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.

<p>Performance management is not a new area within IO psychology research, however recently there has been growing interest with how to increase its effectiveness. Scholars are calling for more research to examine the antecedents of actual performance management behaviors that managers enact on a daily basis. The current study addresses this gap by utilizing Implicit Person Theory to understand the effect of supervisor perceptions on their behaviors that contribute towards the goal(s) of performance management. Previous research has suggested that Implicit Person Theory leads to more coaching behaviors, however, has failed to identify an explanatory mechanism. The current study relies on the three-component model of commitment to offer a mediating variable between Implicit Person Theory and differing degrees of performance management behaviors due to its more proximal relationship to the target behaviors compared to the broad antecedent of perception of others. The researchers tested this mediation using survey data from a broad sample of supervisors across the United States. Managers’ Incrementalism was positively and significantly related to discretionary performance management behaviors via affective commitment to performance management, however the relationship between Incrementalism and focal performance management behaviors via continuance commitment was non-significant. This research extends previous performance management research by providing evidence for the influence of key supervisor attitudes and implicit beliefs on varying levels of performance management behaviors. Theoretical contributions, limitations and future research directions are discussed.</p>

The primary objective of this research was to determine the sources of tension during assessment processes and what could be done to improve employee performance in the Tshwane West District Office of the Gauteng Department of Education. In order to achieve the stated objective of the research, a sequential, explanatory, mixed method was employed in this research. The findings of the research reflected the sources of tension during the assessment process as a result of the lack of training on the part of managers on how to manage tension during the process. Managers are overburdened with work and they cannot cope with the number of employees under their supervision. This negatively affects the manner in which they conduct the assessments. Work balance and a distribution of tasks would assist in this regard. In addition, employees perceive the process as unfair and biased. Therefore, they have developed a negative attitude toward the system. To address the above challenges, this research proposes that managers involved in the performance management process should undergo training to equip them with skills to manage tension during assessments. An employee wellness programme should be made available to assist employees who are stressed about strained relations between them and their managers. A human resource representative could also be invited to sit in during performance reviews as a way of ensuring fairness and objectivity. It is also critical for managers to ensure that they are approachable to their own subordinates so that they have the opportunity to raise their concerns. / Public Administration and Management / M. (Public Administration)

Bakgrund och problem: Ekonomistyrning måste anpassas till respektive företags förutsättningar. Företag kan tillämpas olika strategier i syfte att uppnå deras vision varav en strategi är outsourcing. Outsourcing innebär att en extern part kontrakteras att utföra en viss aktivitet för en annan organisations räkning. Denna form av struktur får dock inverkan på verksamhetens förmåga att skapa målkongruens eftersom det innebär att även den externa partens målsättningar måste stämma överens med organisationens målsättningar. Ytterligare problematik uppstår när outsourcing tillämpas till flertalet externa organisationer i form av agenter. Problematik i förhållandet mellan agenten och den styrande verksamheten beskrivs i teorin av fenomenet agency theory och dess underliggande antagande om att respektive part kommer att agera utefter sina egna intressen och målsättningar. Att styra en verksamhet till målkongruens under dessa förutsättningar blir därmed komplext. Syfte: Studien ämnar förklara komplexiteten i styrning när outsourcing tillämpas på en avdelning som består av agenter. Utöver detta ska studien också beskriva hur styrning implementeras och vilka styrmedel som appliceras för de olika avdelningarna inom fallföretaget i jämförelse med den outsourcade avdelningen. Studien syftar därmed till att undersöka hur styrning kan utformas för att uppnå målkongruens i en verksamhet inom husbyggnadsbranschen som har valt att tillämpa outsourcing på försäljningsavdelningen.  Metod: Studien har tagit ansats i en kvalitativ forskningsmetod och tillämpat en enfallsstudie som forskningsdesign. Vidare har insamlingen av det empiriska materialet utgått från semistrukturerade intervjuer. Slutsats: Styrning mot målkongruens när outsourcing tillämpas uppnås genom att respektive avdelnings samt individers målsättningar sammanlänkas med organisationens målsättningar, vilket också överensstämmer med vad teorin definierar som tillvägagångssätt för att uppnå målkongruens. I syfte att den externa organisationen ska tillta ett målkongruent beteende bör vinstmaximering ligga till grund för utformningen av eventuell budget och målsättning i den outsourcade verksamheten. / Background and problem: Management control must be adapted to the circumstances of each company. Companies can apply different strategies to achieve their vision, one being outsourcing. Outsourcing means that an external party is contracted to perform a certain activity on behalf of another organization. However, this form of structure has an impact on the business's ability to create target congruence because it means that the external party's objectives must be in line with the organisation's objectives. Further problems arise when outsourcing is applied to multiple external organizations in the form of agents. Problems within the relationship between the agent and the business that controls are described as the phenomenon of agency theory and its underlying assumption that each party will act according to its own interests and objectives. Controlling a business to target congruence under these conditions is thereby complex. Purpose: The study aims to explain the complexity of control when outsourcing is applied to a department that consists of agents. In addition to this, the study will also describe how control is implemented and how control mechanisms are applied to the various departments within the case company in comparison to the outsourced department. The aim of this study is thereby to investigate how control can be designed to achieve target congruence in an activity in the house construction industry that has chosen to apply outsourcing to the sales department. Method: The study has taken a qualitative research and applied a case study as a research design. Furthermore, the collection of the empirical material has been based on semi- structured interviews. Conclusion: Control towards goal congruence when outsourcing is applied is achieved by linking the objectives of each department and individuals with the goals of the organization. This is also in line with what the theory defines as the approach to achieving goal congruence. In order to achieve a goal-congruent behaviour, the external organization should use of profit maximization in every budget and objectives in the outsourced activity.

