Performance Management System of Jordanian Public Sector Organizations: Greater Amman Municipality’s (GAM) Experience

Abstract

The Performance Management System (PMS) is one of the most critical systems within the context of public organizations. Without proper implementation of the PMS, these organizations will encounter challenges to deliver their services. Ideally, the PMS framework might cover several fields, including strategic planning and goals setting, strategies and plans, performance appraisal, the reward and punishment system, and performance information. Due to limitations in the existing literature about the PMS in the developing countries, this paper aims to reflect on the implementation of the PMS in the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) in Jordan because it is one of the biggest employers of the Jordanian public sector in the Middle East region, which is an integral part of the developing contexts. To this end, a descriptive analysis of the secondary data has been conducted, including the related literature, published documents, and archival data. According to Otley’s (1999) framework and the analysis of the experiences of the PMS of public entities in the developing world, the GAM system has failed to implement the performance indicators formulation. Also, its indicators are excessively reliant on archival measures. The GAM system is missing out on two major processes, which are appraising performance and the reward and punishment system. The findings revealed that the GAM system has failed to consider the results of the community satisfaction survey as a valuable source of performance for the performance inputs and planning process. Accordingly, a comprehensive framework of PMS has been synthesized and introduced in this paper.