The impact of employee perception on the successful institutionalisation and implementation of performance management systems in developing countries: The perspective from Ghana's public service

Performance management (PM) has become a key instrument in the quest to ensure optimal operations by organisations in the public sector. Some scholars, though, believe that PM has failed because of employees' negative perception and management's exclusion of employees from its development. Studies on the relationship between employee perception of PM and its effectiveness in the public sector are limited. We argue that management must value employee perception more highly than they do at present because it is unlikely employees would be willing to take an active part in implementing a change with which they disagree or that they see as having no value. This study examines the effect of employees' perception on the institutionalisation and implementation of PM in developing countries, with specific reference to Ghana.     

Performance management system in developing countries: A case study in Jordan

The performance management system (PMS) is critical to the success of any organisation, and this article investigates the PMS of the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) in Jordan, which is one of the largest public entities in the country. The article identifies various problems that are faced by GAM, such as HRM and staff, management behaviour, and performance management, which significantly affect GAM's performance. Additionally, the article discusses the process of goal and indicator setting and development of the PMS of GAM. The article adopts a phenomenological approach and a qualitative case study methodology to collect primary data from 15 purposeful semi-structured interviews with GAM's experts. Thematic analysis is used as the data analysis technique to identify the PMS activities and address problems and difficulties in GAM's performance. The findings highlight eight major activities of GAM's PMS, which include performance sourcing, targeting, development, setting and responsibility, gauging, information, results, and alignment. These activities need to be managed properly if GAM wanted to meet its performance targets. Hence, the article presents a set of recommendations to improve GAM's PMS and overcome the identified difficulties, such as improving HRM practices and staff role, enhancing management behaviour, and establishing a performance management culture. Overall, the article provides valuable insights into the PMS of GAM and highlights the importance of an effective PMS to achieve organisational success.     

Legitimacy and context: implications for public sector reform in developing countries

This article examines the interplay between legitimacy and context as key determinants of public sector reform outcomes. Despite the importance of variables such as legitimacy of public institutions, levels of civic morality and socio‐economic realities, reform strategies often fail to take such contextual factors into account. The article examines, first, relevant literature – both conceptual and empirical, including data from the World Values Survey project. It is argued that developing countries have distinctive characteristics which require particular reform strategies. The data analysed shows that in Latin American countries, there is no clear correlation between confidence in public institutions and civic morality. Other empirical studies show that unemployment has a negative impact on the level of civic morality, while inequality engenders corruption. This suggests that poorer and socio‐economically stratified countries face greater reform challenges owing to the lack of legitimacy of public institutions. The article concludes that reforms should focus on areas of governance that impact on poverty. This will in turn help produce more stable outcomes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Risk management for targeting customs controls in developing countries: a risky venture for revenue performance?

Customs authorities in developing countries are often reluctant to forget systematic inspections for fear of risking revenue loss. Such physical inspections however, impede rather than facilitate trade. Control selectivity is therefore a key issue in customs administration reform. This paper shows how a sophisticated risk management method can facilitate trade by automatically and rationally selecting transactions, with the end result of actually enhancing revenue performance. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Policy entrepreneurship in developing countries: A systematic review of the literature

What can be learned from two decades of studies on policy entrepreneurship in developing countries? Policy entrepreneurship is a rapidly evolving analytical concept. A growing number of studies exploring public policy in developing countries use policy entrepreneurship as an explanatory theoretical concept. However, a substantial part of this research relies on qualitative case study analysis, lacking a comprehensive overview of the concept of policy entrepreneurship. This paper conducts a systematic review of the literature on policy entrepreneurship in developing countries. A total of 47 papers addressing policy entrepreneurship in the developing world, published between 1993 and 2017, have been analysed. The purpose and contribution of this paper are to offer a clearer picture of policy entrepreneurship in the developing world by concentrating on two aspects. First, we describe the characteristics of the studies on policy entrepreneurship in the developing world. Second, we analyse such studies, identifying the lessons that can be drawn on the phenomenon of policy entrepreneurship in the developing world. We conclude with an agenda for future studies, examining new theoretical, methodological, and empirical opportunities to advance the understanding of policy entrepreneurship in developing countries.     

