Managerial flexibility versus employee-friendly flexibility: the internal labour market of Taiwan’s civil service

Abstract

This article addresses the highly flexible internal labour market of Taiwan’s civil service that is quite different from the corresponding labour markers in the West. In contrast to managerial flexibility that is popular in the West, Taiwan’s system – as employee-friendly flexibility – allows for a high degree of flexible choices in job transfers for junior civil servants. The system, which has not been influenced by ideas of new public management, is conducive to a high degree of job mobility for civil servants during their early career paths. On the positive side, this job mobility broadens the experiences of civil servants for career advancement, mitigates conflicts caused by a poor person-environment fit, breaks through the promotion bottleneck, and helps the state retain talent. On the negative side, it makes manpower planning difficult, causes an internal brain drain, and encourages withdrawal behaviour. An analysis of it contributes to the understanding of public human resource management in a non-Western context, which shows a different logic of development from the West.