Performance management and development system in South Africa, a necessary evil: Qualitative study

Ozoemena Joan Ibeziako

PLOS ONE, 2025, vol. 20, issue 7, 1-24

Abstract: Performance management focused on development enhances individual and organisational performance and enables improved services. Achieving performance management objectives is vital for addressing healthcare worker shortages and ensuring equitable, quality healthcare. A weakened South African district-based primary health care system links to inadequate leadership and governance. This study aimed to explore how doctors in primary health care perceive performance management and development systems. The objectives examined what medical officers understand about it and their experiences. Emerging themes may provide insights into enhancing implementation. This study used a qualitative, interpretive, and phenomenological research design. Stratified purposive sampling based on PMDS completion and employment duration led to four focus group discussions with 17 participants. A thematic analysis was performed. The overarching theme was the Performance Management and Development System as a necessary evil, with benefits and challenges. The subthemes included understanding components, comprehending clinic systems to improve outcomes, nurturing employee-supervisor interactions, fostering performance and learning culture, and facilitating personal and professional growth. Additional subthemes included ambiguity in fairness, lack of management capacity, and need for a bottom-up approach and realistic implementation. Effective implementation of a Performance Management and Development System requires managers and supervisors to drive this process strategically. Those responsible for clinical governance should invest in personal development to understand the process and consider appropriate implementation tools.

Date: 2025
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0317942 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 17942&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0317942

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0317942

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().