Strategic Leadership for Performance Management in the Mpumalanga Legislature

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to examine the Mpumalanga Legislature’s performance management for politicians and administrative support staff and the extent to which purposive strategic imperatives can enhance such performance. The lack of an appropriate performance management tool in the Legislature would lead to citizens’ apathy towards government services since the Legislature would be unable to demonstrate its interventions on the implementation of government policies. The paper argues that keeping strategic leaders focused on the topic of performance management can prove difficult and undermine their ability to envision, anticipate and position for the future. The stakeholder model of organisational leadership has been proposed as an appropriate performance management model for the Legislature since it embraces the collective sense of the leadership’s efficacy based on the perception of multiple stakeholders. This is contrasted with the public service performance management model which is used for service delivery purposes and is inappropriate to be customized to the legislatures. The view of the study is that strategic leaders who are socially complex have more developed and complex knowledge structures regarding people and situations, and a greater understanding of critical social organisational problems.