Understanding the changing role of public sector performance measurement in less developed countries

This article develops a framework for understanding changes in the demand for and supply of performance information in public sector organizations in less developed countries (LDCs). New Institutional Sociology (NIS) is used to argue that pressures from specific stakeholders stimulate organizations to produce particular performance information. The article distinguishes three groups of stakeholders (i.e. funding bodies, statutory boards and purchasers), and elaborates on the performance dimensions these stakeholders are interested in. The group of funding bodies, with their interest in financial performance information, used to be the most important group of stakeholders. However, statutory boards and purchasers are gaining importance as a result of recent public sector reforms, which include decentralization, marketization and the implementation of anti‐corruption programs. As a consequence of pressures coming from these stakeholders, new performance dimensions, such as the quality and quantity of services and the political governance structure, will be added to organizations' performance measurement (PM) systems. Whether these and other—often more traditional financial—performance dimensions will be balanced and integrated throughout organizations depends on the power positions of the various stakeholders. The arguments presented in this article intend to stimulate public sector organizations in LDCs to design and redesign PM systems as a response to changing stakeholder interests. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public service ethics,values and spirituality in developing and transitional countries: Challenges and opportunities

Concerns over the unethical conduct of leaders and public officials have led to the renaissance of interest in public service ethics and values. Although national and organizational systems and structures have been instituted to either eradicate or ameliorate unethical behaviours in the public service of countries, the practice still persists with devastating consequences. As one way forward, spirituality has been touted as having the potential of stimulating the moral thoughts of individuals who are dealing with ethical issues, thereby reducing unethical behaviour and generating positive organizational behaviour. Drawing from the perspectives of developing and transitional countries, this special issue empirically examines the extent to which ethics, values and spirituality can reduce unethical behaviours.     

Livelihood strategies and performance of Ghana's health and education sectors: exploring the connections

The public sector in Africa is riddled with widespread ineffectiveness. Although some countries have implemented various reform programmes with the support of international development agencies, the results so far have been disappointing. One reason for the failure is that the policies have focussed more on achieving macroeconomic stability than making the organisations effective. This article explores a fundamental problem of the policies—the need to focus on the human component of organisational performance. Using education and health organisations in Ghana as examples, the article advances a hypothesis that the livelihood strategies of public sector employees and the performance of their organisations are interconnected. Specifically, it is argued that as public sector employees have become more dependent on multiple sources of income, they have developed multiple social identities, which influence the culture of their organisations. The organisational culture may have encouraged employee effectiveness in some cases, but for most organisations, it has resulted in practices that perpetuate inefficiency and poor performance. To be successful, public sector reform policies must therefore involve deliberate efforts to change organisational cultures. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The importance of policy entrepreneurs in developing countries: A systematic review and future research agenda

How and with what effect policy entrepreneurship occurs is a persistent and intriguing question for scholars of public policy and administration and political science. So far, the main interest has been on policy entrepreneurship in developed countries rather than developing countries, which largely remains a black box. Adopting a systematic approach to reviewing the literature, this article aims to fill this void. It investigates when, why, and how policy and institutional reforms in developing countries take place, with special reference to the role of policy entrepreneurs. It reviews selected articles published in the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge Social Science Citation Index database from 1984 to 2018. It aims to show the current state of empirical and theoretical knowledge about policy entrepreneurship in developing countries and persistent knowledge gaps. The present review contributes to the body of knowledge on this topic in three main ways. First, we provide a comprehensive review of policy entrepreneurship in developing countries. Second, we consolidate existing research in the political science, public policy and administration, and politicial economy disciplines. Third, we establish connections between fragmented literatures, identify gaps between different research streams, and suggest promising paths for future research on policy entrepreneurship in developing countries.     

Drifting towards convergence? Motivation and performance management in state and private companies in the provision of telecom services in Ghana

The concept of expectancy on which many of the theories of workplace incentive programmes are based, claims that when employees are given a particular level of motivation, it will result in some level of performance. The general perception in Ghana is that public sector employees do not perform as efficiently as private sector workers because they lack incentives to do so. However, few studies have compared the incentive structures of the two sectors. Using empirical evidence from four telecom companies in Ghana, this article shows that the gaps between ‘state’ and ‘private’ have narrowed. Also, while incentive structures such as salary, fringe benefits and job (in)security are converging, critical performance management processes like employees' participation in decision‐making, performance appraisal, monitoring and credibility of sanctions are drifting apart. This article concludes that differences in performance between state and private companies may be explained by performance management processes and not incentive structures. It cautions that improved salaries and other office perquisites may not by themselves achieve organisational performance. Rather, incentives should be embedded in a broader approach through effective performance management processes. The information in the article is relevant to the ‘borderline’ part of the public sector under a deregulated environment. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The application of new public management doctrines in the developing world: An exploratory study of the autonomy and control of executive agencies in Tanzania

