M.Ed. / Die literatuurondersoek het aangedui dat daar ‘n groot dispariteit is in die toewysing van befondsingshulpbronne en steun wat aan skole toegeken word wat daartoe gelei het dat daar verskillende tipes en kwaliteit van onderwys aan leerders in Suid-Afrika aangebied is. Die evalueringsprosesse van die verlede, nie slegs in Suid-Afrika nie maar ook in Australië, die Verenigde Koninkryk en die Verenigde State van Amerika het hiërargiese verhoudings beklemtoon en die evaluering van opvoeders was na bewering ‘n werktuig van hiërargiese en sosiale beheer. Die meerderheid van opvoeders in Suid-Afrika was agterdogtig oor die inspeksiestelsel van die verlede en hulle het weerstand gebied deur die mobilisering van vakunie-ondersteuning, met die resultaat dat hulle die inspekteurs en die lede van die skoolbestuur verbied het om hulle klaskamers te betree. Die verwerping van die apartheidsonderwysstelsel het daartoe gelei dat swart skole aan die stryd vir demokrasie meegedoen het. Die klimaks was die 1976 Soweto-onluste, wat uiteindelik daartoe gelei het dat die onderrig- en leerkultuur in baie van die swart skole ‘n mislukking was (Smith & Ngoma-Maema, 2001:10). Met die geboorte van demokrasie in Suid-Afrika, het die land radikale veranderinge in alle aspekte, insluitend die onderwys ondergaan. Dit het dus noodsaaklik geword dat die demokratiese regering en die departement van onderwys die kwaliteit van die onderwys moes verbeter, veral na die swak matrikulasieresultate van 1995 tot 2000. ‘n Veldtog is geloods om skole aan te moedig om ‘n onderrig- en leerkultuur (OLK) te skep. Dit is in hierdie konteks dat Geheelskool Evaluering (GSE) tot stand gekom het om die nege voorafgedefinieerde areas van die skool te evalueer. Hierdie navorsing handel oor een van die areas van Geheelskool Evaluering, en spesifiek ‘kwaliteit onderwys’. Die Geheelskool Evalueringsbeleid skryf die opvoederbevoegdhede vir kwaliteit onderwys voor. ‘n Vraelys is opgestel om vas te stel wat die persepsies van opvoeders is in verband met die belangrikheid van die vaardighede vir kwaliteit onderwys. Die vraelys het bestaan uit 75 items in verband met essensiële opvoedervaardighede. ‘n Gestratifiseerde gerieflikheidsteekproef wat uit 600 deelnemers bestaan het is in hierdie studie gebruik. Die vraelyste is na opvoeders in Mpumalanga en KwaZulu-Natal versprei. Die voltooide vraelyste is versamel en na die Statistiese Konsultasiediens van die Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit gestuur sodat statistiese toetse gedoen kon word. Die statistiese toetse het een (1) tweede orde-faktor aangedui, naamlik ‘die belangrikheid van opvoedervaardigheid vir kwaliteit onderwys', met ‘n Alpha Cronbach betroubaarheidskoëffisiënt van 0,982 wat as baie betroubaar beskou word aangesien dit groter is as 0,7. Twee of meer onafhanklike groepe is vergelyk en dit is bevind dat al die onafhanklike groepe van mening was dat opvoedervaardigheid tot ‘n wisselende graad belangrik vir kwaliteit onderwys is. Die bevindinge dui aan dat die volgende onafhanklike groepe sterker as ander van mening was dat opvoedervaardigheid uiters belangrik vir kwaliteit onderwys is, naamlik: die Christene as Godsdiensgroep, die Afrikaanse moedertaalgroep, die uitstekende leerder-bywoningsgroep, die uitstekende opvoeder-bywoningsgroep en die uitstekende skoolbeeldgroep. Dit blyk dat uitstekende bywoning deur leerders en opvoeders en die positiewe beeld van die skool verband hou met ‘n gesonde skoolklimaat waar daar goeie dissipline is. Die bevindinge dui ook aan dat daar meriete is in die assessering van essensiële opvoedervaardighede en dit regverdig die titel Die volgende gevolgtrekkings is na aanleiding van hierdie navorsing gemaak: • Geheelskool Evaluering (GSE) is ‘n sistematiese benadering tot totale skoolverbetering wat elke aspek van ‘n skool inkorporeer om die kwaliteit van opvoeding te verbeter. Daar is bevind dat die nege (9) areas • wat deur die GSE bepaal is inderdaad relevant is vir die evaluering van skole in Suid-Afrika; • die beste manier om opvoedervaardigheid te konseptualiseer is deur ‘n integrasie van die kenmerke van individue (kennis, vaardighede, neigings en waardes) met die eise van die take en aktiwiteite (Gonczi, 2002:4); • die beste manier om opvoedervaardigheid te assesseer is deur die holistiese geïntegreerde metode te gebruik waardeur vaardigheid van die opvoeder se prestasie afgelei kan word. Hierdie metode bestaan uit die kombinering van kennis, begrip, vaardighede, houdings/waardes, etiek en probleemoplossing; en • opvoeders wat aan hierdie navorsing deelgeneem het was van mening dat die vaardighede wat deur die GSE geïdentifiseer is, inderdaad belangrik is vir kwaliteit onderwys. Die algemene en spesifieke doelwitte van hierdie navorsingsprojek is bereik en onderwerpe vir verdere navorsing is voorgestel.

