Strategic Human Resources
For Organizational Performance Improvement in the Public Sector is written by Jungin Kim, a doctoral student and also a research assistant in public administration and policy department at University of Georgia. The study is an exploration of how to improve productivity in public sector organizations by use of competition. The study seeks to answer the question of whether public sector organizations have the capability of increasing their productivity via use of competition given that they have many inherent limitations including budget constraints. After an analysis of various studies and a review of literature review, the article comes to a conclusion that introduction of private sector approaches to public sector is ineffective in increasing their productivity and efficiency. Findings of this study however show that competition can be essential in addressing the issue of public sector efficiency and productivity.
Summary of the article
Kim introduces his article by first highlighting the various findings of researchers on the question of public organizations management are in terms of capacity and productivity. Although many scholars comparing the performance of public sectors and private sectors productivity have found out that public sectors have better management as compared to that of the private sector, productivity of the public sectors still remains low as compared to that of the private sectors. This is according to Goodsells research highlighted by the author. However, despite the fact that the government has put in place measures to improve the public sectors performance by introducing the management tools employed by the private sectors (such as pay for performance systems via the establishment of civil service reform act of 1978), public performance has still not improved. Failure of this approach has attracted researchers to carry out research on means of improving productivity by use of organizational behavior theories among them the motivation theory. These studies, according to the author, have found out that perception of private and public employees relating to their jobs may vary hence affecting their productivity.
Public sectors and government agencies still continue to introduce approaches of private sectors such as market based governance so as to increases the productivity and efficiency of the public sector via competition regardless of different perception identified by organizational analyst theories. The article suggests that these approaches are neither effective in improving or motivating employees nor in improving the effectiveness of public sector. According to this article, the various initiatives that have been taken by the government to address the issue of employee productivity and motivation in the past have failed to yield positive results.
Kim seeks to find out the key factors that are essential in creating a work environment that is competitive in public sector and how the work environment that are competitive are perceived by the employees in this organizations. She also seeks to answer the question of whether competitive work environment have any influence on performance evaluations, both organization based and individual based on client satisfaction perception. Another question raised is on how to clearly define competition in government agencies given that the work values of public employees differ with that of private sector employees. The article thus focuses on identifying the relationship that exists between the public and private employees perception of organizational performance and competitive environments.
This article investigates the effects of employees perception of competitive environment on their perceptions pertaining to organizational performance. The author suggests that establishing the existence of such perceptions would be essential towards effective management of public sector since they are directly related to commitment and job satisfaction factors essential in determining the productivity and work performance of an individual. The author carries out an extensive literature review pertaining to effects of competitive and strategic work environment and performance.
According to a study carried by Nigro et al, competition is considered as an essential strategy in obtaining successful and reliable access to employees or human resource. It is argued that since competition allows for comparison of employee performances, it thus acts as an incentive towards efficiency improvement. This kind of competition has the capacity of improving work motivation.
Four factors that determine the expectations of employees pertaining to competitive work environments of the performance of an organization in light of client satisfaction and work quality are highlighted in the literature review as vital in determining the productivity of employees. The four factors that the author uses to measure these expectations are rewards for merit including benefits and salaries, organizational rules, capacity to deal with employees perceived risks and opportunities. By using the data obtained from nonprofit and public sector employees, the author has concluded that there is a positive relationship between the employees merit rewards expectations and their perception of the organizational rules that are performance based. The data also verified that there was satisfaction on risk taking behaviors. The author summarizes this finding when she states that Moreover, employees perceptions of organizational performance tended to increase when they felt that organizational rules were oriented toward performance plus organizational members and top leaders exhibited greater risk-taking behaviors. However, the study does not find any correlation between employees perceived performance of an organization and opportunities expectations.
Critique
Jungin Kims article is an intriguing examination of the various factors that may explain the productivity and efficiency of public sector employees. It is a commendable move from the early theorists and researches that used to argue that use of private sector management tools in public sector could help in improving their performance. The strength of this work draws from the extensive literature review and the comparative study in determining the effect of competition and employee expectation in improving productivity. In particular, Kim has paid substantial attention on the role of employee perception on performance and efficiency and the differences that exist between public sector employees and private sector employees pertaining to competitive work environment. The article also recognizes the role of employee expectancy pertaining to competitive work environment in relation to organizational productivity and performance and how it affects their productivity. Kim has also been able to bring out substantial proof that rewards and benefits previously offered by public sectors are ineffective in increasing employee productivity.
This study is also solid in that Kim uses data obtained via extensive field research to come up with her conclusions. For example, Kim uses a large sample size of 1,850 respondents from the public sector and 1,307 from the nonprofit sector. These respondents are from two different states i.e. Georgia and Illinois making the results less subjective. Use of comparative study has helped the author to avoid or eliminate chances of making subjective conclusions.
Despite the superiority of this article, it is still not adequate or conclusive since Kim only focuses on the physical factors affecting employees motivation. Kim has concentrated on the perceptions of employees in relation to competitive work environment, risk expectancy, client satisfaction and rules of organizational performance and has undermined other issues such as effective leadership, recognition, and innovation incentives which are vital tools in determining motivation and productivity of employees. Management and leadership are two different concepts. Leadership entails influencing people to achieve pre-set goals while management is concerned with distribution and management of resources. Despite the fact that public sectors are better managed than nonprofit sector, they could be having poor leadership hence poor productivity. Findings of this article are also not conclusive, for example, the dual impact of expectations of employees in relation to merit rewards on their perception of performance of an organization gives two indicators.
Conclusion
It is no doubt that employees perception on competitive work environments, merit rewards and organizational performance rules play a major role in determining the productivity of an organization. It is however essential to look at other factors that influence the job satisfaction and motivation of employees such as teamwork, leadership, recognition and other psychological factors that may affect the productivity of an employee. This would increase the understanding of the differences in productivity of nonprofit and public sectors.
Categories:
0 comments:
Post a Comment