Manufacturers have in recent years become more and more aware of the benefits of offering more comprehensive value propositions. As the economic climate changes, more manufacturers are trying to capture value further downstream in the value chain by providing services. The field of performance management has been extensively adopted in production and the benefits of performance measurement have been widely praised both in literature and in business. The literature on performance management has also extended into service management and how to manage service performance. But how can performance measurement and performance measurement systems be implemented when the line between products and services becomes more and more unclear? Over a twenty week period, the researchers have studied, analyzed, and observed the procedures at Scania CV’s maintenance development and delivery organization. The study was conducted on Scania’s premises in Södertälje, Sweden. Scania’s Preventative Maintenance Development group develops and sets the requirements for the preventative maintenance programs Scania offers to its customers. The group had a desire to track and measure what effects changes made in the maintenance program have on the customer’s life cycle profit. At Scania’s Preventative Maintenance Development group, there is a developed performance measurement system, MPI-model, consisting of maintenance performance indicators (MPIs). The current MPI-model, however, lacks practical applicability. The master thesis has aimed at investigating how the MPI-model could be implemented in the preventative maintenance development by researching what criteria are set in literature for performance measures, how existing resources can be employed, and how performance measurement systems can be used. Apart from conducting a case study, in order to investigate how performance measurement systems could be implemented, an extensive literature review was also conducted to provide the necessary theoretical knowledge. The result of the study was a proposed three-step model that clarifies the requirements for the implementation of a performance measurement system.

