Article

Government Officials’ Self-Assessed Expertise and Subject Organizational Performance: Does Recruitment Type Matter?

Seyoung Oh1, Hyejin Kang2,*
Author Information & Copyright
1Institute of Information, Knowledge and Policy, Seoul National University, South Korea, E-mail: wlfmdth@snu.ac.kr.
2Kyungnam University, South Korea, E-mail: hjkang@kyungnam.ac.kr.
*Corresponding author : E-mail: hjkang@kyungnam.ac.kr

ⓒ Copyright 2021 Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Dec 17, 2020; Accepted: Jun 01, 2021

Published Online: Jun 30, 2021

Abstract

This study verified whether the relationship between self-assessed expertise and subject organizational performance of government officials in South Korea would vary depending on the type of recruitment system—open competitive examination for recruitment (OCER) and mid-career competitive recruitment (MCCR). Multiple regression analysis was conducted using Public Employee Perception Survey data from the Korea Institute of Public Administration. The results demonstrated that self-assessed expertise positively affected organizational performance. However, when the two groups were analyzed separately, self-assessed professionalism was not a significant factor in the MCCR model. Additionally, the mediation effect of work autonomy was confirmed between the two models; the mediation effect was present in the OCER group, but not in the MCCR group. The results suggest that creating conditions for work and personnel management that allow MCCR employees to maximize their expertise is necessary, however, the government’s current personnel management system prevents their expertise from being fully utilized.

Keywords: recruitment system; self-assessed expertise; subject organizational performance; human resource management