title: Developing a Performance Appraisal System in the Directorate of General Health Services, the Sultanate of Oman: A Participatory Action Research Project
Creators: name: Al-Hajri, S
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2019

description: The performance appraisal is a tool for professional development in the organization. It has administrative, developmental and strategic roles. This research is conducted in the Directorate General of Health Services in the Ministry of Health in the Sultanate of Oman. The primary aims of this thesis project are identifying the barriers to effective utilization of the performance appraisal system as a tool for professional development. In addition, to explore the factors that prevented evaluators from implementing the open performance appraisal interview. Another objective of this action research is to enable the stakeholders to have a sense of the issues of the performance appraisal system. The research design consists of a combination of case study and participatory action research. The sample was purposeful. The data collection was conducted using face to face interviews with supervisors that included 20 directors and section heads and two homogenous focus group interviews with subordinates consisting of 6 administrative staff and 8 staff nurses. The data were analyzed by thematic analysis and ten themes emerged from the data that achieved the research objectives and answer the research questions. The findings of the study consist of actionable findings that can provide a holistic picture of the research topic that encourage the project team members to build on the findings for developing the new performance appraisal system that can achieve professional development. The main finding of the study is that there is evidence for lack of a clear system for the management of performance appraisal. The implication of the study for theory and practice is that the knowledge of organization‟s stakeholders about the performance appraisal has changed and now they have recognized the importance of using it for professional development. The study has highlighted the need for facilitating all necessary resources in the organization for and establishing collaboration among all the departments in the management of the performance appraisal in order for the organization to implement performance appraisal effectively. Ethical consideration was maintained before, during and after research. The ethical approval was obtained from University of Liverpool and local ethical committee in addition to gate keeper‟s permission and access. One limitation of the study is the scholar practitioner‟s inability to make holistic change in the content of the performance appraisal report as it is a political issue and as the rules and regulations of the performance appraisal is under the control of the Ministry of Civil Service. Also, it was challenging for the researcher to create many different performance appraisal items of measurement to meet the demands of each of the departments in the organization. Another limitation is not test the new performance appraisal system by piloting it due to time constraints imposed by thesis submission requirements. Further studies are required to investigate the impact of implementing the new performance appraisal system and to create varied items of performance appraisal measurement to meet each category of employees in the Ministry of Health organization.