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Performance management in government: the importance of goal clarity

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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT IN GOVERNMENT: THE IMPORTANCE OF GOAL
CLARITY

by
Alan Richard Williams

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

August 2020

Copyright 2020 Alan Richard Williams

ii
Dedication
To my parents Robert and Eugenia Williams who instilled in me the value and
importance of education as the means through which my dreams could be achieved. May they
rest in peace.

iii
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I must thank my son Sterling Williams and Alexander, Andy, and
Damian Montero for the patience and understanding they displayed during this time-consuming
journey.
I would also like to thank Brett Dancer, Keeva Terry, Darryl Richards, Eugene Bryant
and, Tracey Hebert-Seck for their 20+ years of friendship and their undying support and
encouragement throughout this process.
Additionally, I must acknowledge the time and dedication shown to me by my
Dissertation Committee Chair and Members, Dr. Kim Hirabayashi, Dr. Monique Datta, and Dr.
Melanie Brady.
Finally, while my entire cohort must clearly be acknowledged for their comradery, I must
single out Dr. Michael Deer, Dr. Kristen Freemen and Dr. Ed Hasan, whose assistance and
caring were invaluable.

iv
Table of Contents
Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iii
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. vi
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ viii
Introduction to Problem of Practice ................................................................................................ 1
Organizational Context and Mission ...................................................................................1
Importance of Addressing the Problem ...............................................................................2
Purpose of the Evaluation and Questions ............................................................................3
Organizational Performance Goal ........................................................................................4
Stakeholder Group of Focus and Performance Goal ...........................................................4

Review of the Literature ................................................................................................................. 6
The Limitations of Strategic Planning .................................................................................6
Knowledge, Motivation, and Organizational Influences ...................................................10
Interactive Conceptual Framework ....................................................................................16
Stakeholders and Accountability Systems .........................................................................18
BLR and Service Center Staff KMO Influences ................................................................19

Data Collection ............................................................................................................................. 20
Interviews ...........................................................................................................................20
Sample................................................................................................................................20
Protocol ..............................................................................................................................21
Approach and Location ......................................................................................................21
Document Analysis ............................................................................................................22
BLR Annual Reports and Strategic Planning Artifacts .....................................................23

Findings......................................................................................................................................... 24
Knowledge .........................................................................................................................26
Motivation ..........................................................................................................................32
Organization .......................................................................................................................37
v

Solutions and Recommendations .................................................................................................. 43
Knowledge Recommendations ..........................................................................................45
Motivation Recommendations ...........................................................................................48
Organization Recommendations ........................................................................................52

Limitations and Delimitations ....................................................................................................... 55
Recommendations for Future Research ........................................................................................ 56
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 56
References ..................................................................................................................................... 58
Appendix A: Participating Stakeholders with Sampling Criteria for Interviews ......................... 65
Appendix B: Interview Protocol ................................................................................................... 66
Appendix C: Credibility and Trustworthiness .............................................................................. 67
Appendix D: Ethics ....................................................................................................................... 69
Appendix E: Implementation and Evaluation ............................................................................... 71

vi
List of Tables
Table 1: Organization Mission, Global Goal, and Stakeholder Performance Goals ...................... 5
Table 2: KMO Influences ............................................................................................................. 10
Table 3: Interview Subjects .......................................................................................................... 25
Table 4: Assumed Knowledge Influences, Performance Needs Identified, and Summary of
Findings......................................................................................................................................... 26
Table 5: Assumed Motivation Influences, Performance Needs Identified, and Summary of
Findings......................................................................................................................................... 32
Table 6: Assumed Organization Influences, Performance Needs Identified, and Summary of
Findings......................................................................................................................................... 38
Table 7: Summary of Knowledge Influences and Recommendations .......................................... 46
Table 8: Summary of Motivation Influences and Recommendations .......................................... 50
Table 9: Summary of Organization Influences and Recommendations ....................................... 53
Table 10: Outcomes, Metrics, and Methods for External and Internal Outcomes ....................... 73
Table 11: Critical Behaviors, Metrics, Methods, and Timing for Evaluation .............................. 74
Table 12: Required Drivers to Support Critical Behaviors ........................................................... 76
Table 13: Evaluation of the Components of Learning for the Program ....................................... 80
Table 14: Components to Measure Reactions to the Program ...................................................... 81