The study was designed to explore how nurses at a non-union pediatric hospital make meaning of the feedback they receive during their career from their annual appraisals. The qualitative study design used a survey, and from the survey participants, 21 interviewees were selected. Based on the survey responses and categorizing those responses by standard deviation from the mean, three groups were determined. It was expected that there would be differentiated patterns by group. The study identified seven findings that were consistent with the literature. However, there was one surprise. The recipients’ appraisal rating/score on their most recent appraisal was expected to impact their view of their experience, but this was not found to be the case. In fact, those with the lowest survey response scores (least favorable sentiment about appraisals) had the same or higher appraisal ratings when compared to the other two survey groups. With few exceptions, the interviewees expressed a wide variety of responses to interview questions, which is a sign of the dysfunction and lack of alignment of the appraisal tool, its administration, and recipients’ expectations. As a result, there was a lack of a common experience among the interviewees in total as well as within each of the three groups. What was confirmed was that appraisal recipients placed different priorities on multiple variables (experiential learning, coaching, process, power, bias, motivation, learning environment, feedback) that can interfere with the feedback between the leader and the recipient. This can limit the effectiveness of the appraisal and the meaning the recipients make from the feedback. The Introduction chapter highlighted that many employers are struggling with appraisals, as evidenced by the number of major companies over the last few years looking for new ways of providing feedback and casting the traditional appraisal aside. Appraisals are widely used, and much of the research has been completed by researchers in Psychology or Human Resources. Most often, the recipient has not been the focus of the research, or an Adult Learning lens was used. Understanding how an appraisal recipient makes meaning is complex and likely beyond the training and ability of most leaders. As a result, a principal recommendation of this study is that an intermediary who is a highly trained coach be integrated into the appraisal process for all employees. This would allow a personalized approach to be developed for each employee within a standard process.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Performance management is not a new area within IO psychology research, however recently there has been growing interest with how to increase its effectiveness. Scholars are calling for more research to examine the antecedents of actual performance management behaviors that managers enact on a daily basis. The current study addresses this gap by utilizing Implicit Person Theory to understand the effect of supervisor perceptions on their behaviors that contribute towards the goal(s) of performance management. Previous research has suggested that Implicit Person Theory leads to more coaching behaviors, however, has failed to identify an explanatory mechanism. The current study relies on the three-component model of commitment to offer a mediating variable between Implicit Person Theory and differing degrees of performance management behaviors due to its more proximal relationship to the target behaviors compared to the broad antecedent of perception of others. The researchers tested this mediation using survey data from a broad sample of supervisors across the United States. Managers’ Incrementalism was positively and significantly related to discretionary performance management behaviors via affective commitment to performance management, however the relationship between Incrementalism and focal performance management behaviors via continuance commitment was non-significant. This research extends previous performance management research by providing evidence for the influence of key supervisor attitudes and implicit beliefs on varying levels of performance management behaviors. Theoretical contributions, limitations and future research directions are discussed.

Existing scholarship in public sector results-based management (RBM) mostly conceptualizes implementation as an isomorphic process. Researchers frequently look at implementation from a top-down driven approach which conjures images of public servants as automatons who merely sustain RBM practices due to institutional pressures on behaviour. To that effect, little is known around how agency dynamically intersects with institutions not only to maintain, but also to create and disrupt RBM institutions through implementation. Combining institutional pressures and institutional work as theoretical frameworks, this study deploys qualitative content analysis on institutional instruments such as archival materials, as well as semi-structured interviews with Chief Results and Delivery Officers (CRDOs), to identify the various institutional pressures acting on public servants, the different types of institutional work activities performed during implementation of the Results Agenda, and how such actions contribute to the creation, maintenance, and disruption of institutional RBM regime within Canadian public sector. The agency of public servants bears heavily on how CRDOs perceive, understand, and respond to implementation pressures from institutional Results Agenda. The study finds that Results Agenda implementation is not a straightforward, linear, and exclusively top-down political and administrative centre driven activity. CRDOs overwhelmingly perform nuanced and overt actions that at times support, build on, and confront institutional Results Agenda imposed by the centres. This unique and evolving dynamic between institutions and agency intentionally and unintentionally reproduces, maintains, and alters institutional Results Agenda features within Canadian federal public sector. Given the importance of RBM systems in Canada’s federal public organisations, the insights from this study can shed light on how public servants implement institutional RBM and create, maintain, and disrupt centre driven institutional RBM through agency. Finally, this dissertation advances the methodological utility of integrating institutional work for combined empirical and interpretive social action research on institutional RBM implementation.

