Management and Delivery of UK Higher Education - Essay Example

?How have performance management systems introduced over the last 20 years impacted upon the management and delivery of UK higher education Contents Contents 2 Introduction 3 Public service management 3 Transition to new public management 5 Performance management 6 Impact of performance management system on Higher education 9 Reference 12 Bibliography 15 17 Introduction Public services are an important and a very important part of management. This includes various sectors like education, hospitals, hospitality etc. The administration and management of theses public services have changed with the introduction of the New Pubic Management. This change in the administration of the change in the public service management with the introduction of New Public Service has resulted in changes in the public spending, role of the public services, change in the relationship of the public and private sector. The public service managers have to deal with everyday challenges regarding the management of the services. The public service managers evaluate the services on the basis of the set targets. They not only measure the performance but also monitor and regulate the services. It is often said that anything which has to be managed must measured. Without measuring the concerned topic, managing the topic cannot be made because without measurement enable the detection of the various problems and strengths of the topic which helps to manage the topic. Therefore to manage the performance of the organisation it is very important to measure it. In this essay the impact of impact of the performance management system on the management of the higher education of UK has been analysed. To analyse the performance management it is very important to analyse and understand the concept of public services. Public service management Public service management deals with managing the public services. Therefore to understand the public service management it is very important to understand the public services. In many countries the services which are provided by the government to the general public like law enforcement, primary education, health services and many other services which are provided by the public sector if not financed by them (Grout and Stevens, 2003, p.2). Previously the public services were considered as the work which was government centred. With time the division of the government, private sector, nongovernment sector and public sector faded to such an extent that the area of public services expanded and included the services provided by the private sector and the non government sector too. Hence it can be said that the providers of the public services can be referred as the organisation from the multilayered sector. Hence sometimes the public services are referred as ‘people establishment’ which provide service to the general public and works on collective interest and also accept the responsibility for those services provided. Therefore the sector of public sector is heterogeneous which contains different people who had different expectations. Therefore the management of the public services is very important. The public service officials has to deal with the different political situations as well as ensure that the services done are morally correct as the services uses the resources of the society and are valuable to the society. The services constitute the technical skills, ethical values and leadership (Bowmen, West and Beck, 2009, p.9). The areas of public services include medical or health care sector, housing sector, transport sector, police services and the services and the services of government (Bach, et al, 1999, p.58). The health care sector provides services which includes highly technical expertise. This service is provided by the government as well as the private organisations. This sector is driven by ethical standards. Education which was primarily a government domain and was provided by the government is now provided by the other non-profit organisations too. The main objective of these service providers are to provide services which are valuable to the society. The performance of these service providers are also measured and analysed by the public service officers. Police services and the services of the local government were already considered as the public services by the traditional point of view. Among the new participants of public service are the transport sector and the housing sector. Transition to new public management The new public management was developed to reorganise the public sector in order to make the management, approaches to the accounting and the standard of reporting at par with the methods used in the business. It is a theory about how government should direct the work so that organised service can be offered to the public (Lane, 2000, p.304). The new public management signifies and clarifies the various issues related to the failures of the public sector. It identifies the various reasons for which the public sector performed below average. New Public Management aimed at dealing and solving the problems associated with the inefficient usage of resources and accountability of the public sector. The shift from the public administration to the New Public Management was done in many ways. Firstly, more efficient and transparent budgets were made and the performance indicators were used to measure the outputs. The main work of these performance indicators is to improve the performance on the basis of the data (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2001, p.35). Secondly, the organisation was viewed in a different way and many incentives were introduced in order to motivate the performers. Functions were distributed on the basis of quasi market and quasi contract form. Thirdly the competition between the various service providers that is between the non-profit organisations, public agencies etc were enhanced. In UK the new public management was introduced to make the public sector organisations more efficient and economical. The organisations were decentralized to make the organisation more visible and accountable. In UK the ‘contratualism’ was introduced as a step of tranfering to the new public management. It gave a new approach to the governance of the public sector (Lane, 2000, p.3). Competition was introduced to increase the accountability of the organisations. The