M.Ed. / Over the years, and even now, the Department of Education is busy trying to find a better method of managing and empowering educators with the aim of attaining whole school development. The South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) as early as 1992 proposed an educator developmental appraisal system. Workshops are currently conducted to facilitate the implementation of DAS (developmental appraisal system) at schools. This study concentrates on peer appraisal of educators as an aspect of educator management and its contribution to whole school development. The literature indicated that educators are dissatisfied with the traditional appraisal instruments and the old inspection system. Hence it was abolished on the basis that it was not transparent, not developmental and not democratic (SADTU, 1999(a):61). Information obtained from different books clearly states that peer appraisal is a process that directly involves all the educators in a school. It stresses the mutual understanding, transparency and capacity building among the educators. This research used a structured questionnaire to collect data on the opmwns of the respondents in seven of the nine provinces in South Africa. The questionnaire contained 79 items and seven of these items were relevant to peer appraisal. The structured questionnaires were distributed to a convenient stratified sample of educators in seven of the nine provinces. Based on the information from the questionnaire, each item relevant to this particular research was analysed and discussed. After the factor analysis, the significance of the difference between the factor mean scores of various groups for each of the factors that make up whole school development were analysed and explained. The data obtained indicates that peer appraisal of educators has a positive impact on the professional development of educators. An atmosphere of collegial relationships among staff is a pre-requisite for whole school development. It appears as if the learning and teaching process can be improved through the implementation of peer appraisal m schools.

In recent years, challenging economic conditions have stressed organizations, some to breaking point. Rather than waiting for external improvements, such as market growth or technological advances, many organizations are looking internally for performance and productivity gains (Boxall and Purcell, 2003). Consequently, the concept of performance management is receiving increased attention as a route to improved results and organisational growth (Boxall and Purcell, 2003). Likewise, increasing public pressure on governments to improve service delivery and account for the public purse have also forced many governments worldwide to implement a performance management system in one form or another (Ohemeng, 2009; Cameron and Sewell, 2003; Williams, 2005; Sehested, 2008). The South African Public Service has undergone much transformation since 2000. The transformation has been motivated by the Government’s realisation that, as with governments throughout the world, there is a need to modernise and professionalise all spheres of Government. The guiding principles for this transformation are contained in the White Paper on the Transformation of the Public Service (1995) and the Batho Pele White Paper (1997). This has informed the Public Service Act: Act 32 of 2000 of which stipulates that public service organisations should have a performance management system to promote a culture of performance management amongst all staff. The performance management system must ensure that the public service administers its affairs in an economical, effective, efficient and accountable manner. Whereas performance management systems have been in existence in some parts of the world since the early 1970s (Armstrong and Baron, 2005), in the Eastern Cape Provincial Government (ECPG) the Performance Management and Development System (PMDS) can be considered to still be in its infancy stage. It was introduced slightly over a decade ago, with the objective of managing performance in a consultative, supportive and non-discriminatory manner (ECPG, 2001). The PMDS also aims to provide clarity to all employees on their role in the achievement of departmental and provincial goals. This was anticipated to result in enhanced organisational efficiency and effectiveness, accountability for the use of resources and the achievement of results (ECPG, 2001). 4 A literature review contained in this research indicates that internationally and locally, implementing performance management systems is beset with challenges such as conflicting interests between different groups such as professionals wanting autonomy, organisational culture, poor implementation, lack of capacity and resources, lack of institutional and leadership support, changing workplace environments and many others. However it has also been shown that performance management systems are one way of ensuring that employees are focused, goals are met and organisation move forward toward meeting their mission. This research, which has been grounded within a post positivist paradigm, describes the impact of the PMDS on veterinarians in their professional conduct. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten veterinarians within the Department, culminating in a total of seven and a half hours of interviewing time. The findings of this study were that the PMDS was minimally effective in achieving organisational goals and mission because of several reasons such as inconsistency in application, perceived unfairness, a lack of ownership of the system amongst workers and management, a lack of involvement, a dichotomy between policy and actual practice, geographical remoteness of subordinates resulting in dilution of information and influence, lack of resources and finally, the type and validity of indicators used. A significant finding was that having a non-veterinarian as a supervisor, impacted negatively on professional conduct. This was perceived to affect planning and goal setting, review and feedback discussions, as well as career advancement. The research ends with recommendations for practice and further research such as exploring management of professionals in multidisciplinary organisations. This research paper is organised and presented in three sections; the first section is in the format of an academic paper, and in addition to a concise review of the literature, will detail the findings, their discussion and conclusion. The second section contains a more expanded literature review of performance management of professionals and the third and last section describes and justifies the design of the study and how it was conducted.

