Leadership quality and organisational performance

Date
2016
Authors
Phuthi, Rebaone Daniel Doctor
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Abstract
Abstract Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries(DAFF ) is constitutionally carrying the mandate of coordinating food security interventions in South Africa, hence food security and poverty alleviation are amongst top priorities which DAFF as a national department is relying on provincial departments of agriculture for efficient implementation of plans and programmes in order to respond to these, this therefore make agriculture portion of DAFF mandate transversal in nature because of its concurrent relationship between DAFF and Provincial departments of Agriculture. Department DAFF often gets confronted with series of questions from different stakeholders all expressing dissatisfaction by the department’s inability to follow money and fully account for the effective utilisation of funds by the provincial departments of Agriculture. The Portfolio committee members and the Auditor General’s findings for a number of years all cited insufficient monitoring and oversight of supported projects as a serious problematic area for the department, hence a qualified audits for predetermined objectives for the past three years has been received. The directorate Organisation Performance (D:OP) in DAFF focuses on monitoring strategic objectives of DAFF at national level through tracking performance against Strategic Plan/Annual Performance Plan and Service catalogue which reflect services offered by national directorates in order to achieve constitutional mandates. It is in directorate Organisation Performance where there are Monitoring and Evaluation Specialists at a deputy director level attached to every branch for focused and dedicated M&E support and these officials are very key for effective organisation performance. Though the paper primary intention is to focus on quality of leadership in DAFF and its relationship with organisation performance, the mediating role of monitoring and evaluation function serve as a glue that enhance decision making because top management rely on reliable and accurate information to be provided by directorate organisation performance and this is also in line with National Treasury Framework for Managing Programme Performance Information (2007) requirements. This therefore make monitoring and evaluation very important as well to be considered in evaluating the influence of leadership quality on organizational performance. One of the key findings is that though there is positive relationship between leadership quality and organisational performance within DAFF, the relationship is not as strong as in the relationship between monitoring and evaluation effectiveness and organisational performance. It is therefore recommended that with more focused investment in supporting the function of monitoring and evaluation, good organisational performance will be realised even if the quality of leadership is not that strong.
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Leadership, Organizational effectiveness -- South Africa.
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