centralised organisations were decentralized in to a number of market oriented organisation to enhance the competition between the different public sectors. Another change was made in the section of the delivery of the public service. The part of the policy making was separated from the operation of those policies. For example in National Health Service the policies are made by the policy board and management executive. More over the work of the health service has become more transparent. The address, name and other details of the officers who are dealing with the patents are highlighted and any compliant regarding the service delivery by the officers are enquired and often referred to the higher officials. With the introduction of the new service management the difference between the public and private sector have been diminished by making the public organisations act in a business way and delivering the service with the partnership of public and private sector (Falconer, No Date, p.5). With the introduction of new public management, many integrated healthcare services were provided in UK. Some of these services were provided through partnerships (Woods, 2001). Innovation in the structure of the organisations was very important in NPM. Public sector including the health sector was also got affected to the change in networks due to the implementation of PMS (Hogg, et al. 2002, p.65). Performance management In order to understand the rise in performance management in public sector it is very important to understand the meaning of performance management. As per HM treasury performance management can be described as ‘managing the performance of an individual or organisation.’ This enables the management to identify and understand the how the organisation is performing (HM Treasury, 2001). The performance of an organisation depends upon many things like the goals setting, performance of the employees etc. The effectiveness of the organisation can be improved by managing well the performance of the employees. The employee’s performance can be managed in five ways. Firstly, the work assigned to the employee must be properly planned and the standard of the work performance must be established. The performance standard is the expected performance. It can be defined as a statement of conditions which is measurable and behavioural (University of southern California, No Date, p.1). These standards must be specific, measurable, achievable, and realistic and should be time bound. Secondly, the performance of the employees must be measured and monitored from time to time. While monitoring the performance of the employees the actual performance is measured on the basis of the standard established. This helps the management to identify the variance of the actual performance from the standard performance. Thirdly, the efficiency levels of the employees are developed in order to achieve more efficient performance from them. This can be done by training the employees and imparting new skill and technical expertise. The areas of improvement are especially highlighted to them. Fourthly, as per the performance of the employees the employees are rated. This helps the management to identify the good performers and those who are not performing and simply becoming a liability of the organisation. These rating help the management to decide on the matters like promotion, training, bonus etc. The last step is to give recognition to the good performers. This can be done by rewarding the employees in cash or kind or both (US Office of Personnel Management, No Date). Thus performance management consists of many activities like planning the activities, executing those activities to achieve the desired performance. In performance management, measuring the performance is very important. It is said that anything which has to be managed must be measured. Many quantitative tools are used to measure the performance of the organisations. These tools range from the field of accounting to strategic management to operation management. In strategic management the balance scorecard is a very important tool used for development and control of strategy (Schmeisser, et al, 2011, p.21). Managing the performance of the organisation is very important because this enables the management to formulate the different strategies of the organisation. It helps to identify the organisational objectives and make the plan to achieve them. It also helps the management to make sure whether the strategy has been implemented as desired. It also helps the management to identify the validity of the strategies. It helps the organisation to identify the difference between the actual result and the desired result and also the reason for the difference. It enables the management in benchmarking the performance of the organisation as a whole and also the various parts of the organisation. For maintaining a good communication level with the stakeholders of the organisation, enhancing the learning and up gradation of the employees and providing appropriate feedback to the employee’s performance management is needed (Cranfield School of Management, No Date, p.5). In UK, the problem which the government faced while decentralising the public sector was the inadequate system of measurement of performance and information available to the officers. In organisations operating in the public sector, most of the employees were unknown to the organisational goals and objective. Therefore one of the objectives while doing the decentralisation was to make the managers aware of the organisational objectives. This will help the managers to monitor and measure the performance according to the organisational objectives. This resulted in the inclusion of performance indicators as the tool for controlling the organisations. The effective performance indicators were developed by continuous monitoring of the performance (McKevitt and Lawton, 2001, p.209). Another concept which has evolved in the performance management is the concept of audit society. Audit is generally done to check whether the activities are done as per the laid down norms or not. During the 1980s and 1990s in Britain many types of audits were started, such as the medical audit, financial audit, environmental audit, management etc were started to increase the accountability. Thus audit society refers to a situation where each and every activity is checked and monitored (Power, 1999, p.3). Nowadays