Effectiveness of performance management system in Moses Kotane Local Municipality

Abstract

Section 38 of the Local Government Municipal Systems Act (32 of 2000) mandates municipalities to establish and implement performance management systems. The aim was to curb and assign responsibility to the utilizing of resources to be effective, efficiently and economically. It further mandates municipalities to develop Integrated Development Plan (IDP) to prioritise delivery of services to communities. Thus, Moses Kotane Local Municipality has the statutory obligation to ensure delivery of sustainable and quality services to its communities through the guidance of local government legal prescripts. Hence, the objective of this paper is to measure the effectiveness of performance management system implemented in measuring organisational performance at Moses Kotane Local Municipality. The implementation of an effective performance management is affected by various factors depending on the organisation and industry. Effective implementation of PMS is characterised as the epitome of exceptional performance management of an organisation. Hence, when it is well-implemented, organisations perform well and vice versa. Furthermore, the IDP is deemed the driving tool of service delivery and has been characterised to be an essential document which municipalities are mandated to. The study was conducted within Moses Kotane Local Municipality as the employees were the relevant subject matter in the research. The results of the study found that various factors affected the effective implementation of PMS. Furthermore, PMS was found to be ineffective in MLMK. The results show that the respondents are knowledgeable about PMS processes although this does not improve on organisational performance. As a result of the findings, the recommendations were that the municipality should re-evaluate the entire performance management system to determine vulnerabilities discovered within the system. The municipality should further introduce the balance scorecard mechanism as a strategic tool to warrant that resources are used efficiently, economically and efficiently. For the purpose of this study, the quantitative methodology has been used to conduct the study in MKLM as it was found to be useful and fairly represents the observations. Furthermore, a self-administered questionnaire was utilised as a data collection instrument which consisted of closed-ended questions.