In 1988, the Australian Federal Government released the document Higher Education: A Policy Statement which was intended to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the higher education sector. This paved the way for the application of performance indicators (Pls) across higher education, most notably the creation of a link between Pls (called the Composite Index) and the research component of the annual government funding to universities. Although PIS for teaching became popular, funding for the teaching component was not directly attached to PIS and remained largely based on student enrolments. The purpose of this study is to examine the perceptions of university academics in Australia on the effects of research and teaching as a result of the introduction of funding based on research Pls. The academic literature suggests that Pls can bring about desirable effects but it also warns that their imposition, particularly by the government on universities, may lead to unintended and undesirable effects, such as goal displacement and strategic manipulation, which may be designed to enhance apparent research performance. To guide the investigation, it was hypothesised that the government's Pls which focus on research will be integrated into the universities' internal policies; will encourage universities to place a high priority on the research activities funded by the Pls; will lead to significantly more paperwork; will contribute to a significant change in the approach to research but not to teaching; and will result in academics adopting negative attitudes towards Pls. Two basic sources of information were obtained to evaluate these hypotheses. First, the administrations of selected universities were consulted, and staff interviewed, to gauge the degree of change that had been implemented by the universities. Second, a questionnaire was constructed in order to assess academics' attitude towards Pls, and their perceptions of an association between Pls and their institutional reward system. The questionnaire also assessed changes in research, teaching and paperwork activities. The universities selected characterised the different kinds of universities found in the Unified National System of the Australian higher education system. One hundred and fifty-two academics from these universities were surveyed by the questionnaire. Thirty percent of these academics participated in a structured interview. The disciplines from which the academics were selected for participation included arts/humanities, science, and professional studies which included a natural science based profession and a social science based profession. In addition, a case study of one of these universities was carried out. The institutions were found to have reorganised their internal policies to incorporate and focus on the Pls in the government's Composite Index. The academics surveyed were generally found to have negative attitude towards their institutional Pls, although staff of higher rank had relatively more positive views. Reasons for their dissatisfaction included the inability of Pls to capture the various dimensions of academic work and privileging research over teaching. For a majority of the academics, the introduction of Pls was associated with a rise in paperwork load and a change in the approach to research in terms of focusing on publications and external research grant applications, particularly those counted in their institutional PI-based funding schemes. The time devoted to these activities, as well as the number of publications and grants for which they were expected to apply, have significantly increased. It was found that staff did use various strategies to maximise their PI scores, such as writing shorter papers in order to increase the quantity of publications. The proportion who changed their approach to teaching was also sizeable; most of them were concerned about getting students through their courses with minimum fuss by having lower ambitions for students and pandering to their superficial needs. However, the proportion who changed their teaching was significantly less than those who changed their research. One possible reason could be the lack of special incentives to increase their emphasis on teaching.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010. / Submitted to Centre for Environment, Agriculture and Development. Full text also available online. Scroll down for electronic link.

