The persistence of organizational performance problems the public services in Ghana: The perspective of societal culture

Abstract

Performance management (PM) has been one of the most profound initiatives of public services reforms in both developed and developing countries in the last three decades. Despite its acceptance as a tool to enhance efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability, many continue to question its efficacy to enhance organizational performance in public services. This is because organizational performance problems continue to persist in the sector. How then can this persistence of organizational performance problems be explained? For some scholars, the answer lies in examining the behaviour of employees and thus moving away from the instrumentality of PM. While this is laudable, what influences employees’ behaviours for them to engage in activities that make nonsense of the existence of PM has not been greatly articulated. In this paper, we attempt to contribute to this discussion by focusing on how societal culture influences behaviour, which in turn affects management of performance both internationaly and across cultures. We, therefore, argue that the inability of PM to effectively achieve its objectives is due to the high prevalence of informal societal culture that influences behaviours detrimental to rational performance PM in the public sector. We examine these behaviours from Hofstede’s four cultural dimensions with a focus on Ghana.