vii
List of Figures
Figure 1. BLR conceptual framework ......................................................................................... 17

viii
Abstract
As government agencies strive to do more with less, their organizations’ underlying performance
becomes a more central focus. While strategic planning is a tool which is used to help
organizations focus their efforts, guide their direction, and inform their performance
management decisions, the goals provided in these strategic plans can often be ambiguous. This
study posited that for government agencies to improve their performance, they should establish
concise and clearly communicable organizational goals. Through a review of scholarly literature
and the use of Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework, the knowledge, motivational, and
organizational elements which influenced a state government motor vehicles agency’s
performance needs and performance assets were identified. To address these performance needs
and capitalize on these performance assets, a set of recommendations were developed and the
New World Kirkpatrick Model (Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick, 2016) was employed to present a
comprehensive plan for their [the recommendations] implementation and evaluation.

1
Introduction to Problem of Practice
This study addressed the problem of public sector agencies and programs’ performance
improvement efforts, which are hampered by ambiguous goals and objectives. In 2014, Jung
substantiated the importance of this problem by analyzing the Program Assessment Rating Tool
results of 188 federal government programs (from 2004 to 2008) and confirmed the negative
correlation between program performance and the level of ambiguity of a program’s goals and
objectives. In addition, Jung (2012) asserted that goal ambiguity has a negative impact on public
sector employee retention, consequently dampening the organization’s performance. This
evidence highlights clear and thoughtful strategic planning (or goal establishment) as a tool to
ensure an agency or program can justify its continued use of scarce government resources
(Poister, 2010).
To substantiate the benefits of goal clarity, this study begins with a review of relevant
literature. Following the literature review, the performance of a specific stakeholder group was
analyzed across multiple dimensions of influence through a qualitative lens. Finally, a set of
recommendations for continued performance improvement will be discussed. As a means of
providing context, an overview of the study’s subject organization is provided before the
literature review is discussed.
Organizational Context and Mission
The Bureau of Licensing and Registration (BLR) is an agency within the Commonwealth
Department of Transportation
1
. The BLR has existed for nearly 100 years and its mission is to
“enable customer mobility and consumer safety across Commonwealth by credentialing and
delivering driver, non-driver, and vehicle services in multiple channels.”

1
A pseudonym has been used to ensure anonymity

2
Headquartered near the capitol of Commonwealth, the BLR has 30 service centers
statewide and employs over 700 people. Between the headquarters and the service centers, the
BLR provides over 100 products and services to address the needs of Commonwealth’s nearly 5
million licensed drivers and over 6 million passenger vehicles. These products and services
include the issuance of passenger and commercial driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations,
motorcycle licensing and registration, school bus safety and vehicle emission inspections,
driving school licensing, camper and recreational vehicle registration, and disabled parking
permit distribution. Despite the richness of the BLR’s service offerings, it is not immune to the
problems associated with goal ambiguity.
Importance of Addressing the Problem
Recognizing the benefits of strategic planning and goal clarity, the US Congress and the
most recent governor of Commonwealth enacted the Government Performance and Results Act
of 1993 (GPRA) and Commonwealth Executive Order 540 (EO 540), respectively. The goal of
both acts was to improve government performance and ensure the effective and efficient use of
taxpayer dollars (Government Performance and Results Act, 1993; Commonwealth Executive
Order 540, 2012). Fully realizing the intended benefits of GPRA and EO 540 requires that
government agencies engage in strategic planning processes that produce unambiguous goals and
objectives, which are then embraced and codified in the psyches of the agency’s personnel
(Andrews, Boyne, Law, & Walker, 2009; Kim, 2012).
Unclear goals and objectives can impede performance improvement at the individual and
organization level. The problem of goal ambiguity runs counter to the objectives of these two
laws and can lead to the unintended consequence of an agency worsening its performance and
potentially increasing the incidence of turnover intention (an employee’s plan to leave the

