Measuring Productivity to Improve Efficiency

Research Question

What mechanisms can public managers utilize to measure the productivity and achievement/accomplishment of their agencies towards improving efficiencies in pursuit of such goals?

Rationale

Performance management refers to the adoption and implementation appraisal systems and programs to evaluate the level of production of the employees while adhering to their ability to achieve the stated objectives. From this perspective, employees are major contributors to the realization of the goals and targets of the organization. It is valuable to engage in monitoring and evaluation of the role and contributions of the employees in pursuit of the competitive advantage and sustainability on the operations of the public institution. Public management aims at improving the performance of the workforce, thus, the need to adopt and incorporate quality appraisal systems to enable the institutions to achieve their goals and targets at the end of each operational year. In this context, I chose this topic because of the increasing importance of performance management in the modern society, particularly as an element of the public management. 

Research Design

Research design refers to the illustration of the process and product focusing on or enabling the generation or construction of sound arguments while using evidence and reasoning to offer support some point or claim. Evidently, the objective of the research design is to provide the subsequent meaning of the structure of an investigation into the research problem in the course of generating valid, useful, and reliable arguments from the audiences’ perspective. The quality of the research design is critical in determining the quality of the product or output of the research process in agreement with the demands and scope of the research. Additionally, research design is crucial in determining convincing arguments and interpretation of the research findings. Conclusively, research design is valuable in enabling narrowing of the research towards a particular combination of specific theories, research questions, and frameworks.

The study seems to be descriptive, as well as explorative in nature because of the composition of the research question. In the first instance, the research question is descriptive because it seems to answer ‘what’ question regarding the evaluation of the performance of the employees in pursuit of competitive advantage. Secondly, the research question proves to be explorative because it seeks to explore the mechanisms enabling the public managers to monitor and assess the performance of the employees within the public management context. From this perspective, it is appropriate to consider utilization of the inductive research logic in the exploration of the scope and questions regarding the study (Bowen & Bowen, 2008). 

The research will focus on the adoption and utilization of the mixed research design. The mixed research design is valuable for the execution of this study because of the ability of the design to facilitate utilization of words, pictures, and narrative in the course of adding meaning to numbers. Conversely, it is appropriate to use the number to add precision to the words, narrative, and pictures. The researcher will also have the opportunity to utilize the design to generate, as well as test a grounded theory. The approach is valuable in offering quality findings to the holistic research question, thus, flexibility and agility in the maximization of the scope of the study (Creswell& Clark, 2007). The mixed research design is ideal for the generalization of the research results, thus, the platform for the provision of a stronger evidence for the conclusion. This is through convergence and the eventual corroboration of the results, thus, execution of the principles of triangulation. Categorically, utilization of both qualitative and quantitative research designs is crucial in the generation of a complete knowledge to inform practice, as well as theory. Evidently, this research design will be appropriate for the exploration of the research question. 

The research design will incorporate both questionnaires and interviews as the instruments for the mixed research design. The approach will engage in the administration of questionnaires or surveys to 100 students from the learning institutions under the influence of random sampling technique. Similarly, the study will consider interviewing 20 public managers over the internet platforms regarding their perceptions on the performance management among the employees (Dornyei 2007). These tools are justifiable because of the opportunity to generate numbers and words, as well as images regarding the research question, as well as scope of the study. For instance, both questionnaires and interview tools will be appropriate in enabling follow-up on the responses by the research participants during the collection of quality data.

In the analysis of the research findings, the study will focus on the utilization of the mixed research analysis techniques. For instance, the study will consider identification of the emerging trends and themes to address the qualitative part of the research. On the other hand, the study will consider the exploitation of the regression analysis in the exploration of the findings from the administration of the questions. The approach will facilitate investigation of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables such as performance monitoring and management, as well as the output of the employees in pursuit of competitive advantage and sustainability in the public sector. 

References

Bowen, C. C., & Bowen, W. M. (2008). Handbook of research methods in public administration.

Creswell, J. W., & Clark, V. L. P. (2007). Designing and conducting mixed methods research.

Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research methods in applied linguistics: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies . Oxford University Press.

Wiersma, W., & Jurs, S. G. (2005). Research methods in education: An introduction.