The Practices and Problems of Employee Appraisal Systems: A Psychological Perspectives

The objective of the study was to assess the practices and problems of employee performance appraisal system in Ethiopian Telecommunication Agency. The intention of the study was that majority of the employees are de motivated in their work, do not satisfied regarding their performance evaluation, complaining heard among departments for rewards and frequent turnover of employees. The study employed descriptive research methodology. The researcher used stratified random sampling technique in selecting respondents, while interview informants selected purposively. In addition, data collected through questionnaires, interview and documents analysis. The collected data analyzed through quantitatively and qualitatively. Quantitative data described by using frequency, percentages and mean scores. The findings revealed that purpose of appraisal is not connected with varieties of its function, which is facilitating both developmental and administrative issues of employees.  In the study, both evaluator and evaluates lack awareness of evaluation method (BSC), evaluation is not undertaken in a planned time schedule, bias (subjectivity of evaluator), difficulty of customizing evaluation criteria, and defining activities and targets, misunderstanding of the evaluation system (BSC), misperception and attitude of employees are identified as a major problems faced in the employee performance evaluation. To overcome the challenges and bottle necks of employees performance appraisal system; the importance of improving evaluation system, continuous training for awareness creation concerning method of evaluation (BSC), commitment of both evaluator and evaluates, being trustworthy and loyalty through the process of evaluation were recommended. Keywords: Employees, Performance, Appraisal System, Practices and Problem

EVALUATING CHANGES IN TRAINING MANAGER’S ROLE PERCEPTIONS: A CASE STUDY OF TRHE NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY

Organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of moving from training to performance improvement in Human Resource Development (HRD). Business organizations need to dramatically alter the roles of training managers to ensure that they move towards a performance improvement process, and to ensure that potential solutions are linked to organizational and individual performance problems. As part of a program for nuclear power managers at a major university, we evaluated the changes in the perceptions of twenty-one training managers from around the United States. The evaluation data lead us to conclusions regarding the changing role of training managers from strictly training to that of performance consultant and the challenges manger’s face as they try to build partnering relationships

The role of tacit knowledge in the construction industry: towards a definition

The construction industry is perceived as one of the knowledge-based value creating sectors of the economy; however, it faces many challenges, especially in terms of performance, due to its intrinsic nature. Different knowledge-based solutions have been proposed in the past to overcome this problem. However, the process-based solutions, enhancing personalisation strategies and interactions between construction workers to generate and share tacit knowledge, would be much more relevant to overcome KM problems in construction organisations. As the initial step towards the management of tacit knowledge, this paper examines the nature and importance of tacit knowledge in the construction industry. Based on research findings a definition for tacit knowledge is synthesised to: understanding, capabilities, skills and the experiences of individuals; often expressed in human actions in the form of thoughts, points of view, evaluation and advice; generated and acquired through past experiences, individuals, and repositories; utilised for the benefit of individual and organisational development

Acute Care Occupational Therapy Practice: Application of the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure in A Palliative Care Program

Occupational therapists working in acute care must meet the many challenges of working with a diverse group of clients such as adult cancer survivors. Clients may be transitioned to acute palliative care due to disease progression. Clients in palliative care have many unmet needs affecting engagement in occupations, thus requiring occupational therapy services. The goal of this capstone project is to describe occupation-based problems and level of independence in completing basic activities of daily living among acute palliative care clients to illustrate the importance of using occupation-based approach with this population. The longitudinal prospective study utilized standardized evaluations to assess functional performance when admitted to acute palliative care: Canadian Occupational Performance Measure, Shah Modified Barthel Index, and Palliative Performance Scale. Ten clients identified more occupational performance problems at initial OT evaluation in self-care (75%), than productivity (12.5%), and leisure (12.5%). Relationships between the client’s perception and satisfaction scores at initial OT evaluation and the Palliative Performance Scale scores as well as the Shah Modified Barthel Index scores were not statistically significant. The difference between the pre-post Canadian Occupational Performance Measure scores for performance and satisfaction suggested that 50% of the clients experienced an improvement in performance scores and 50% of the clients experienced improvement in satisfaction scores. The use of a client-centered, standardized assessment guided the occupational therapy process in providing occupation-based goals

Learning cybersecurity in iot-based applications through a capture the flag competition

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the main foundations of Industry 4.0, providing widespread connectivity of systems and devices, which promotes significant benefits, such as improved performance, responsiveness, and reconfigurability. However, it also brings some security problems, which make these devices and systems vulnerable to cyberattacks, consequently demanding efficient learning and training initiatives to address the challenges regarding the qualification of undergraduate students and active professionals to design more secure systems, as well as to be more aware of cyberthreats during the management and use of them. With this in mind, this paper describes a Capture the Flag competition based on IoT cybersecurity. The participants’ feedback and performance evaluation show that this type of hands-on competition strongly contributes to learning the importance of cybersecurity in IoT-based applications.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Addressing housing needs in minimising the problems of post conflict housing reconstruction