According to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) there is a need to invest 104 billion Euros to either refurbish or construct overhead lines (OHLs). This massive enterprise is mainly driven by the need to accommodate the proliferation of renewable energy generation projects across Europe in response to the European Commission’s directive to supply 20% of its energy from renewables by the year 2020. However, 30% of transmission projects experience delays; and moreover, it has been found that if the existing grid capacity is to be increased by about 1.3% it would facilitate about 3% of renewables. Therefore, attention towards the thermal uprating of existing networks has attracted research interest. In this thesis, the main contribution to this research is a probabilistic and holistically integrated system and OHL plant reliability centred thermal uprating evaluation methodology. This methodology is designed to aid the facilitation of the thermal uprating’s of existing lines, through a variety of multistage and multifaceted risk based decisions. These multifaceted aspects are subject to the conflicting views to thermal uprating which stem from various utility personnel; which further stem from their constricted views on system reliability. For example, plant maintainers may resist thermal uprating because it may require the need to increase maintenance works on right-of-ways, or because they may need to prevent conductors from ageing sooner than initially projected. However, restricting thermal uprating for these reasons will limit the capability of the system to facilitate renewables, and this will negatively affect overall system reliability. Therefore, the presented methodology aids to facilitate highly efficient interdependent decision making amongst plant designers and maintainers, and system planners and operators, to effectively manage thermal uprating risks in consideration to the overall utility’s goals. This thesis implements a variety of studies to enlighten utility personnel of the possible economic benefits and risk mitigation practices that could be realised through thermal uprating. To present robustly conclusive and compelling results, these studies research the value of thermal uprating from three possible time scales: long-, medium- and short-term time domains. Consequently, planners (through this methodology) will for the first time ascertain the true value of (1) uprating existing conductors by accepting the subsequent acceleration of their ageing, (2) selecting the optimal reconductoring technology from a suite of candidate (conventional and novel) conductor technologies, (3) the retensioning policy to implement (at a particular stage of a project) in order to maintain reliability, and (4) novel real-time OHL ageing management tools for power system operators to use reliably.

Undergraduates rated scripts describing the performance of different instructors in the following order: two positive or negative scripts followed by an average script; or two average scripts followed by a positive or a negative script. Context effects were assessed by comparing ratings of the target stimulus in the context and in the context-free control conditions. Several individual difference variables were measured as possible moderators of this phenomenon. Results indicated robust contrast effects mediated by beliefs in the variability of human nature in the extreme context conditions. In the positive context condition, high scorers in Variability were not affected by context, whereas medium or low scorers in Variability exhibited contrast effects. In the negative context condition, high scorers in Variability exhibited a more extreme contrast effect than medium or low scorers in Variability. In the average context conditions, contrast was observed only when the target was positive.

The performance management and development system (PMDS) is a tool that is used by government to measure the performance of individuals in the organisation. PMDS was developmental in its nature in identifying the development of employees and training in case of poor performance. The main aim of the PMDS is to motivate officials in the organisation by rewarding a performance bonus at the end of the financial year. There are challenges that affect the PMDS: officials felt that the system did not motivate them; it is perceived as a 14th cheque and some of them felt the system should be terminated. The main aim of the study is to evaluate the performance management and development system at the Department of Safety and Liaison in the Eastern Cape. Quantitative and qualitative data was collected through questionnaires and interviews. Questionnaires were distributed to officials from levels 1 - 8 and interviews were conducted with assistant managers, managers and senior managers. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the questionnaires and transcriptions were used to interpret the interviews. The results of the study reflect that most officials in the Department are young and new to the public service. The findings show that the employees of the Department are average in their performance and the Department perceives that the PMDS is not used to identify poor performance and training. The system is not implemented effectively and efficiently. Based on the findings and recommendations made to management to facilitate the training on PMDS and also to allow the processes and procedures to be more efficient. Furthermore allowing performance from all staff to achieve the core objectives of the department.

