U 4875631 Performance Management Report

Performance Management System in Police Organisation of Pakistan

Performance management in a public sector organisation is relatively a modern concept.

Now the public sector organisations are asked to produce mission statements, strategies,
goals and performance indicators as a response to general dissatisfaction with the
service delivery of public sector all over the world. Public sector in Pakistan has also
been influenced by New Public Management practices and has moved towards
Performance Management System (PMS). In this regard adequate procedural and legal
reforms coupled with resources and technology has been introduced in many public
sector organisations including Police. Pakistan Police (PP) has long been seen as an
underperforming organisation that has failed to meet the challenges. At the heart of this
failure lies the individual and organisational performance management system that
focuses on misplaced indicators and promotes strict organisational hierarchy at the
expense of individual creativity and organisations alignment with societal needs.

This paper will argue that PMS in PP serves the implicit objective of maintaining strict
hierarchy within the organisation to support the coercive side of the state. Particularly, it
will be argued that the performance indicators are devoid of organisations role and
goals. There is a need to re-orient the organisational and individual performance
indicators in the wider perspective of its perceived role. It will be supported by
describing context, contents and evaluating its effectiveness, and finally suggesting that
performance appraisal should include the non quantifiable indicators as well because
most of the police performance remains unseen in the current PMS.

PP has a historical context that influences its current PMS. Pakistan inherited a colonial
police system that was devised in aftermath of 1857 anti-colonial uprising. It was
governed by police act of 1861 by which the main function of the police was to coerce,
rather than protect, citizens (Crisis Group Asia Report 2008, p. 2). Maintenance of
social order was the prime responsibility and for this purpose a regimented
organisational culture was introduced, producing a military like command and control
and non compliance was punished severely. Although Police has transformed much in
its outlook since 1861 yet public servants not only shape history of their organisation
but also are shaped by that history (Denhardt 1993, p. 73).

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Strength of Police is about 324,000 aprox. (93% frontline employees, 5% supervisors,

3% executives). After recruitment and training, they are allocated to different branches
and are evaluated annually. At the end of every year, every employee is bound to get his
Performance Evaluation Report (PER) written by his direct supervisor and
countersigned by two next immediate seniors. In case of pre mature transfer, he gets
PER for the period not less than three months. The PER contains his rating with respect
to global categories such as initiative, leadership, appearance and knowledge of laws. It
also contains crime related figures .i.e. arrests and detections during his posting.

Another formal channel of PMS is mid career professional course at the end of which he
is evaluated. Every course contains certain marks that are added up to his rating.
Besides professional courses, promotion committees also evaluate him on the basis of
his postings and performance. The promotion committees quantify his PERs, course
results and any extraordinary act of gallantry. (Attached as appendix 1).

There are also informal channels of Performance appraisal like peer review in form of
impressions about the employee, his accessibility to the seniors and political bosses.
Moreover, how society, through media and direct interaction, gauges his performance
also shapes his professional repute. These factors impact his formal performance
appraisal directly or indirectly.

The stated aim of the PMS in police is to reward and punish. The recommendations for
accelerated promotions by the reporting senior officer has considerable effect on the
decision of the promotion committee while the adverse remarks can lead to deferment
of promotion. Although there is an option of appeal but still any negative or below the
average rating brings serious consequences for the employee. PMS puts greater
emphasis on punishing the failure than rewarding the performance

However, the implicit aim of PMS is to maintain the paramilitary posture of the force. It
promotes loyalty to the person rather than organisation or clients. It may appear an
obsolete performance indicator but performance is a relative and cultural-specific
concept (Sundaram & Campo 2000, p. 652). Evolved amidst the feudal, rural and
scattered society, Police tried to replace the loyalty to social figure heads with loyalty to
departmental heads for sake of transforming the staff employees into agents of social
cohesion. Police, with the help of land revenue staff, codified the procedures and united

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the vast Sub continent. Legacy of playing a unifying role under the political leadership
still carries on with the police culture. So, hierarchical Police culture has its own roots
and utility in a highly fractionalised society of Pakistan.

If seen critically, Performance appraisal system of Police strengthens the sense of

community with in the organisation. Forces usually have a self protective subculture
where we feelings keep the seniors away from concrete and objective appraisal of
their subordinates. Although building a sense of community within the organisation
(Denhardt 1993, p. 71) is the vital function of the managers for performance
enhancement but it should not lead to empty rituals where little concrete depends on
evaluation and everybody is rated as satisfactory (Marx 1976, p.23).