3
agency or program) by negatively impacting employee satisfaction (Jung, 2012; Jung, 2013).
The consequence of not addressing this problem is that the efficiency and effectiveness of
government agencies and their programs will be lessened, thereby limiting their benefit to the
multitude of distinct populations they were individually and collectively designed to serve. The
U.S. Congress found
(1) waste and inefficiency in Federal programs undermine the confidence of the
American people in the Government and reduces the Federal Government’s ability to
adequately address vital public needs; (2) Federal managers are seriously disadvantaged
in their efforts to improve program efficiency and effectiveness, because of insufficient
articulation of program goals and inadequate information on program performance.
(Government Performance and Results Act, 1993, p. 1)
Solving the problem of goal ambiguity could help ensure that the trillions of U.S. dollars spent
by local and national governments worldwide would be better utilized because the effectiveness
of the appropriation of funds could be readily evaluated based on the results these agencies and
programs delivered against a clearly defined set of goals and objectives. To further explore the
benefits of goal clarity, a study which isolates three distinct questions was devised and will be
discussed.
Purpose of the Evaluation and Questions
The purpose of this study was to examine how developing clear and concise goals
impacted the BLR’s organizational performance. The questions that guided the study were the
following:
1. To what extent were the BLR Service Center staff aligning their daily activities to
achieve the organization’s strategic customer service goal?

4
2. What were the knowledge, motivation, and organizational (KMO) influences related to
achieving this organizational goal?
3. What are the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational resources?
Organizational Performance Goal
The mission of the BLR is to enable customer mobility and consumer safety across
Commonwealth by credentialing and delivering driver, non-driver, and vehicle services in
multiple channels. Historically, the BLR’s performance targets were ambiguous and not directed
towards improving customer service; they were singularly focused on reducing average wait
times. Desirous of providing a superior experience to its customers, the BLR established a
strategic customer service goal to become the industry leader in customer satisfaction. Achieving
the organization’s strategic customer service goal is important because the governor declared
improvement of service at the BLR as one of the top priorities of his administration.
The BLR has a variety of stakeholder groups which directly contribute to or benefit from
the achievement of the division’s organization goals; the principal stakeholder group, however, is
the BLR Service Center staff who are the bureau’s frontline workers and are responsible for
providing citizens with an excellent customer experience. As the central points of service
delivery for the BLR, the service centers, and more specifically, their employees served as the
principal stakeholders of this study.
Stakeholder Group of Focus and Performance Goal
To achieve its strategic customer service goal of being considered the industry leader in
customer service by 31 December 2019, the BLR aspired to serve 80% of its service center
customers within 30 minutes. To track progress against the target, service-level data are

5
collected across all 30 BLR Service Center locations. Once collected, the service-level data are
aggregated and a detailed report is provided daily to the members of the governor’s office, the
Commonwealth Secretary of Transportation, and BLR executive staff. Service-level targets are
one of the principal measures of customer service; evaluating daily performance against the
service-level target enables the BLR’s leadership team to identify problem service centers and
quickly implement corrective action (See Table 1).
Establishing this target was part of the preliminary stage of the agency’s strategic
planning process and was accomplished through informal polling and a general belief amongst
senior members of the governor’s administration that 30 minutes was a reasonable time limit for
someone to receive in-person service from a government agency.
Table 1
Organization Mission, Global Goal, and Stakeholder Performance Goals
Organization Mission
The mission of the Bureau of Licensing and Registration is to enable customer mobility and
consumer safety across Commonwealth by credentialing and delivering driver, non-driver, and
vehicle services in multiple channels.
Organization Strategic Customer Service Goal
By 31 December 2019, the BLR will be considered the industry leader in customer satisfaction.
Stakeholder Performance Goal
By 31 December 2019, all BLR Service Center staff will align their daily activities with the
organization’s strategic customer service goal.

