How to Improve the Performance of State Universities: An Integration of Strategic Management and Performance Management Processes

Abstract

The paper interrogates the performance of Zimbabwean State Universities and proposes the integration of strategic management and performance management. The contention was that the strategic management process could not lead to high institutional performance because it was divorced from the sphere of managing institutional performance, and the removal of the operational staff from the strategic planning process. A constructivist paradigm was adopted as it was viewed to be the best suited to allow the researcher to become one with participants and ‘get’ into their psych to extract their lived experiences. A group of well-informed persons 
from the target institutions was purposively identified and interviewed over some time. The acquired data were transcribed and then analysed for meaning. The findings were that the strategic planning process should be integrated with the performance management process. The operational staff must be involved and participate in both processes for purposes of process ownership and buy-in. their participation resulted in corporate objectives being cascaded down to the operational level without their loss of meaning. The conclusion was that the performance management process should be integrated with the strategic planning process if state institutions were to achieve their vision.