Public Administration Dilemmas: An Analysis of Teachers’ Perceptions of the Effects of Performance Evaluation in Post-Colonial South Africa

Sybert Mutereko and Faith Ruffin

International Journal of Public Administration, 2018, vol. 41, issue 1, 34-45

Abstract: The adoption of the principles of New Public Management by many governments across the world was invariably accompanied by the implementation of performance evaluation. It is generally accepted that performance evaluation optimizes the performance of workers. As part of a broader investigation which employed a mixed methods approach, the study used data from six interviews with high school principals and 100 survey questionnaires with purposively selected high school teachers in uMgungundlovu District of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In the analysis of this data, the paper demonstrates that beyond the obvious benefits of performance evaluation such as improvement in performance, there are also unintended consequences such as a narrow focus on measured output, teacher burnout, and falsification of information in order to maximize credit or to avoid punishment. This study illustrates the understandings of high school educators in uMgungundlovu District of the effects of performance evaluation. The findings have important implications for public administration and scholars alike.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01900692.2016.1247366 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:lpadxx:v:41:y:2018:i:1:p:34-45

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/lpad20

DOI: 10.1080/01900692.2016.1247366

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Public Administration is currently edited by Ali Farazmand

More articles in International Journal of Public Administration from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().