Book excerpt: Now in a thoroughly revised 7th edition, Public Personnel Management focuses on the critical issues and common processes in the management of public sector personnel. In keeping with prior editions, the text centers on the core processes within public human resource management: strategic workforce planning, effective recruitment and retention, workforce development, and employee relations. Designed to further address the ways in which expectations for human resource managers have changed and developed in recent years, the 7th edition includes several new features and improvements: Substantially restructured, updated, and additional case studies and student exercises. Coverage of how the field of Public HRM has been influenced by the two most recent national recessions, economic downturns at the state and local level, privatization and contracting trends at all levels of government, the growing presence of millennial employees in the workplace, issues surrounding social media use within the workplace, the evolving goals of social equity and diversity, and the shifting role and influence of labor unions. Discussions of how the growth in information technology capabilities has influenced the major processes within HRM, from workforce analysis through big data analytics to the explosion in automated recruitment, assessment, and instructional technologies. For the first time, the text includes an online Instructor's Manual, PowerPoint slides, discussion questions, and suggestions for further reading to make it even easier to assign and use this classic text in the classroom. Providing the most up-to-date and thorough overview of the history and practice of public human resource management for both undergraduate and graduate students, Public Personnel Management, 7e remains the beloved text it ever was, ideal for introductory courses in Public Personnel Management, Public Human Resource Management, and Nonprofit Personnel Management.