A review of performance management in a Government Department.

Fitzpatrick, Tony (2005) A review of performance management in a Government Department. Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

The private sector has been using various systems to manage performance since the 1970s, from around about the time that I joined the civil service. I have throughout my career experienced the civil service approach to managing people with a range of responses that stretched from fascination, through bewilderment and on to frustration.
There were many periods of admiration along the journey, but they tended to relate to exceptional individuals who seemed to intuitively know how best to deal with staff, without the guidance of a formal policy or system. And all the time I harboured a sneaking admiration, sometimes bordering on envy, for my counterparts in the self-styled "real world" of the private sector, who enjoyed all the benefits of cutting-edge management thinking and practice - clarity of focus, borne of the underlying profit motive; staff managed professionally; no tolerance of below-par performance; or so I presumed.
And so, when the civil service "borrowed" the concept of performance management from the private sector, I anticipated that there would be significant changes for the better in the way the civil service managed and performed.
This paper reviews one Government Department's experience of performance management and seeks to find out whether it has been effective.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Subjects:	J Political Science > JS Local government Municipal government > Public Sector H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management > Human Resource Management > Performance Management J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) > Ireland > Government Departments
Divisions:	School of Business > Master of Arts in Human Resource Management
Depositing User:	SINEAD CORCORAN
Date Deposited:	31 Aug 2010 16:38
Last Modified:	26 Nov 2014 11:25
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/455

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