When management sets performance goals the expectation is that employees should strive to reach them, they are used to drive motivation and increase performance. However, the task of instituting performance goals should not be taken lightly. The goals need to fair, measurable, and accepted by the employees who are to adopt them. There are pitfalls to avoid when setting up performance management systems. If goals are not fair, they can breed resentment against the performance management system. If goals are not easily measurable, their validity in the view of the employees can fade as they cannot tell if their work impacts the goals. This thesis examines the deployment of a performance management application to bolster an already existing performance management system. The thesis involves both the construction of the application, using theory from the field of performance management to inspire its functions, and the investigation into how the application affects increased performance and job satisfaction for the employees who uses it. Thus, the thesis takes theories from performance management, some with their genesis before the digital age; and applied them in a digital format, investigating how well they apply within the space of a web application. The analysis concludes that employing a web application as part of a performance management system can increase engagement with that system. However, if that system is poorly implemented, the positive effects sought from a performance management system, increased performance and job satisfaction, can turn into negative effects such as increased negative stress for the employees. In the studied case, the existing performance management system was poorly fit for some employees, and well fit for others. The result of deploying the web application was increased engagement and a high affect for the web application by those for whom the system fit well, and low engagement and negative affect for the web application by those for whom the system fit poorly. Additionally, implementing competitions made the application more appealing and caused employees to actively use it. Thus, making employees seek to engage more with the underlying performance management system. / När chefer sätter mål för arbetare finns en förväntan att arbetarna ska jobba för att uppnå dem, målen används för att driva motivation och att få arbetarna att uppnå högre produktivitet. Men, innan mål sätts bör dessa tänkas igenom grundligt. Målen måste vara rättvisa, mätbara, och accepteras av arbetarna som komma att arbeta under dem. Om målen inte år rättvisa kan dem leda till negativt anseende av förtaget från arbetarna. Om målen inte är mätbara kan deras validitet ifrågasättas då arbetarna inte kan se om deras arbete tar dem närmare att uppfylla målen. Detta examensarbete undersöker vad som händer när en performance managementwebbapplikation används för att förstärka ett existerande performance management-system. Examensarbetet innefattar både konstruktionen av applikationen, och undersökningen av hur applikationen påverkar produktivitet och jobbnöjdhet för arbetarna som använder applikationen. Därav tar examensarbetet teorier från fältet performance management, vissa uttänkta innan digitaliseringens ålder, och undersöker hur dessa fungerar inom ramarna för en webbapplikation. Analysens slutsats är att en webbapplikation med syftet att komplettera ett underliggande performance management-system kan öka arbetarnas engagemang gentemot det underliggande systemet. Dock, om det underliggande systemet lider av brister kan de önskade positiva effekterna av systemet, ökad produktivitet och jobbnöjdhet, vändas till negativa effekter som ökad stress för arbetarna. I det studerade fallet var det underliggande performance management-systemet välanpassat för de flesta arbetare, men dåligt anpassat för en mindre grupp. Resultatet av att införa applikationen var ökat engagemang och uppskattning för performance management-systemet och webbapplikationen från de arbetare för vilka systemet var välanpassat, men lågt engagemang och låg uppskattning för de arbetare för vilka systemet passade dåligt. Ytterligare, implementationen av tävlingar i applikationen gjorde applikationen mer attraktiv och rolig att använda för arbetarna. Detta ledde till att arbetarna sökte sig till applikationen, och därmed sökte sig till att engagera mer med det underliggande performance management-systemet.

The amount of data is growing fast with the advance of data capturing and management technologies. However, data from different source are often isolated and not ready to be analyzed together as one data set. The effort of connecting pieces of isolated data into a unified data set is time consuming and often costly in terms of cognitive load and programming time. To address this problem, here we proposed an approach using machine learning to augment human intelligence in the data unification process, especially complex categorical data value unification. Many aspects of useful information are extracted from supervised machine learning models, then used to amplify intelligence of human experts in various aspects of the data unification process. An empirical study is performed applying the proposed methodology to the field of Asset Performance Management, specifically focus only on the performance of equipment asset. The experiments show that machine learning helps experts in the unification standard generation, unified value suggestion, batch data unification. We conclude that machine learning models contain valuable information that can facilitate the data unification process. / Master of Science