Social Sciences and Humanities Open (Jan 2024)
Performance management and contextual performance in technical universities
Abstract
Despite the huge investments made by successive governments in public tertiary educational institutions in Ghana especially with the recent conversion of polytechnics to technical universities, many have expressed doubt about the capability of the performance management systems deplored to deliver their strategic objectives. The study investigated how performance management in technical universities in Ghana using the Bolgatanga Technical University as a case study can be improved. The qualitative research method was adopted for the study. Ten senior members who held offices as deans, directors, heads of department and coordinators were selected based on their availability and willingness to participate in the study. Thematic content analysis was employed to analyse the data collected from the ten participants to identify which themes occurred the most or the least. The results showed that all the participants were conscious of performance management. Seven participants believe that effective performance management can promote job satisfaction thereby leading to increased productivity. With regards to the challenges of performance management, the participants mentioned lack of skill, poor goal setting, lack of commitment from management, no rewards, assigning task to wrong staff, delay in giving feedback and discrimination. On how to improve performance, the following suggestions were received from participants; non-discrimination in terms of assigning roles, motivation of staff, proper goal setting, regular feedback from management, and training of staff. The study found out that performance management at the Bolgatanga Technical University was concentrated on task performance while neglecting the contextual performance which drives task performance. Therefore, equal attention must be given to both task and contextual performance.
