LITERATURE REVIEW

A review on the concept of promotion with regards to the public sector gives an
explanation and description of the types of promotion the public is familiarised with in
the country, the significance of the employees’ promotion and the procedures taken
such as the criteria, requirements and challenges faced in this procedure.

Gupta (2012) defined promotion as the advancement of the employee from low job
responsibilities to take higher responsibilities of more status in an organisation with
an increased salary. The promotions are regarded as rewards for effort and an
expression of appreciation from the organisation that the individual is an asset to the
team. These attributes are perceived to be self-fulfilling, an achievement and a
career advancement. However, the concept of the public service is that promotion in
public sectors should depend on a budget established for accomplishing the process
of promoting employees and the vacancy posts should be advertised so as to have
enough potential applicants. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Namibia as most
employees in the public sector claim that the promotion is based on who you know
and not what you know. In other words, it is believed that in order to be promoted
one needs to invest in interpersonal relationships (politics) with the right circle of
people than putting in the work to benefit the organisation or company.

The finding highlight lack of transparency in the process of evaluating and promoting
the employees as well as limited or partial information that is made available as to
what influences such promotion is the public sector. The weakness of the system
has repercussions with the scarcity of jobs on the market. Despite the fact of a
person have the necessary professional exceptional qualifications one may be stuck
on a post for a period of 10 to 15 years such as one of the few interviewees I
interviewed. The management needs to develop and implement an effective
personnel policy with less or no corruption. The government of Namibia has not
implemented a performance appraisal system to date due to lack of institutional and
trained personnel at the time of the implementation.

The promotion process should be carried out by the human resource department
with assistance of line managers. According to Armstrong (1984) the procedures of
promotion had to entail notifications on the personnel development in a way that
vacancies were clarified and advertised within the internal organisation for suitable
candidates from the internal organisation, but in this generational era that is not the
case. New employees to the company are given higher ranks or grow rapidly in the
industry more than the old employees. Armstrong added that promotion vacancies
should be open to all not basing on age, race, sex or marital status. The work
environment must allow determination of degree to which the employees may
perform their tasks efficiently and this process involves evaluating results obtained
assessing the physical, intellectual, professional and managerial potential.
From the research conducted the effectiveness of promotion of staff in the public
sector has formalities that are not flexible enough to adapt to changes in line with the
new era that we are in. The evaluations must be systematic, formalised and allow
free accessibility of an employer- employee dialogue eradicating an obstacle that
most employees abuse which pressurizing the managers directly and indirectly for
the promotion.