Managing Government Agencies with Open Labor Markets

One of the big issues in the social sciences, and arguably the biggest issue in employment, is how to hire the right people. Much of the practice of behavioral research has been devoted to selection, that is, picking the right candidate from among applicants. The topic of recruiting, broadly defined, has received much less attention, except in economics, where search models put a premium on the notion of the potential candidate's decision to sign up for different employers.

Making use of self-selection is central to many economic models of hiring and, in turn, to explanations about the fit between hires and the unique concerns of the organization. The authors of this chapter extend that general approach to consider what might be unique about the public sector and the associated self-selection into government work – and out of it – that would be desirable for employees there and ultimately for government. Considering the flow of employees out of government explicitly is an important innovation in the model that should be adapted not just to formal models of employment but to more empirical investigations.