This edition of Government at a Glance: Western Balkans included two composite indexes on human resource management (HRM) practices. They are: 1) delegation in human resources management practices; and 2) separate human resources practices for senior civil servants. Data used to construct the composite indexes were derived from 2019 Survey for the Western Balkans on Strategic Human Resources Management and the data for the OECD averages from the 2016 OECD survey on Strategic Human Resources Management. Survey respondents were predominantly senior officials in central government HRM departments, and data refer only to HRM practices at the central government level.
The composites presented here, including the variables comprising each index and their relative weights, are based on concepts that reflect contemporary public sector HRM developments and dilemmas on how best to manage human resources in the public sector in the 21st century. These include characteristics of HRM practices that were previously reviewed by the OECD’s Working Party on Public Employment and Management in 2016. In order to eliminate scale effects, all the variables were normalised between “0” and “1” prior to the final computation of the index.
The narrowly defined composite indexes presented in this publication represent the best way of summarising discrete, qualitative information on key aspects of HRM practices. However, the development of composite indexes and their use can also be controversial, as these indexes are easily and often misinterpreted by users due to a lack of transparency as to how they were generated, resulting in difficulties understanding what they are actually measuring. When making cross-country comparisons, it is crucial to consider that definitions of the civil services, as well as the organisations governed at the central level of government, may differ across countries.