Human Resources Management and Training in Metropolitan Municipalities in Turkey

Introduction

In 1970, when Japanese competition started to affect western trade, Human Resources Management (HRM) developed as a management issue. In the development of HRM in the West, the addition of HRM to the Business Administration, the master program in the USA Harvard Business School in the year 1981, was a significant development, and after that, the process of teaching HRM started in many business schools and universities around the world (Benligiray, 2020, p. 10). With the understanding that human is the factor that makes a difference in the success of businesses that use similar technologies and methods in the fields of finance, marketing, and production in the 1980s, human resources, which have a broader meaning than the concept of personnel, have started to be used in order to reveal the importance of human for a business organization. The new needs that emerged in the 1980s and the change in the view of people created a change in the content of personnel management, and in many enterprises, personnel management signs were changed to HRM. Along with the developments, changes occurred in HRM in Turkey in the 1990s, and awareness that HRM is a field of expertise that requires professional knowledge has become widespread, and many businesses have started to implement human resources practices (Benligiray, 2013, p. 6-7).

HRM is referred to as the new name of management, formerly used as public personnel management, and HRM is cited as a combination of actions such as recruitment and selection, compensation and administration’s benefits, staff training and human resources development (Carnevale & Ham, 2005, p. 244). Many public institutions are moving towards a performance-oriented approach to the provision of public services, and HRM personnel are hoped to contribute to decisions concerning the main objectives of the state agency and personnel management. With the changing scope of work at public sector organizations, there is a need for a new stress on human capital management, and the aim here is to improve and support the strategic and operational objectives of the public agency (French & Goodman, 2012, p. 64).

In that context, local governments are important institutions at the local scale. The human factor is an essential issue for municipalities, special administrations, villages, the local administration unions established between them, and the human factor is one of the leading factors in forming institutions. Therefore, it is a necessity to analyze the human factor in local governments in a good way and to handle the human factor very well with the objectives of local governments’ becoming strong on the local scale and the public services’ provision most effectively and efficiently (Tamer, 2007, p. 20-21). Since the 2000’s within the framework of public administration reform, which has begun in Turkey, HRM principles’ have started to practice in municipal administrations, and Municipality Law No. 5393 has made strategic planning and performance management mandatory. Thus, there has been a transition from personnel management to HRM in municipal administrations (Bulut, Duruel, Kara & Bilbay, 2016, p. 5-6). In that regard, problems relating to the personnel management of the municipalities of different sizes in Turkey are listed as (Sadioğlu & Ömürgönülşen, 2013, p. 68); the existence of more than necessary and unqualified permanent workers, civil servant-worker balance not being in line with the norm staff principles and standards, the presence of permanent workers with more than the number of civil servants, the low rate of contracted employees in the total employees.