Current performance indicators like personal traits and crime figures are internally
generated and control oriented. Colleagues and clients are excluded from it that further
widens the gap between societal demands and performance of the individuals. Police
managers usually consider conformity to the bureaucratic norms as satisfactory
performance and ensure that the subordinates are doing the right thing and how inputs
can be regulated to enhance their performance (Behn 2003, Pp. 588 & 593).

Performance indicators of a policeman have been defined very narrowly. They only
evaluate the crime related performance and ignore other important duties like peace-
keeping and helping the distressed. Due to decentralised and autonomous nature of
police work, an individual policemans performance during isolated events remains
unreported. Moreover, the peace keeping and emergency services do not produce any
product so they go unreported and unrewarded.

Moreover, PMS of police is quantitative, least concerned with the process. It stresses
how many and not how it is achieved. Like outputs, the value of good process is
high but undetermined (Sundaram & Campo 2000, p. 653). Whether it is issuing the
traffic tickets or arresting the criminals, PMS does not bother about the way and why it
was done. As a result the employees try to look smart in figures and ignore the
contribution to the organisational goals.

Use of seniors rating for performance appraisal has a danger of subjectivity. There is
hardly any mean for assessing the reliability of seniors judgement. A subordinate may

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be a victim of his bias, lack of knowledge or mere hesitancy to report objectively. More
often seniors think that reporting his subordinate negatively may reflect badly on his
own performance as manager.

PMS relies solely on outputs rather than outcomes. Arresting a criminal is not an end
itself but how that arrest affects the overall peace and security of a society is more
valuable. Outcome indicators are more relevant and valuable to the end user of the
service. Although arrest of criminal is a relevant and quantifiable indicator than
outcomes yet, outcomes are more meaningful and feasible indicator but quite difficult to
quantify. As stated by Behn (2003, p. 586) neither the act of measuring performance
nor the resulting data accomplishes anything; only when someone uses these measures
in some way do they accomplish something.

PMS of police can be improved by including the non quantifiable indicators like
processes and outcomes.

A process is the manner to procure the output. A spectacular arrest affected by coercion
and treachery should not be viewed by its result only. Moreover, restoring peace is
desirable but how many times the police man baton charged the crowd to restore peace,
is also important. Sometimes the process themselves are an end and ignoring them
trivialises outputs. Individual restraint on using wrong processes can be aggregated to
from a group measure, and respecting the process will become an end in itself.

PMS should also consider the outcomes of a policemans activity for better performance
appraisal. In Police working, the relationship between output and outcome is vague
(Jones 2001, p. 127) but quite important for measuring efficiency. Crime fighting
neither consumes much of their time not taken seriously by many. A policeman spends
most of his time in interacting with society in civil matters and emergencies and that is
where his utility and effectiveness is gauged by the society. Managers should consider
how a policeman contributed to collective preferences and whether he focussed on
results or relationships (OFlynn 2007, p. 3). Quality of his interaction with society,
problem solving approach and the action taken or suggested by him must be part of
performance appraisal for an effective PMS of Police.

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References

Behn, R. D 2003, Why measure performance? Different purposes require different

measures, Public Administration Review, 63(5), Pp. 586-606.

Denhardt, R. B 1993, The pursuit of significance: strategies for managerial success in

public organisations, Long Grove, Waveland Press, ch. 3.

Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2005, World Public Sector Report:
Unlocking the human potential for public sector performance, United Nations, New
York.

International Crisis Group 2008, Reforming Pakistans Police, Asia Report, N 157,
viewed 5 June 2010, < www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/ASAZ-82QHVU>.

Jones, G 2001, Performance measurement, in Aulich, C. Halligan, J. &Nutley(eds),

Australian Hand Book of Public Sector Management, Allen and Unwin.

Marx, T. G 1976, Alternative measure of police performance, in Viano, E. (ed.),

Criminal Justice Research, Lexington Books.

O Flynn, J 2007, From new Public Management to Public Value; Paradigmatic

Changes and Managerial Implications, Australian Journal of Public Administration,
66(3), Pp. 353-366.

Sundaram, P. A. & Schiavo-Campo, S 2000, Performance measurement in public

administration, To Serve and To Preserve: Improving public administration in a
competitive world, Asian Development Bank, Manila.

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Appendix 1 attached with hardcopy