Economic performance assessment (EPA) of control systems is receiving increasing attention in both academia and industry. It addresses the estimation of the potential benefits resulting from control upgrade projects and monitoring and improvement of economic performance of the control system. Economic performance of control systems can often be related to crucial controlled variables dynamically and when controlled variables move away from an optimal operating point either more profit will be made or more cost will be incurred. This relation can be modelled by performance functions (PFs). When the multivariate nature of a process’s economic model is not considered, PFs of different controlled variables are referred to as individual performance functions. Otherwise, PFs of dependent controlled variables are referred to as joint performance functions. PFs play an important role in the latest techniques of EPA. There appears, however, to be no systematic method for developing PFs. The lack of such a method restrains further research into EPA, as without well-established PFs an EPA cannot be conducted smoothly and therefore cannot effectively support decision-making for management. The development of PFs is a bottleneck in the further research into EPA. Furthermore, the multivariate nature of processes has not been taken into account sufficiently as far as the relevant literature is concerned, which hampers the accuracy of PFs and accordingly the accuracy of economic assessment results. The contributions of this thesis lie in the following aspects: • A methodology for developing PFs is proposed, based on the PF development for an electric arc furnace, a grinding mill circuit and a stage of a bleach plant. • A comprehensive case study of an EPA of three controllers of a grinding mill circuit is conducted using a newly published framework to show the significance of PFs and how to perform an EPA systematically. • The current practice and guidelines on the control and functional/economic performance assessment of grinding mill circuits are captured using a survey study. The multivariate nature of an electric arc furnace’s economic model is investigated and joint performance functions are built based on individual performance functions. A multivariate economic assessment is conducted that shows how joint performance functions can help to provide a more accurate estimate of the economic performance of a controlled process. A web-based survey study on grinding mill circuits in mineral processing industries is conducted. One of its objectives is to obtain general PFs of grinding circuits. The survey results provide instructive insight into the PFs of grinding circuits. Furthermore, an in-depth literature review is conducted and the relationship between the product’s particle size distribution of grinding mill circuits and mineral recovery in downstream flotation circuits is revealed. The PFs of a grinding mill circuit being considered are formed, based on the survey results and literature study. An investigation into the PF development of a stage of a bleach plant is performed and crucial ideas used for their development are abstracted. A methodology for developing PFs for the EPA of control systems is then proposed by synthesising the methods used in the PF development described above. This methodology mainly includes the following stages: Stage 1: Determine information required for PF development. • Process operation and control understanding. • Process economics understanding. Stage 2: Gain required information on PF development. • PF-related information elicitation using survey research. • PF-related information available in the literature, including textbooks, journal papers, conference papers. • PF-related information from plant tests. Stage 3: Obtain suitable performance measures. Stage 4: Make suitable assumptions. Stage 5: Determine PFs. Stage 6: Develop Joint PFs. An economic assessment of three controllers (a nonlinear model predictive controller, a decentralized controller and three single-loop proportional-integral-derivative controllers) of the considered grinding mill circuit is conducted, using an EPA framework published recently to show the central role of PFs in the EPA and how to perform an EPA systematically. The circuit’s PFs, developed as described above, are used for the assessment. The EPA also shows that the improvement in the economic performance with the nonlinear model predictive controller mainly results from the improvement of the operating point and the controlled variables’ variation reduction only contributes a small part to the overall improvement, due to the characteristic of the PF of the circuit’s product particle size distribution. In addition, a web-based survey study is conducted and the current practice and guidelines on the control and functional/economic performance assessment of grinding mill circuits are captured. The questionnaire used for the study includes five segments. The first part identifies the respondents and the second part is intended to obtain background information on the milling circuits. The third part concerns the choice of key process variables and their economic impact. Part four involves the control of milling circuits and control loop performance and part five covers economic issues. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

The Performance Management System (PMS) has been introduced in the Republic of South African public service with intentions of planning, monitoring, developing under-performance, rating and rewarding good performance. The study was undertaken as an attempt to investigate the impact of the PMS on employees of the ECPL. The literature review shows that there are challenges facing the institution with regards to implementation of PMS. The findings of the study indicated that the supervisors have no understanding of PMS instead they used it as punishing tool. Other findings of the study showed that there’s a culture within the institution of using PMS as a money making scheme or a 14th checque. To achieve this, a semi- structured questionnaire was issued to employees of the ECPL. The recommendation on the basis of the study is that the compliance issue should be strengthened and disciplinary measures be taken against employees who failed to comply with the provisions of the PMS policy.

This Master Thesis aims to provide an overview of performance measurement systems both business and team related and to analyse their application spectrum. Based on the theoretical analysis, a new framework was created, including all relevant factors to analyse team performance. Thus the research questions of whether performance is measurable and what factors influence performance were investigated. The team performance framework (TPF) and the results from its application are presented in the practical part. The TPF includes different factors influencing team performance, such as input factors, motivation, communication, and output factors. This academic research concludes that various factors influence performance but that simplistic theoretical models still cannot catch the whole complex picture of reality.