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to assess the efficiency of 15 container terminals in Africa. The models proposed by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes (1978) and Banker, Charnes and Cooper (1984) are used to determine and rank the efficiencies of the container terminals for 2013 and 2014. The results show that selected South African container terminals can improve on their operations relative to some of their neighbours to the North. Bootstrapping methods are used to investigate and clarify the results. The Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) model is used to track and explain changes in efficiency over the period of assessment.

The Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality (BCMM) has been experiencing inappropriate job behaviour and performance from some of its workers. These inappropriate practices have been widely reported in the media, audit reports, parliamentary discussions, reports to parliament, municipal reports, and departmental reports. They include misappropriation of municipal resources, maladministration, mismanagement, lack of service delivery, fraud, and corruption. Since many BCMM workers have various levels of formal education, such practices are not expected, because the structural-functionalist assumption is that formal education is a solution to societal challenges. At the BCMM, however, formal education seemed to also serve a different purpose, that of realising the principle that says “[k]now the rules well, so you can break them effectively” (Dalai Lama 2013, 2). This study therefore hypothesises that the perpetual inappropriate job behaviour and performance at the BCMM is due to the paucity of broad skills. The concept of broad skills includes the various dimensions of knowledge (know that, know why, know how) as well as attitudes, ethics and values. Inappropriate job behaviour and performance practices thus indicate that current levels of broad skills are insufficient. This study acknowledges that labour (ability to work) is a product of multifarious forms of capital, hence this study amalgamates four forms of capital - human capital, social capital, cultural capital, and reputation capital – into a theoretical framework in order to get a broader explanation of the workers’ job behaviour and performance. The various forms of capital contribute to the formation of skill, hence the notion of broad skills. How workers discharge their responsibilities is determined by numerous factors such as cultural capital (the workers’ family background, race, ethnicity, personality, and geographical area) (Bourdieu 1977); reputation capital (the workers’ brand, public perceptions of trustworthiness, popularity, authority in the field, ethics, integrity and reputation) (Ingbretsen 2011); social capital (the workers’ social development, social relations, and social networks) (Blackmore 1997); and human capital (schooling) (Becker 1964). The value of adopting the broad skills approach lies in gaining a broader perspective on job performance as opposed to the dominant use of the human capital model alone which predominantly uses schooling to explain job performance. In practice, the human capital model is characterised by its association of job performance problems with lack of skills. However, investigation of the role of attitudes, ethics and values in the labour process reveals that the lack of will also contributes to job performance problems. In fact, the adoption of multiple perspectives for investigating the paradoxical co-existence of inappropriate job behaviour and performance with formal education reveals several factors that make this phenomenon possible, besides lack of skills. These include the job environment, ineffective performance management systems, compromised municipal effectiveness and efficiency due to the politicisation of municipal management, and manipulation of the labour process to suit the interests of the workers who want to engage in inappropriate practices.

We are living in a changing world. Performance management is becoming a major challenge for organisations. The aim of this study is to review the current status of the Performance Management and Development System at the Department of the Premier and to look into the reasons why it has become a pain rather than a gain to both the organisation and its employees. This document will also look at the possible causes of the failure of the performance management system and will then propose useful guidelines to overcome obstacles to the benefit of all the affected parties. To achieve this objective a comprehensive literature study was performed to the Department of the Premier to determine the views on performance, and on performance management programmes. The study also included an investigation into the extent to which a performance management programme should be aligned with Provincial Government Western Cape (PGWC) and individual goals. Questionnaires developed from the literature study, were distributed amongst randomly selected respondents, in order to determine the extent to which a specific directorate manages performance, in line with the guidelines provided by the literature study. The information obtained from the questionnaires were compared with the guidelines provided by the literature study in order to identify shortcomings in the influence that the performance management programme has on the achievement of Department and individual goals at the selected Directorates. The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of the current performance management system, in the Department at Provincial Government Western Cape, as a facilitation tool in aiding or assisting management in achieving individual and departmental goals. To achieve this objective a comprehensive literature study was performed to determine the views on performance, and on performance management systems. A questionnaire was designed based on the guidelines in the literature study, in order to establish the extent to which the organisation manages performance. The completed questionnaires were returned and these were processed and analysed using Microsoft Office Excel 2003, running on the Windows XP suite of computer packages. The respondent’s opinion obtained from the questionnaires were compared with the guidelines provided by the literature study in order to identify shortcomings of the influence that the performance management system has on the achievement of individual and departmental goals at the selected organization. The research results indicate that the majority of staff supports and understands the process.

No description available.