total quality management is also practised in the organisations. The main objective of total quality management is to change the organisational culture and the view that errors are natural (Rawlins, 2008, p.6). Impact of performance management system on Higher education In UK the performance management was introduced in the educational sector so that the education system can be improved. As per the NPM managerialism was introduced to fulfil the universities’ needs (Dent, Chandler and Barry, 2004, p.166). The main objective of the implementation of the performance management makes the teachers more accountable. Different quantitative tools have been used to measure the performance of the teachers as well as the students. The introduction of the performance management in the education system has encouraged the organisations to increase their performance level. The teacher’s appraisal was considered after considering the performance of the student. This means that if the student scored low then that will affect the appraisal of the teacher too. In a study conducted on the performance management of schools in Scotland reflects that the teachers were under tremendous stress to perform and improve continuously. This had both positive and negative effects. In one hand their performance was increasing on the other hand the students were also under pressure to improve every time (Ozga, 2003, p.3). The introduction of performance management in the higher education system has impacted the financial performance of the organisation in many ways. During the 1990s this sector was facing problem in terms of the financial resources available to the organisation. The profit margins of the institution were also low. In 2005 the operating margin declined to more than half of the previous year’s level. Wi8th the introduction of new fee system the financial situation has improved. With the introduction of the performance management system in higher education, the expectation of the students for quality education has also increased. This has indeed created pressure on those who are providing the service, to perform better. Thus, the financial flow of those institutions that are performing well has increased and the shortage of financial resources is not a problem for those institutions. The government also provided funds to the universities so that they can perform better. Thus the implementation of the performance management system has impacted the financial aspect of the organisations and also encouraged the good performers by rewarding them through incentives (Broadbent, 2007, p.10). The implementation of performance management system in the education sector was directed to provide desired and expected service to the providers of the funds. The new performance management has influenced the service providers to deliver a more specific performance to the members or the fund providers and delivering the same without any mistake. The performance management system has made a situation as per which any service does not come for free. In high education sector, the implementation of performance management system has led to the increase in infrastructure of the institutions. It has also influenced the organisations to increase their capacity as well as their capabilities in terms of delivering efficient service. This has also helped the organisations to establish its targets and also measure them to ensure the quality of the service. But, the performance management system has also challenged the culture of the universities (Broadbent, 2007, p.18). The measurement and management of any service cannot be complete without mentioning the quality aspect of the service. For managing the performance of any service it is important to manage the quality of the service. Quality management in the higher education sector has always been a tough job. This is because the meaning of quality varies from person to person. In case of higher education the range of stake holders is quite large. The stake holders are both internal and external of the organisation. The internal ones are the students, teachers, and management staffs and the external ones are the other fund providers. Previously the quality management only dealt with the assurance of the quality but now it includes increase of the knowledge, skills, social interaction etc. In UK the quality assurance work is done by the quality assurance agency. They are responsible to inspect and judge the quality of services of the institutions (Becket and Brookes, 2008, p.41). The performance management system has also enable the organisation to be more aware of the uncertainties as these uncertainties can affect the performance of the organisation. To be more aware of the uncertainties and manage them effectively, more and more public sector organisations are adopting risk management measures. As the financial resources are limited and has to be used efficiently therefore the organisation are using different ways to manage the financial risks and perform efficiently. Identifying the key risk indicators is an important way to manage the risk for proper implementations of the strategies (Fraser and Simkins, 2010, p.139). Thus, it can be said that performance management system was introduced by the government in the UK primarily to make the public sector organisation act more efficiently and become at par with the private sector organisations. The transition of the public management system with the new public management enhanced the area of the implementation and the performance management system was also implemented in the non profit organisations like medical sector and the education sector. The implementation of the performance management system has impacted the higher education system in a number of ways. It has increased the financial strength of the institutes, made the service providers more accountable to their work and also motivated the good performers by rewarding them but, it has also increased the pressure on the teachers and the management to perform well every time which is sometime passed to the students. In all it can be said that the implementation of the performance management system have both positive and negative impact on the higher education in UK. Reference Bach, S. Et al. (1999). Public service employment relations in Europe: transformation, modernization or inertia. Great Britain: Routledge. 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