This article examines the agencification of public service in Tanzania. This is discussed with reference to the New Public Management (NPM)‐inspired reforms of which the creation of executive agencies is one of its core features. The article attempts to understand the extent to which executive agencies in Tanzania display characteristic features of an ideal‐agency model as propagated by the NPM reform doctrines. Key features of the ideal‐agency model have been described as structural disaggregation, autonomy and contractualisation. It questions views held by many NPM‐minded reformers, such as the EU and World Bank that this model is universally applicable and can be emulated in different parts of the world. The article's assumption is that the NPM‐agency model is based on a weak empirical foundation and its universal applicability is questionable. To illustrate our arguments we confront the NPM‐agency model with the empirical data drawn from the agencification of public services in Tanzania. Findings indicate that agencies in Tanzania display hybrid characteristics in terms of their autonomy and control. Our conclusion is that the universality of NPM‐agency model is illusive. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Influence of public administration and environmental management performance of cement manufacturing in Malaysia

Environmental issues have become critical concerns of businesses worldwide where environmental obligations have grown substantially and companies have to be environmentally responsible. Malaysia has enacted the Environmental Quality Act 1974 and subsidiary Environmental Quality （Clean Air） Regulations 1978, Environmental Quality （Sewage and Industrial Effluent） Regulations 1979, Environmental Quality （Prescribed Activities） Order 1987 and Environmental Quality （Scheduled Waste） Regulation 2005. ISO 14001 environmental management system （EMS） standard designed to introduce environmental improvement into every aspect of a company＇s operations. ISO 14001 assists companies in creation of structured mechanisms for continuous improvement in environmental performance. There is a complex and dynamic relation between profitability and environmental concerns. The paper evaluates how ISO 14001 aids cement companies in operating continuous environment protection programs to minimize significant environmental impacts. This study analyzes the relationship between adoption of ISO 14001 to business performance and competitive advantage of Malaysian companies that provides insights into motivations and results. ISO 14001 has a positive impact on companies＇ performance, specifically on perceived environmental impacts. The companies recognized the need for ISO 14001 as an internal tool to maintain operations and management competitiveness. To adopt the ISO 14001 environment elements, it is necessary to have corporate culture that support complex operational activities in line with the top management commitment of the ISO 14001 policy and regulatory-compliant. ISO 14001 implementation was crucial in bringing about reduction of damage to the environment at operational level, and effective environmental management at management level, as well as improvement of the company＇s image and competitiveness at strategic level. Companies that export their products are expected to implement the ISO 14001 in order to maintain their competitive edge in the global market place.     

Modeling the macroeconomic determinants of environmental degradation in E-7 countries: The role of technological innovation and institutional quality

Environmental degradation poses a severe threat to life on earth. Similarly to other countries, emerging seven (E-7) countries have been struggling to decrease their dependence on non-renewable energy sources by adopting environment friendly technologies for reducing environmental deterioration and to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. In present study, we reassessed the technological policies of E-7 countries, and addressed the issues of affordable and clean energy, institutional quality (IQU), and sustained economic growth (EGR) to address the problem of environmental deterioration. For this purpose, we have investigated the role of renewable energy consumption (REC), technological innovations (TINs), IQU, and EGR on CO₂ emissions (CE) by using the panel quantile regression (PQR) for the period from 1996 to 2020. The empirical outcomes of FGLS reveal that a 1% increase in REC, TIN, and IQU reduces the CE by 0.145%, 0.233%, and 0.249%, while a 1% rise in EGR and population (POPU) raises the CE by 0.993% and 1.546% respectively. Similarly, the results of PQR demonstrate that REC, TIN, and IQU reduce CE, whereas EGR and POPU increase environmental degradation. The impact of TIN on CE is high at lower quantiles and low at higher quantiles. The impact of IQU on CE is low at lower quantiles and high at higher quantiles Based on these findings, we have recommended a comprehensive SDG-oriented policy framework, so that E-7 countries can make progress towards achieving the objectives of SDG 16, SDG 13, SDG 7, SDG 8, and SDG 9.     

