The nexus between institutional framework and employee performance in Tanzania’s maritime sector
| Published date | 01 March 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523231184617 |
| Author | Sigfrid Kilian Kikoti,Wilfred Uronu Lameck |
| Date | 01 March 2024 |
The nexus between
institutional framework
and employee
performance in Tanzania’s
maritime sector
Sigfrid Kilian Kikoti
Mzumbe University, Tanzania
Wilfred Uronu Lameck
Mzumbe University, Tanzania
Abstract
Employee performance has been a critical theme which has received global attention in
the mainstream literature of public sector governance. In developing countries, the need
for employee performance is backed up by public dismay on declining public sector per-
formance. Some of the causes attributed to low performance are the meagre resources
allocated to the public sector and the existing formal rules and regulations which mould
the behaviour of employees. So far, the existing informal social rules which alsoregulate
the behaviour of employees have received little attention. This article is therefore set to
explore the relationship between the formal institutional framework, the informal social
rules and the availability of resources on one hand, and employee performance within
Tanzania’s maritime sectoron the other. Accordingly, the study adopted a mixed
approach with a case study of the Tanzania Port Authority in Dar es Salaam. To this
end, a stratified simple random sampling technique was used to get a sample of 318
respondents for a questionnaire and a purposeful sampling technique was used toget
a sample of 30 respondents for in-depth interviews. Quantitative data were analysed
through descriptive statistics of employee performance variables and interviews were
Corresponding author:
Wilfred Uronu Lameck, School of Public Administration and Management, Mzumbe University, PO Box 2,
Morogoro, Tanzania.
Email: wlameck@mzumbe.ac.tz
CORRECTION (August 2023): There were some typos in the caption of Figure 1. Those typos have been
corrected in the article.
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2024, Vol. 90(1) 259–275
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523231184617
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
analysed through a thematic approach to get in-depth information concerning the influ-
ence of formal and informal institutions and resources on employee performance. The
study found that employees’performance behaviour at Dar es Salaam port authority is
regulated by formal system such as the Open Performance Review and Appraisal System
and informal channels of communication. The formal rules define the targets to be
reached by each employee but the informal social rules and the resources provide
the conditions to achieve the predetermined target.
Points for practitioners
Public managers should be aware that employee performance in the public sector is a
function not only of formal rules and regulations in place but also of the availability of
resources and the informal social rules which set the conditions and influence the
way public officials perform their daily duties and responsibilities in the public office.
Keywords
Institutional framework, employee performance, maritime sector, Tanzania
Introduction
Most organizations across the globe have recognized the importance of employee per-
formance and the role that it plays in organizational productivity. This is because
employee performance places more emphasis on employees to fulfil their required
duties towards the realization of organizational goals. Despite this recognition, in
recent years many countries have experienced a decline in employee performance
which has raised a global concern for organizational productivity (Sarangi and Shah,
2015; Tchapchet et al., 2014). This concern has drawn the attention of many researchers
in different parts of the world with a varying degree and causes. In Asian countries, for
example, there is a growing drastic decline in employee performance in the public sector
associated with poor governance conditions which bear on disincentives for employee
performance (Sarangi and Shah, 2015). The situation is even worse in Africa, where
the declining employee performance is attributed to the existing corruption associated
with a lack of transparency, accountability and the unlimited powers of government offi-
cials (Arinanye, 2015; Bana, 2009). Another factor attributed to declining employee per-
formance in Africa is the limited budget allocated to public sector agencies. As a result,
the limited budget constrains employee promotions, and payments of incentives and
bonuses, which consequently bears on their de-motivations and poor performance
(Arinanye, 2015). Apart from that, in some African countries, poor employee perform-
ance is attributed to employee job dissatisfaction which results in frequent riots and
strikes over poor working conditions and remunerations (Arinanye, 2015; Tchapchet
et al., 2014). The Tanzania experience concerning employee performance is more or
less similar to that of other countries across the globe. For example, the Tanzanian
260 International Review of Administrative Sciences 90(1)
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