Even though responsibility for achieving the organization’s goal is shared across all BLR
departments, the BLR Service Center staff have the greatest impact on this facet of
organizational performance. While a complete evaluation project would focus on all the BLR’s

6
stakeholders, for practical purposes and given their relative importance, the BLR Service Center
staff is the stakeholder group of the focus in this study.
Alignment of the daily activities of the BLR Service Center staff with the BLR’s strategic
customer services goal is of critical importance. Failure to achieve this goal could have negative
implications for the administration and ultimately continue to perpetuate the notion that the BLR
is not committed to providing customers a positive experience.
Review of the Literature
The framers of GPRA recognized the importance of strategic planning to clarify goals
and objectives and to operate a government agency effectively and efficiently. While GPRA
legislates that agencies must produce strategic plans, the legislation does not speak to the
underlying content of the plan; GPRA focuses on form but not on substance. A review of the
scholarly literature about government strategic planning and goal setting illustrated that strategic
planning alone is insufficient to improve agency performance. In addition, there is empirical
evidence which suggests that strategic plans which fail to clearly articulate an organization’s
goals and simultaneously engender employees’ sense of commitment to those goals are unlikely
to result substantive performance improvement.
The Limitations of Strategic Planning
Performance improvement efforts suffer when public sector agencies and programs
assume that the mere process of strategic planning is sufficient to improve their operations or
their delivery of programs and services. Some approaches to the strategic planning process can
impede agency performance. Analyzing data collected in 2002 from 237 managers across 90
Welsh government authorities, Andrews et al. (2009) found that rational strategic planning (a
formal and logic-driven process which is supported by analysis) could have a positive impact on

7
organization performance. Conversely, Andrews et al. (2009) asserted that the alternative
approach, logical incrementalism (employing a political process in the setting of broad
organizational goals devoid of internal or external environmental assessments), could be
detrimental to performance in public sector organizations.
By measuring increased transit system ridership and analyzing 2009 survey data in the
National Transit Database collected from 103 of the then 236 transit system chief executive
officers, Poister, Edwards, Pasha, and Edwards (2013) confirmed that logical incrementalism
was negatively correlated with effectiveness. Despite the difference between rational strategic
planning and logical incrementalism, the planning process alone only produces limited benefits
to public sector agencies.
In some contexts, strategic planning has resulted in higher levels of service utilization
coupled with an overall productivity gains (improved effectiveness); but has not yielded the
same positive results with respect to improved efficiency (Poister et al., 2013). Linkages
between the strategic planning process and performance improvements which combine both
improved effectiveness and improved efficiency are sparse. There seems to be no verifiable link
between the actual strategic planning process and improved performance (Poister, Pitts, &
Edwards, 2010).
Strategic planning fails to provide long-term benefits when it is divorced from a
deliberate mechanism through which to realize its value. Poister (2010) asserted that, to achieve
sustainable performance improvement, government agencies should evolve from an over reliance
on strategic planning and begin fostering a culture which embraces strategy implementation and
management. Poister (2010) contended that, to improve performance in the future, government
agencies need to expand beyond occasional strategic planning exercises and advance towards

8
integrating legitimate goals into the agency’s ongoing operations and programs. Andrews et al.
(2009) developed a statistically significant model which empirically proved that both strategic
content and the strategic planning process have an impact on performance and that, in fact,
strategic absence can have negative consequences on agency performance. While a well-
executed strategic planning exercise is valuable, it does not obviate the threat to performance
posed by obscure strategic content and unrecognizable agency goals and objectives.
The importance of goal clarity. Unclear and ambiguous strategic goals can adversely
affect the performance of public sector agencies and programs. When a government agency
promotes a strategic plan with ambiguous goals and objectives, the risk of performance
deterioration is greater. Rainey and Jung (2014) analyzed and synthesized the work of numerous
scholars and developed a conceptual framework which illustrates the risk of performance
dysfunction associated with inappropriate goal specification and the absence of goal validation
and quality control. Rainey and Jung’s model supports the notion that there is a certain degree of
goal ambiguity inherent to government agencies because they are subjected to the ambiguity
found in the defined laws, statutes and other regulations which govern them.
In fact, Rainey and Jung (2014) found that government agencies and programs that are
directly appropriated will suffer from higher levels of directive goal ambiguity (the amount of
freedom to interpret the organization’s missions and goals) because their mandates can become
obscured by the complexities of the underlying law which authorized their funding. Therefore,
government agencies are more burdened by goal ambiguity than private sector organizations
(Jung, 2014). Additionally, while Rainey and Jung (2014) identified that improved goal
clarification and the reduction of goal ambiguity could be evidenced in many government reform
initiatives, they also conceded that goal ambiguity could be a necessary evil in some political

