Assessing performance

ENHANCING ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE: Charles Lusthaus, Marie Helene Adrien, Gary Anderson and Fred Carden; Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., 576, Masjid Road, Jungpura, New Delhi-110014. Rs. 295.

ORGANISATIONS USUALLY conduct self-assessment to understand their own performance, better to address their strategic issues and it is often used as a diagnostic, or a starting point for organisations, implementing an internal change or strategic planning process.

The book under notice, in 130 pages, divided into two parts with four chapters and an equal number of appendices, is actually a companion to their earlier publication Evaluation Institutionnelle which described their conceptual framework for assessing organisational capacity through various possible interventions. The authors have rightly claimed that this is not a definitive work but meant for sharing their experiences, which must be really rich going by this book.

The first three chapters describe major elements of self- assessment processes. The fourth reviews the performance of the International Development Research Centre, an institution with funded research at solving problems and is collaborating with Universalia Management Group (a Canadian management consulting firm) to help diagnose an organisation's strength and weaknesses, guide it in the formulation of capacity building responses, to open new possibilities for it to improve its performance and sustain growth.

The book contains tools, tips and exercises to test and these are easily identified by proper icons. What issues may arise in pre- planning? How to collect data? What methods can be used? What are the seven areas of organisational capacity and what are their components? To what extent does an organisation have adequate staffing procedures to ensure its performance? To what extent are appropriate systems for motivating available? What measures are available to support good performance? The answers to these and many more on communication, evaluation, networking and electronic linkage are available in the four chapters.

The appendices are supportive self-test exercises. The sample questionnaires on staff, donors, tips for designing interviews and the self-assessment exercises for SWOT analysis and dreaming about the future as also bridging the gap for the future, are good.

The book, a tool kit or a self-assessment guide with flexible tools and techniques that can be adapted, is a product of collaboration between the evaluation centre of the International Development Research Centre and Universalia Management Group. The main objective is to provide one with a process for conducting an assessment, a framework for assessing issues and tips on addressing issues. It would have been much better if the ``key'' for self-analysis (if at all these have been tested) are given at the end as is the case with such books.

To the credit of the publishers, it must be said that the well got up book is easy on the eye though the size is odd. A good buy for laity, better for academics and best for professionals and trainers.

N. RAMASWAMI

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Exposition of Saiva Siddhanta
Next     : Governance at the grassroots