Biography

Charlene M. L. Roach is a former Fulbright scholar and serves as Lecturer at the Department of Behavioral Sciences, The University of The West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, where she earned her undergraduate degree. She obtained her master's and doctorate in public administration from Arizona State University, U.S.A. Her areas of research and teaching are in public management/public human resource management, organizational behaviour/studies for the public sector, and e-government. She is a foreign correspondent for an international teaching and learning journal, The Journal of Public Affairs Education, U.S.A. and a reviewer for a Caribbean teaching and learning journal.

Gloria Davis-Cooper has a Bachelor’s of Science in Sociology with Government; a Master’s. of Science in Government and a Master’s of Philosophy Candidate in Governance, from The University of West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine/Mona Campuses. She has lectured over a decade in the Faculty of Social Sciences, The UWI and currently serves as Assistant Lecturer in the Management Studies Department. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of organizational behaviour/studies, public management, human resource management/development, and public policy analysis. She has over 30 years’ expertise in public management and administration in Trinidad and Tobago’s public services.

Article Title

Big Questions: Performance Management System After Fifty Years

Abstract

This paper examines the big questions in public service performance management system after fifty years of practice in the Trinidad and Tobago (TT) public service. During this half a century, spanning pre-independence self governance, and independence, two systems emerged that shaped and determined the structure, culture, and normative standards that characterized public service employees’ performance and their evaluation. Historically, TT inherited a system that remained until the early 2000s. Such changes could imply broadening perspectives in public management and administration to explore options other than what persisted during the colonial and pre-independence eras. The authors bring to the fore issues befitting of this conference as it seeks to survey the past and map the future. They posit how have the big questions in the TT public service performance management system (PMAS) address issues that have surfaced in the first quarter century compared to those in the latter quarter century. By doing so, they highlight the policies and practices that have been adopted over time and the challenges that surfaced as well as the outcomes. The paper points to the fact that there are perennial issues that surface in this HRM function during the fifty year period given the two PMAS designed, and how they impacted public service employees’ performance, the public sector PMAS, and public Human Resources Management practices. The authors put forward recommendations to consider in a collective sense for future possibilities for PMAS, direction of governments with divergent policies/arrangements, and a trajectory of practices that can steer and guide countries such as TT for another fifty years into the future.