Thesis (MPH.) -- University of Limpopo, 2016. / The South African government has introduced PMDS as a tool to monitor and manage the performances of departments, institutions, teams and individuals in order to improve service delivery, and to counteract the legacy of poor performance. In order for the government to achieve this goal, PMDS implementers must be equipped with adequate knowledge and skills which will enable them to implement the system correctly, in compliance with the standards and procedures laid down in the government PMDS policy. The aim of the study was to determine the knowledge and practices of PMDS of supervisors who are tasked with the responsibility to supervise their subordinates. Methods A cross sectional descriptive quantitative study was carried out in the Greater Tzaneen Primary Health Care facilities. A total of 117 participants comprising of professional nurses, operational managers and assistant managers completed the questionnaires. These comprised largely of close-ended questions and some open- ended questions. Analysis of data was done using statistical software, SPSS 22.0 version and results were interpreted. Results Generally all the respondents had average (65.8%) understanding of the PMDS processes including the purpose and their roles as supervisors. However, a gap exists between the theoretical knowledge and the actual ability to practise PMDS which was found to be around 52%. There are areas of weakness that still need attention: unavailability of PMDS guidelines, lack of training of both supervisors and employees. Lastly, the nature of challenges which the respondents reported regarding PMDS implementation signifies that there might be underlying problems with PMDS which were not covered by this study, and these challenges, by far outweigh their confident knowledge and ability to practise PMDS. v Conclusion To improve the knowledge and ability to supervise PMDS, the following recommendations were brought forth: proper induction of all PMDS supervisors and periodic in-service training, PMDS policy manuals as a source of reference to be made available in the facility and all supervisors to be orientated how to use them.

Although there is substantial literature on the use of performance appraisal in the for-profit world, there is little literature available concerning the appraisal of staff positions in higher education. More knowledge is needed in this area since there is considerable research indicating that performance appraisal creates benefits to an organization and its employees. This study provides a comprehensive review of the development and use of performance appraisal in the United States, and a detailed look at the purposes, benefits, and challenges of performance appraisal. The study found a very high usage of staff performance appraisal in its population of 108 Christian colleges and universities. However, it also found a significant amount of dissatisfaction with the appraisal process due to (a) lack of leadership support for the appraisal process, (b) supervisors not being held accountable for the timely completion of their appraisals, and (c) the lack of training provided supervisors for doing performance appraisals well.

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This study contributes to the performance measurement (PM) literature by providing validated measures of PM system use and increased understanding of the impact of PM use on organizational outcomes. The purpose of this study was to articulate and test the relationships between PM system use, organizational learning, and organizational performance by taking into account the effects of PM-related technical factors (namely, PM system maturity and review process (RP) maturity). The concept of PM use was explored through the examination of its underlying processes, as reflected in the literature and two case studies, and a set of practices delineating PM use processes were proposed. Following a scale development approach, a measurement instrument of PM use was developed and validated with empirical data collected through a web-based questionnaire. The results from factor analysis showed the need to revise the initial set of PM use practices into five dimensions: monitoring, problem-finding, problem-solving, validating causal relationships, and validating improvement actions. Additionally, new measures were developed to assess PM and RP maturity factors. The factor analysis results identified four maturity variables: managed RP, optimized RP, PM design and PM implementation. Data from 216 managers participating in RP meetings were used to test the hypothesized relationships via partial least square (PLS). The results provide varying support for the hypotheses defined. First, the results show that monitoring directly impacts organizational performance while problem-finding, problem-solving and validating causal relationships indirectly impact organizational performance through shared vision and team learning. These indirect effects were positive in some cases and negative in others, depending on the direction of the relationship between the use variable and the organizational learning variable. Second, validating improvement actions did not influence organizational outcomes. Finally, the only moderating effect found was managed RP on the relationship between validating causal relationships and financial performance. Because of the weak support for moderating effects, an alternative model was proposed, exploring these maturity variables as antecedents of PM use. The results provided substantial support for this alternate model. Practical implications and areas for future research are also identified and discussed. / Ph. D.