The board of directors should have evaluated the director on the following competencies: accomplishing management objectives, program management, fiscal management, effectiveness in fundraising, board relations, public image, and external relations. The ex-director clearly failed to achieve management objectives in the described case and used fiscal management to his own advantage. Moreover, in the end, these actions also distorted the public image of the company. The board of directors was expected to design a system within which they could control the activities of the ex-director, notice the existence of problems, and be able to resolve these problems. According to the given information, there are three problems from the perspective of performance management. The first one is connected to the compensation of the ex-director, the second one is related to the mismanagement of dwellings, and the third one considers the usage of homes by employees and family members of the community assistance project.
In the first case, it is evident that the compensation receiving procedure was not designed appropriately; thus, the ex-director could abuse the system to his advantage. The system should undoubtedly compensate additionally for specific achievements, such as spending less public funds, to motivate the employees; however, the amounts of compensation should be limited and prescribed in advance. Moreover, the financial performance of the executive director should be performed regularly, as it may positively affect their quality of work (Hung & Monastyrsky, 2017).
Secondly, regarding the mismanagement of dwellings, it is possible to implement a simple quality control procedure based on people’s opinions living in the houses, as they are the primary beneficiaries of the project. According to scholars, “in the users/clients’ perspective, the organizational purpose is to meet the collective needs of specific groups related to its social purpose” (Moura et al., 2019, p.1374). Within this procedure, the list of criteria of quality dwelling management should be composed, and then this list should be sent to the residents of the dwelling regularly in the form of a survey. The residents can express their opinion about the perceived availability of included services and their quality, the results of the survey can be sent to the board of directors. Furthermore, it is also possible to let the residents approach the board of directors without involving the executive director if they get some specified majority for that.
Thirdly, regarding unauthorized usage, there should be specific and strict restrictions on the use of houses. A person who does not fit the particular criteria can not be a part of the program and can not access the house. The verification procedure can be simplified in the following way – each person living in the houses should possess documents that confirm their eligibility for housing. The copies of these documents for every person should be available for the board of directors’ verification at any time. Within these conditions, the likelihood of unauthorized use of dwellings will be reduced. The criteria for eligibility should be based on the goals of the overall project.
One more additional issue that should be addressed is the specification of the goals of the program and the means of their achievement. For instance, according to the given data, public funds saving is an encouraged practice within the program. However, in that case, a manager can be incentivized to save money by lowering the quality of the company’s services; for instance, the renovation can be performed using lower-quality materials. This issue can be solved in two possible ways, either the manager’s compensation should depend on other factors, such as the satisfaction of the residents of the houses, or the result conditions should be prescribed carefully and in detail.
References
Hung, E., & Monastyrsky, M. (2017). Performance management and employee outcomes: What performance management processes drive improvement of employee performance. Cornell University. Web.
Moura, L.M., de Lima, E.P., Deschamps, F., Van Aken, E., Gouvea da Costa, S.E., Treinta, F.T., and Cestari, J.A. (2019). Designing performance measurement systems in nonprofit and public administration organizations. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 68(8), 1373-1410.