BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM

The Botswana Police Service was formed in 1884 when Botswana became
a British Protectorate and known as Bechuanaland.By then the
organisation was known as the Bechunaland Police Mounted Unit. It late
changed to be known as the Botswana Police service. The organisation is
changed with the following responsibilities which are enshrined in the
Botswana Laws under the Police Act Cap 21:01 Volume III Law of
Botswana.
# To protect life and property
# Apprehend offenders and bring them before justice
#Suppress any internal disturbances
#Enforce all written laws with which it is directly changed
# And generally maintain peace and order
The Botswana Police Service is administering as a disciplined organisation
whereby orders and instructions from superiors should be obeyed by
subordinates with less hesitation. The type of communication was
predominantly up-down communication. The organisation embraced a
military form of command and rule.
The Botswana Police Service is made up of functional departments foe
ease of management and operation. The department include:
#General duties
#air support
#Criminal Investigation
#Transport and communication
#Forensic
#Training
#Special support
#serious crime
Prior to 1998 the Botswana Police service practiced a secret performance
appraisal system that was not well defined to junior staff. The
subordinates performance was evaluated in their absences and given
score they could not contest. The subordinates were not involved in the

appraisal process, there were no feedback and they did not know its
significance. Through this kind of appraisal some officers were promoted
to higher positions even though they were poor performance whilst high
performers efforts were not rewarded. This resulted in some disaffection
and low morale among the junior staff and could not event their views for
fear of being reprimanded for acts of insubordination.
In 1998 the government of Botswana introduced the performance
Management System in all its operatives, the Botswana Police Service
(BPS) included. The BPS adopted the Performance Management system
which meant that it had change many of its earlier administrative
approaches in order to be complainant with the new introduced system
for managing performance in particular it was forced to change its secret
performance appraisal system to a more liberal system as according to
Coutts and Schneider(2004),consider five important comports of
effective performance appraisal system, among them is the second
component that states a performance appraisal system gives an
employee the opportunity to have input into evaluation process which
increases the perceived fairness of the evaluation procedure.
It is no the light of the transformation in the BPS that this study want to
establish whether the secret appraisal system has been abolished, and
how the employees rate the new system, do they find any benefit on it, its
short comings and its significance in their career development. No study
was conducted in the BPS to establish these research problems.
This topic is worth investigating because BPS is service provider who
needs to have a well-motivated and efficient workforce. Experts and
researcher have recommended two extensive uses of performance
appraisal in organisations. First, it serves for administrative purposes in
area such as reward allocation(salary increases, bonuses)and assignment
decisions(transfers ,promotions ,demotions).Second, it contributes to
employee development in that it makes possible the identification of their
strengths and weakness, provides performance feedback and facilitates
exchange with managers(Dorfman, Stephan&
Loveland,1986;Murphy &Cleveland,1995)The focus of the study will
rely of the employees of BPS deployed under the Transport and
Telecommunication department hereunder referred to as the Technical
department.