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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:9587 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Twalo, Thembinkosi Gladden |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Education |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Doctoral, PhD |
| Format | xvi, 335 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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