................................ 46 2.6 Observations on Institutional Literature .................................................................................... 57 2.7 Conceptual Framework ....................................................................................................................... 58 3 METHODOLOGY .............................................................................................................. 63 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 63 3.2 Research Design ..................................................................................................................................... 63 3.2.1 Study Orientation .......................................................................................................................... 63 3.2.2 An Abductive Approach .............................................................................................................. 64 3.2.3 Mixed Methods and Case Study Research .......................................................................... 66 3.2.4 The Use of Case Studies .............................................................................................................. 67 3.3 Data Collection And Construction .................................................................................................. 69 3.3.1 Mixed Methods in Data Collection ......................................................................................... 69 3.3.2 Organizational (Site) Selection ................................................................................................ 70 3.4 Participant Selection and the Interview Process ..................................................................... 76 3.4.1 Participant Selection .................................................................................................................... 76 3.4.2 The Interviewing Process .......................................................................................................... 79 3.4.3 Concluding Observations on the Interview Process ...................................................... 81 3.5 Historical Documentation and the Challenge of Selection ................................................... 83 3.6 Analytic Approaches ............................................................................................................................. 85 3.6.1 Thematic Coding ............................................................................................................................ 85 3.6.2 Discourse Analysis as an Explanatory Resource ............................................................. 87 3.7 Study Limitations and Challenges .................................................................................................. 88 iv 4 ANALYSIS PART I: THE PRESENT ............................................................................. 94 4.1 Introduction: Situating Institutional Change and Maintenance ........................................ 94 4.2 Thematic Analysis: Participant Interviews ................................................................................ 95 4.3 Narratives of Fear, Powerful Agents and Institutionalized Practices .......................... 104 4.3.1 Risk Aversion and Institutional Maintenance ...............................................................
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