Thirty Years of ROPPA: Past Trends and Future Prospects

In the fall of 1980, the inaugural issue of the Review of Public Personnel Administration was published. This symposium celebrates the 30-year anniversary of ROPPA. The articles in the symposium look back and forward to take stock of the current state of the public human resource management (HRM) field. This introduction reviews publishing trends in the journal over the past 30 years, including the contributions of editors and authors, the subject matter of articles published in the journal, the most frequent contributors, and the Review of Public Personnel Administration's impact. The introduction concludes with highlights from the five articles appearing in this symposium and their focus on critical issues in the field, including a strategic research agenda for HRM, workforce diversity, performance-based pay, labor-management relations, and public HRM education.