Basic Report

The purpose of this study is to identify the appropriate manpower scale of local governments based on characteristics of municipality functions and analysis of the distribution of manpower by functions. In this study, the following analysis was carried out based on the theoretical discussion on the size of the local public officials and the previous research.First, we analyzed the status and change trend of manpower by function using the survey data of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. The function allocation by function has changed considerably over the past 10 years (from 2007 to 2016). The functions that are continuously decreasing are the support function, the industrial economic function, the environmental function, the urban housing function, while the functions that show an increasing tendency are the functions of culture and tourism, health and welfare functions, and fire fighting and disaster prevention civil defense. This is in line with the trend of emphasizing cultural, welfare and safety functions as a major function of the nation.In addition, we also use the data to analyze the change in the distribution of manpower by function by selecting representative local governments with increasing or decreasing population growth rate. As a result, the welfare functions of health and welfare were most sensitive to the change of administrative demand according to the population increase in the regional local governments. In the basic local governments, regional development function and industrial economic function are most sensitive Respectively.Next, based on statute or work data, we analyze whether characteristics of work and administrative demand according to function is labor-intensive or capital-intensive. As a result of analysis, it can be concluded that the financial function, health welfare function, fire - fighting defense civil defense function, which are part of the support function, have labor intensive characteristics and the remaining functions- cultural tourism function, industrial economic function, environmental function, urban housing function, regional development function- are capital intensive characteristics. In the case of capital intensive characteristics, as the administrative demand increases, economies of scale that do not necessarily increase manpower appear. This was confirmed through a scatter plot of the number of manpower and population by function.Based on this analysis, the manpower model was estimated by using the panel data that combined the local government manpower data and the administrative demand data. The log function, which is a nonlinear function, is applied to functions with economies of scale. Population and area variables are included as the main variables in the function. In addition to the 10 variables used for calculating the standard labor cost, cultural facilities, and fisheries variables are added. The characteristics of office work carried out by the regional local governments and the basic local governments may be different from each other. The regression model is estimated by using the panel data from 2013 to 2015 for each of nine local governments types or by regional and basic local governments. The results of the simulation analysis are compared with the number of public officials in the actual local government.This study is a study on the optimal manpower scale of local autonomous entities. Therefore, it is suggested through multidimensional analysis that it is more reasonable to consider such characteristics when estimating the manpower scale to prepare for the administrative demand. Because the nature of office work differs for each function performed by local governments, the way to cope with the increase and decrease of administrative demand will be different. This study suggests not only a more in - depth discussion than the previous discussion, but also suggests some implications for the personnel management of the local government. In particular, it provides useful theoretical and empirical grounds for determining the size of manpower by function. Such research needs to be continued in the future.The limitations of this study are that they did not discuss the demand variables that represent each function more in depth. Of course, we tried to increase the fit of the manpower estimation model by function, which was not included in the existing standard labor cost model. However, data at the level of the basic local governments are often not publicized, so that the appropriate variables are not obtained sufficiently and there is a model in which the explanatory power of each function is low due to these limitations. In addition, we did not use the data to verify the economies of scale in setting each functional model. Although we have tried to prove economies of scale through various analyzes, there is still a lack of verification through inductive analysis. Lastly, manpower sclae of local government to be analyzed in this study is limited to the number of civil servants. In fact, the scope of the workforce performing the functions of the local government can be extended to temporary workers and even civil contractors. It is not easy to approach such matters as the limitations of data so far, although it can only be referred to as genuine local government workforce size when all of them are included, so it should be left as a research task in the future.