E‐Government Technology Transfer: A Case Study of the Implementation of a European Patent Management System in Brazil

In order to bolster the emerging but still underdeveloped conceptualization of e‐government technology transfer, we examine the implementation of a European Patent Management System in Brazil. The case study provided in this article offers opportunities to improve understanding on technical and organizational issues associated with e‐government technology transfer. Our findings provide evidence that the transfer of e‐government technology from a European to a Brazilian context requires multiple adaptations of the original design, intensive learning on the side of the recipient organization, and flexible implementation plans. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Employee engagement and task performance in state‐owned enterprises in developing countries: The case study of the power sector in Ghana

A growing number of studies prove a relationship between employee engagement (EE) and performance. Unfortunately, almost all originate in the developed world; the few that look at developing countries, including their public sectors, have focused more on the civil service and agencies, and neglect state‐owned enterprises (SOEs), despite their importance for delivery of public services. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of EE on task performance in SOEs in developing countries, with particular reference to Ghana. We purposively selected SOEs in the power sector and quantitatively surveyed their employees. We employed regression analysis to examine the link between EE and employee task performance. Our study, like those before it, shows that EE has a positive and significant effect on employee task performance. Our findings further suggest that for SOEs to achieve their targets with employees' performance, appropriate strategies should be adopted to ensure that employees are highly engaged.     

Towards virtuous and ethical organisational performance in the context of corruption: A case study in the public sector

With the increasing number of ethical violations reported across the public sector, the emphasis on ethics and values in governance is on the rise. Corruption is widely accepted as a form of unethical behaviour that can have detrimental effects on organisations as well as society at large. Research calls for empirical studies focusing on the contextual factors surrounding corruption. Based on the Contextually Based Human Resource Theory and using the case study method, this paper examines the role of context through a systematic analysis of corruption in a public sector organisation. We integrate corruption and human resource literature to understand employee behaviour, employee relations, HRM strategies, and organisational outcomes in the context of organisational corruption.     

Export processing zones and corporate environmental performance in emerging economies: The case of the oil,gas, and chemical sectors of Trinidad and Tobago

Export processing zones (EPZs) are increasingly being established to promote economic growth in developing countries. However, they remain controversial and are often criticized for being associated with a “race to the bottom” characterized by the easing of labor and environmental standards. This paper investigates whether the decision to locate facilities inside these zones is associated with higher corporate environmental performance. Findings indicate that facilities operating in Trinidad and Tobago’s EPZs are more likely to show higher corporate environmental performance than those outside. Additionally, firms in state-managed zones appear to show higher corporate environmental performance than those located in privately managed zones. Enhanced institutional pressures from regulators, local communities, and fellow tenant firms may explain these differences. These results suggest that environmental policy makers and environmentalists can take advantage of already established EPZs to promote enclave enhanced institutional pressures associated with superior corporate environmental performance.

Macroeconomic performance,political trust and the Great Recession: A multilevel analysis of the effects of within‐country fluctuations in macroeconomic performance on political trust in 15 EU countries, 1999–2011

Recent cross‐national comparative studies have found no effect of countries’ macroeconomic performances on trust in national political institutions, once political explanations (most notably corruption) are taken into account. Although political trust is not determined by the comparison of national economic performance to other countries, it is argued in this article that it is affected by comparisons to their own past performance. In a multilevel, fixed effects analysis of Eurobarometer data (21 waves in 15 European Union Member States between 1999 and 2011) the extent to which within‐country variations in economic performance affect political trust longitudinally is tested. Three major conclusions are reached. First, within‐country, longitudinal changes in performance (growth, deficits, unemployment and inflation) affect political trust. Second, the impact of macroeconomic performance is stronger among the lower educated. Third, even in times of economic duress, budgetary deficits tend to undermine political trust.     

Implementing management tools in Turkish public hospitals: the impact of culture,politics and role status

The government of Turkey has attempted to substantially improve the management of its public hospitals. However, an analysis of the performance of the quality certified hospitals finds only minor improvements. This study seeks to explain these disappointing results by interviewing 46 hospital managers and employees about the successes and failures of the management reform effort. The interviews suggest that traditional Turkish organisational culture often hinders attempts to decrease hierarchy, but, more positively, it also encourages the use of frontline teams and group rewards. Moreover, Turkey's hybrid system of allowing public doctors to maintain private practices has provided doctors with both the resources and the incentives to fight management reform efforts. Finally, organisational decentralisation in Turkey has evoked fierce political opposition, ironically even from many pro‐modernising forces that fear it could increase the power of Islamic fundamentalists. Turkey's experience suggests a number of broader points about management reform in non‐western societies. It suggests that decentralisation can often impede, rather than strengthen the other aspects of management reform; that a hybrid market organisation is often harder to move toward market efficiencies than a purely governmental one; and that national cultures should help guide the order in which reform tools are implemented. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.