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High Performance Organizations Introduction The competitive edge of modern-day business an public sector emerges from creation or discovery of a high performance management system. A system that increases efficiency, decreases cost or enhances quality confers immediate competitive advantage on its creator and sets a standard for the rest of the industry to follow. But once disseminated across the field of competition, it becomes the standard. Now a new, yet more innovative, high performance system must be discovered that once more creates competitive advantage for its inventors. The evolution of high performance organization offers an instructive review of management history and useful suggestions for the design of future high performance systems. This paper examines some theoretical background of high performance organizations, its characteristics and discusses issues of high performance management, particularly concerning public sector.
In addition some implementation strategies and approaches considered. High Performance Organization High Performance Organizations are those organizations that are designed taking into consideration the business situation (the external environment), the business results, and the business strategy of the organization. (Hanna) He suggests that the organization design is an important determinant of the organizational culture, which in turn has an impact on the business results obtained. In other words, Hanna argues that an organizational strategy must be developed taking into consideration an organization's business situation, and the gap between the desired results and the actual results obtained by the organization. This determination of strategy drives the organization design.
The design focuses on the creation of "fit" (Lawler) between several design features - organization structure, rewards, decision making, information systems, and tasks. High performance organization is focused on effectiveness rather than efficiency. Its leaders believe that the people in it are its greatest assets and the keys to its success. The chief executive officer of such an organization is comfortable sharing power with the senior staff and, ultimately, with everyone in the organization. This does not mean that functional lines and hierarchy disappear. Actually, it is possible to have parallel organizations There are following characteristics of high performing organizations (APO): A strong vision and mission to which everyone is committed.
A strong team that complements each others personal challenges. Employees are all held to high standards of performance and the culture supports this. A powerful and challenging business plan to which everyone is committed. Everyone understands their individual role in achieving a challenging set of goals. Performs its marketing and sales function in an extraordinary way exceeding competitor execution of marketing and sales.
A highly profitable niche in which the organization stands alone or outperforms all other competitors. Produces a high quality product or service that customers recognize as superior to others. Provides high quality customer service that customers recognize as superior. Has implemented repeatable and uniform processes whenever possible, measures compliance and results, and assures continued high quality of these processes.
The cornerstones of a high - performance organization are the forming and development of high - performance teams. The team concept includes members in cross-functional areas and from all levels of the organization, all working toward a clearly articulated mission. Generally, status within the group is knowledge- or competence-based, not hierarchy-based. Each member of the team provides an important professional perspective but recognizes no departmental or position-classification boundaries. The clearly articulated mission of a team must serve an established goal for the organization. A major responsibility of the high - performance manager is to provide an environment in which the creation of cross-functional high - performance teams becomes a habit.
The manager must empower these teams to seek creative solutions to problems, must be committed to developing programs that meet the organization's goals, and must enable this behavior to become part of the organization's culture. Not every problem or issue can be resolved by high - performance teams; in some cases, decisions must be made solely by the manager, supervisor, or employee. This suggests the need to create parallel organizations, one hierarchical and one based on high - performance teams. Performance Management Armstrong (2000) stressed that High Performance Management (HPM) has become more and more important from the formally widely used performance appraisal scheme to today's an integrated and continues approach. HPM in today's human resources (HR) practice is no longer depends on the merit rating form as the only measurement. However, HPM defines strategic goals, and identified outputs to achieve strategic goals.
Managers and employees are committed to achieve the identified outputs, and monitor outcomes. Firms that adopted HPM fares better in terms of financial, and non-financial factors than those firms that do not practice HPM. Hence, the understanding of HPM and its processes for today's firms is essential in determining and assuring its competitive advantage in the ever-changing business environment. Benefits of High Performance Management On the employee context, HPM can better align employees towards achieving goals of the organization (Farias).
Consequently, employees have more understanding amongst themselves. Thus, with a clear goal setting, more work can be done effectively and efficiently; and they will be more willing in sharing experiences and opinions to better solve organizational problems to achieve a common goal. Furthermore, they are able to observe their own performances and obtain information to appraise their own strength and weaknesses, as well as the identifying the possibility of future growth from the process of working. In this respect, continuously learning process is practiced in the organization, which it helps to encourage learning culture in the organization. On the other hand, HPM helps in ensuring the uniformity of strategic, managerial and operational direction throughout the entire organization, thus providing a more effective way of managing employee (Lawler). The management will have a clearer understanding of the core competency of the work force.
Hence, it will be able to develop, and implement a more effective business and motivational strategy, that will take into consideration the different strength, weaknesses, and needs of the employees. These will help managers in capitalizing on possible opportunity and eliminate forthcoming treats to the well being of the organization. HPM provides a system-based approach to ensure a more accurate explanation on the current organization situation, and to assist in better decision making which will benefit the organization in the long run. The on-going process of HPM enables availability of timely and accurate information, which would subsequently place the organization at a more competitive advantage position in this turbulent business environment. Moreover, with the presents of effective communication in HPM, would promote a better understanding of roles and expected standards among the employees.
The communication is two-way and on-going among the managers and employees, to enable necessary changes to be implemented and problems to be rectified immediately. Therefore, employees' achievements can be recognized and identified, and be rewarded accordingly. As a result, members of the team will be highly motivated. Disadvantages of High Performance Management Some of the problems faced by HPM implementation were the lack of support commitment from management and employee. Reason being manager & employee do not understand the purpose of HPM and how could it value add to the current appraisal system.
Bureaucracy of organization procedures can also impede the success of HPM. Managers might feel the HPM process involves a lot of unnecessary paper work and is non-beneficial. They felt that it was a waste of time (Bassett) and HPM systems are desirable but not applicable. As performance appraisal, HPM has lack of clear and quantifiable performance measurement.
Ideally, employees' performance would be measured and evaluated by management from time to time. However, management evaluation can be easily influenced by favoritism and prejudice, which could effectively defeats the whole objective of HPM. Hence, it will not be an easy task to change management and workforce's perception on HPM in order to gain their support and co-operation. Feedback from various parties is very important in the process of implementing HPM to ensure that the implementation is on the right track. Apparently, negative feedback has overshadowed positive feedback in this case due to the drawbacks and practical difficulties in process of HPM.
Such negative feedback is not only causing confusion among management and workforce, but also adversely affecting their acceptance of HPM. HPM will require a lot of time allocation and cost allocation for a organization. Over concentration on this HPM factor may adversely neglect the real function in an organization and thus affecting the overall organization performance. Thus, management must be wise in allocating necessary funds and time for HPM without over budgeting. Certainly, the on-going evaluation and judgment on employees may put both the organization and employees under tremendous pressure. Both parties are performing under constant pressure, where actual effectiveness and efficiency level may not be performed.
New Public Management During the 1990 s, many governments embarked upon some kind of public sector reform. The concept of public sector reform is now quite multi-dimensional covering a variety of phenomena. Some countries have tried one or two of these kinds of reforms, whereas other countries have embraced all of them: decentralization, privatization, incorporation, deregulation, and re regulation, the introduction of executive agencies, the use of the purchaser-provider split as well as tendering and bidding schemes. If there is one label that is used to refer to all kinds of public sector reforms then it would be the 'New Public Management' (Walker). Common to all the public sector reform efforts is the attempt to employ new governance mechanisms in the public sector that go beyond the traditional institutions of governance such as the bureau and the public enterprise and that employ or imitate market institutions of governance (Wilson). The New Public Management (NPM) as managerial ism focusing on contract making and enforcement seems to take government once and for all out of the bureaucracy framework.
It is a theory of the most recent paradigm shift in how...
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Research essay sample on Taking Into Consideration Managers And Employees
