Abstract
Leadership styles adopted influence employee performance, but merely appropriate style without workforce reskilling cannot ensure sustainable and holistic organizational performance. The objective of this chapter is to explore and analyze leadership for enhancing organizational performance through workforce reskilling in the context of a local authority, namely municipality. Adopting mixed method approach, the primary data was collected by administering questionnaires. A sample size of 100 respondents participated in the study with the aid of convenience sampling technique for proportionate representation from each department. However, out of 100 questionnaires distributed, only 96 were completed and returned. Analysis is done by STATISTICA Software. The findings reflect that both democratic and autocratic leadership are adopted and there was insufficient workforce reskilling required to meet the current needs of the organization.
TopIntroduction
As other organizational and managerial factors have changed, shared values and norms of society and its organizations have also shifted (Kim & Bae, 2017). Over the past 15 years or so, human resource management (HRM) systems and practices have gone through tremendous changes globally. Traditionally HRM policies and practices aimed at tenure and seniority approach. With advent of ICT and knowledge shits from early 21 century, performance-based systems with greater emphasis on rationality, fairness and competence came into use (Kim & Bae, 2017). Today, organizations have started to intensively train and develop managers to enhance their professional competences. Hence, the challenge for leadership is to transform its role and ensure that human capital formation takes the priority. Municipality of Swakopmund is no exception to this dynamics of leadership and human resource management issues.
The Municipality of Swakopmund is a local Authority established under the Namibia Local Authority Act, 1992 (Act 23 of 1992). This town is situated in the Namib Desert along the western coast of Namibia. Swakopmund is the fourth largest populated city in Namibia (Erongo Regional Profile, 2010). The Municipality of Swakopmund is grouped under a category called part one Municipality. Being a part, one Municipality means that the institution is autonomous and does not depend on the central government for funding. It literally approves its own budget and runs its own affairs. In general, municipalities are responsible for the management of the provision of services to local communities in a sustainable and equitable manner. Swakopmund Municipality has a staff compliment of 388, comprised of five departments namely; Corporate, Community Development, Engineering, Finance and Health Services. Ten political councillors represent the Municipality from different political parties. The Mayor of Swakopmund is the chairperson of the Council who plays the leading role among her fellow Councillors. There is a management committee responsible for ensuring that the decisions of the Council are carried out and Council approves those budgets. The Chief Executive Officer is the highest administrative authority responsible for ensuring that the set Council policies are executed.
In line with the Municipality of Swakopmund’s mission statement, the organisation creates an environment that promotes earning income, respect, trust, support, personal growth and productivity in order to develop effective and committed employees. The Municipality of Swakopmund commits to accepting a high degree of open communication, a participative management style and lead by example. For the Municipality to fulfil its mission and achieve its objectives it undertook a “Free to Grow exercise” in 2015, which was aimed at identifying factors influencing or affecting employees’ performance. The Free to Grow exercise was conducted within the organisation where employees were engaged through a workshop. This exercise revealed that most of the employees said that there was lack of recognition and lack of appreciation, lack of trust, inconsistent treatment, favouritism, and lack of communication and coordination of resources as factors negatively influencing employees’ performance (Botha, 2015).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Manager: A person who has the authority and responsibility for getting the work done, making decisions, and is accountable.
Organization: A group of persons organized for some end or work; an organized structure or whole for a business or administrative concern united and constructed for a particular end.
Competence: Refers to the capacity of individuals/employees to act in a wide variety of situations. It consists of education, skills, experience, energy and their attitudes that will make or mar relationships with the customers and the products or services they provide.
Development: Means ‘steady progress’ and stresses effective assisting in hastening a process or bringing about a desired end, a significant consequence or event, the act or process of growing, progressing, or developing.
Government: The organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions and which is usually classified according to the distribution of power within it.
Knowledge Management: The systematic process of finding, selecting, organizing, distilling and presenting information that improves the comprehension in a specific area of interest. It is also as a synonym for content management or information management, but incorporates communities of practice, learning from experience, and knowledge retention and transfer.
Transformation: The act or process of transforming, change in form, appearance, nature, or character or alteration, especially a radical one. A change in position or direction of the reference axes in a coordinate system without an alteration in their relative angle.
Challenges: Something that by its nature or character serves as a call to make special effort, a demand to explain, justify, or difficulty in a undertaking that is stimulating to one engaged in it.
Training: Organized activity aimed at imparting information and/or instructions to improve the recipient’s performance or to help him or her attain a required level of knowledge or skill.
Leader: Head, superior, a person who rules, guides, motivates, encourages, stimulates and inspires others.
Decision-Making: A rational and logical process of choosing the best alternative or course of action among the available options.