Master's Thesis: Performance Management in Cambodian Civil Service (2011)

Master's Thesis on Performance Management in Cambodian Civil Service, published in 2011, Yokohama National University. The following is an abstract. ABSTRACT: Performance reform in Cambodian bureaucracy has just surfaced in recent years after three decades of negligence caused by the devastating civil war. Initial public administrative reform (PAR) efforts in the 1990s were hindered by political struggle and peace and security policy. The most striking PAR has been made since the early 2000s starting with the civil service census, employment and remuneration restructuring. In this context, the main finding is that performance management is still at very rudimentary stage while its quest to institutionalize this system for the whole bureaucracy still has a long way to go. The study concludes that the reasons attributed to this late performance management reform are the civil war which lasted from 1970 to 1999 and followed by politicization of the civil service. Furthermore, below substance salaries and lack of effective meritocratic mechanisms are attributable to poor performance of the public administration. In addition, although the size of the civil service does not exceed the public needs, shortage of staff in education and health sectors also has negative impact on the public sector performance. Therefore, some fundamental prerequisites are needed to entrench performance management in this bureaucracy.