Abstract
THE future position of the Civil Service in Great Britain turns on two fundamental factors: first, the adequacy of the methods at present in use in the Civil Service for handling the new and wider range of problems with which it is called upon to deal in the discharge of a new and more positive conception of government, and what changes, if any, are required to enable it the better to discharge those functions; secondly, the capacity of its personnel to handle those problems constructively, imaginatively and efficiently, with its corollary, the consideration of methods of the recruitment, training and tradition of the Service. It is not, of course, possible to separate questions of methods and men in practice quite so sharply. The personnel of a Civil Service may be defective because of lack of inherent capacity, but the presence of competent or incompetent officers in the Service and their subsequent attainments are determined largely by the methods of recruitment and training employed, just as the tradition of the Service has a large influence on its attractiveness as a career for the ablest minds and finest characters in the community it serves. Equally, it is true that no perfection of administrative methods and machinery will ensure efficient functioning unless the Service attracts administrative ability as well as integrity.
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Social Sciences and the Civil Service. Nature 155, 767–769 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/155767a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/155767a0