Key Management Practices within the South African Department of Labour and SETAS

Abstract

An effective public sector is a crucial role-player to ensure that the development of all sectors of a country is efficient and sustainable. This is especially true for a developing country such as South Africa that needs to address macro socio-economic challenges such as poverty and unemployment. The Senior Management Staff (SMS) in the public sector have a pivotal role to ensure that the public sector is managed effectively. The reason for this qualitative study was to identify the standards that key management practices should comply with, to benchmark the applied practices of the Department of Labour (DoL) and Sectoral Education and Training Authorities (SETAS) against these standards and to recommend guidelines of how these practices could be improved. In addition the improvement of management practices would advance the implementation of strategies and policies and service delivery in the public sector. The guidelines proposed, based on the identified weaknesses should also improve the degree of compliance of the management practices. The improvement in compliance should thus ensure a more effective public sector, which delivers a better service to all citizens and contribute effectively to the sustainable socio-economic growth and development in South Africa.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n1p303