Depleted human and social capital, displacement of people, destruction of property, weakened institutions and ruined economy are some of the legacies of conflicts. Within this context, post conflict reconstruction contributes to overcome the legacies of conflict through reactivating the development process that has been disrupted by the conflict. Among the post conflict reconstruction interventions, post conflict housing reconstruction is paramount important as it contributes to development and peace through restoring the economic and social life of conflict affected people. Despite the importance, the success of post conflict housing reconstruction is hindered by a number of problems such as lack of strategies to address the unique challenges faced by vulnerable households, lack of involvement of local people, lack of use of local building material and technology, lack of local economic development, lack of community linkages, lack of cultural and local consideration, overlooked socio-economic conditions of occupants, standardised housing models, housing models imported from different cultures, lack of beneficiary consultation, poor performance of agencies, bribery and corruptions and lack of post occupancy evaluation. If not properly managed, these issues lead to hinder the success of post conflict housing reconstruction and its contribution to the development and peace. This paper argues that lack of concern on housing needs has directly or indirectly given rise for most of these issues through a comprehensive literature review on post conflict housing reconstruction and housing needs. The paper establishes the link between the problems of housing reconstruction and lack of addressing housing needs. Accordingly, it concludes that adequate housing measures provide a general guideline in addressing housing needs and addressing such needs leads to minimise the problems of post conflict housing reconstruction

Data-Driven Methods and Applications for Optimization under Uncertainty and Rare-Event Simulation

For most of decisions or system designs in practice, there exist chances of severe hazards or system failures that can be catastrophic. The occurrence of such hazards is usually uncertain, and hence it is important to measure and analyze the associated risks. As a powerful tool for estimating risks, rare-event simulation techniques are used to improve the efficiency of the estimation when the risk occurs with an extremely small probability. Furthermore, one can utilize the risk measurements to achieve better decisions or designs. This can be achieved by modeling the task into a chance constrained optimization problem, which optimizes an objective with a controlled risk level. However, recent problems in practice have become more data-driven and hence brought new challenges to the existing literature in these two domains. In this dissertation, we will discuss challenges and remedies in data-driven problems for rare-event simulation and chance constrained problems. We propose a robust optimization based framework for approaching chance constrained optimization problems under a data-driven setting. We also analyze the impact of tail uncertainty in data-driven rare-event simulation tasks. On the other hand, due to recent breakthroughs in machine learning techniques, the development of intelligent physical systems, e.g. autonomous vehicles, have been actively investigated. Since these systems can cause catastrophes to public safety, the evaluation of their machine learning components and system performance is crucial. This dissertation will cover problems arising in the evaluation of such systems. We propose an importance sampling scheme for estimating rare events defined by machine learning predictors. Lastly, we discuss an application project in evaluating the safety of autonomous vehicle driving algorithms.PHDIndustrial & Operations EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163270/1/zhyhuang_1.pd

Faktor-faktor Keberhasilan Kritis Pengelolaan Teknologi Informasi Pada Kontraktor Di Indonesia

. Entering globalization era, contractors face many challenges, as the forces to continually adapt the changes in the very high competitive market increase. One of the strategies that is believed can answer the challenges is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the business processes by adopting information technologies (IT). The construction industry, like other industries, has entered the information age by using IT in a variety of ways. Yet many construction firms, that have adopted IT, faced many problems related to how to get the best of IT adoption into their business processes. IT is still used merely as supporting tools and there are many limitations to its current use in construction. It is believed that the problem lay on poor management of IT by contractors. This paper discusses a research that has been conducted to identify the critical success factors in managing IT by Indonesian contractors. The success factors were developed based on important and necessary stages ofmanaging IT, i.e. planning, implementation, maintenance, and evaluation. The research used a self-administered questionnaire to collect opinions from 107 Indonesian contractors that are members of Indonesian Contractors Association (AKI) on the importance of each suggested factor in contributing to the successful IT management in contractors\u27 environment. By knowing those critical success factors, contactors can focus their efforts in managing IT to the most significant strategy to reap the benefit of IT in supporting their business process. On the other hand, the identified critical success factors can also be used as variables in evaluation of contractors\u27 performance in managing IT. Furthermore, the contractors can use this evaluation system to measure their performance to the others as a mean to improve their competitive advantages

Concepts and practices in agricultural extension in developing countries: a source book

The first chapter outlines the emerging challenges faced by agricultural R&D sectors and how paradigms are evolving in response to these changes and challenges. The second chapter traces the evolution of agricultural extension thinking and practice. It highlights some generic problems faced at various stages of evolution and approaches to address them. It highlights the factors identified in literature as contributing to successful knowledge dissemination processes and creating higher access to clients to the services. While reflecting on the challenges and opportunities, the chapter also explores the possible future of extension services in developing countries. The third chapter gives an account of the various extension models, approaches and methods that have been tried out in developing countries and the experiences. The chapter concludes with the transition being made to agricultural innovation systems from Research & Extension systems and highlights the role of extension services in this context. Chapter four highlights the importance of farmer groups in providing effective extension services and promoting innovation. It explains in detail the processes, approaches and methods involved in group formation and development, management, performance assessment and, monitoring and evaluation. Chapter five lists and describes in detail the various tools and methods used in participatory research and development processes. Chapter six focuses on the very important issues of Monitoring and Evaluation as systems for learning and for facilitating reflective action cycles. The importance of participatory approaches in M&E, process monitoring and outcome mapping are highlighted. This book can be used by students and practitioners of extension, researchers and decision-makers. This is a collation of knowledge regarding the practice of extension and is not intended to be used as a recipe or blue print. Based on the context and the requirement, the approaches and tools should be selected, adapted and used. There is a built-in flexibility that would allow the user to employ his/her experience, creativity and imagination in adapting and using the approaches and tools described in this source book