Role of Performance Contracting in Enhancing Effectiveness of Performance in the Civil Service in Kenya, State Department of Infrastructure

Abstract

The management of the Public Service in Kenya has been a challenge and has been undergoing changes and evolving over time towards improved service delivery to the citizens and none has born better results than performance contracting. Key trend in the New Public Management (NPM) approach in crisis states is the increasing resort to performance contracting as an instrument to reform state-owned enterprises. Introduction of performance contracting emanated from the realization that public service was not clear about its goals as it had several functions with multiple objectives to fulfill where some were not related to their core mandate. It's also from realization that what gets measured gets done, a philosophy that has been practiced widely in the private sector. The study established that performance contracting enhanced effectiveness of performance in service delivery in the civil service in Kenya and particularly in the State Department of Infrastructure. Literature was reviewed to broaden the view of management of public service systems and performance contracting in particular. The Department under study was divided into five heterogeneous divisions (stratum) and a sample of 108 out of 1072 was got through proportionate stratified sampling method. Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) was used in the descriptive and inferential data analyses to establish meanings and relationships. Correlations revealed a strong relationship of (0.596) between performance contracting and effectiveness of performance. R-Square indicated that performance contracting explained 31.6% of effectiveness of performance. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) established that performance contracting is significant on performance while regression model established that a unit increase in performance contracting resulted to an increase in effectiveness of performance by 1.22 units which is significant at a p-value of 0.000. These results provided and revealed an important aspect bearing the effort and cost the government is putting in the performance contracting tool. It is concluded from the findings that performance contracting leads to effectiveness of performance and therefore recommended that more resources need to be used to fast track the tool in the entire public service.