9
contexts for an agency’s leaders to maintain political support and avoid alienating powerful
stakeholder groups.
The existence of goal ambiguity can also impact an agency’s ability to clearly determine
whether it should take a more proactive stance, which focuses on innovation, or consolidation, or
if it should take a more reactive approach to changing conditions. These three strategic stances
(innovation, consolidation, and reaction) are referred to as strategic content (Andrews, Boyne, &
Walker, 2006).
Following an empirical analysis of data collected from 2,355 corporate officers and
service managers across 314 local English government authorities, Andrews et al. (2006)
determined that strategy content is a key determinant of organization performance in the public
sector and plays an important role in theorizing and explaining the relative success or failure of
public-service providers. It is necessary to note that the quality of the strategic content is also
important. Specifically, agency performance can also be hindered by goals and objectives which
are overly precise or not fully developed (Pandey & Rainey, 2006).
By analyzing 2001 survey data taken from 274 federal government managers, Pandey
and Rainey (2006) also discovered that one of the best methods for reducing goal ambiguity was
ensuring that clear communication regarding goals and objectives was effectively disseminated
internally. Goal ambiguity negatively impacts performance at the organization level, but its
detrimental effects can also be evidenced at the employee level.
While scholars have thoroughly reviewed the limitations of strategic planning and the
importance of goal clarity, for the BLR to capitalize on these concepts, they should look to
address their performance needs and leverage their performance assets related to employee
knowledge and/or motivation and remove identifiable organization barriers.

10
Knowledge, Motivation, and Organizational Influences
Historically, the BLR struggled to meet basic performance expectations (Commonwealth
Department of Transportation, 2014). One of the BLR’s challenges was the lack of clearly
articulated goals and objectives. The absence of clearly articulated goals and objectives
negatively impacts organization performance (Jung, 2014). To improve performance, the BLR,
for the first time in its nearly 100-year history, developed a comprehensive strategic plan and
identified high-level goals and objectives for the agency (Bureau of Licensing and Registration,
2016). While ambiguous goals likely contributed to the organization’s underperformance,
performance challenges may have also been influenced by performance challenges which arose
due to inadequate knowledge and skills, motivation on the part of the organization’s staff, or
organization barriers (Clark & Estes, 2008). Table 2 outlines the knowledge, motivation, and
organization (KMO) influences related to achieving the BLR Service Center staff members’
stakeholder goal.
Table 2
KMO Influences
Organization Mission
The mission of the Bureau of Licensing and Registration is to enable customer mobility and
consumer safety across Commonwealth by credentialing and delivering driver, non-driver, and
vehicle services in multiple channels.
Organization Strategic Customer Service Goal
By 31 December 2019, the BLR will be considered the industry leader in customer satisfaction.
Stakeholder Performance Goal
By 31 December 2019, all BLR Service Center staff will align their daily activities with the
organization’s strategic customer service goal.

11
Table 2, continued
KMO Influence
Category
KMO Influence
Type
Application to the Stakeholder of Focus
Knowledge Declarative
Knowledge
BLR Service Center staff need to know the
organization’s strategic customer service goal.
Knowledge Procedural
Knowledge
BLR Service Center staff need to know how to
concurrently provide customers with positive
experiences and efficiently execute common
transactions to achieve the organization’s strategic
customer service goal.
Motivation Utility Value BLR Service Center staff need to see value in achieving
the organization’s strategic customer service goal.
Motivation Attribution BLR Service Center staff need to believe their
individual effort directly contributes to the achievement
of the organization’s strategic customer service goal.
Motivation Self-Efficacy BLR Service Center staff need to feel confident in their
ability to achieve the organization’s strategic customer
service goal.
Organization Cultural Model BLR Service Center staff need to be individually and
collectively held accountable for achieving the
organization’s strategic customer service goal.
Organization Cultural Setting BLR Service Center staff staffing levels need to be
sufficient to achieve the organization’s strategic
customer service goal.

Knowledge. Exploring the knowledge influence first leads to the recasting of Bloom’s
taxonomy of educational objectives and categorizing knowledge into four discrete dimensions:
factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive (Krathwohl, 2002). Factual knowledge refers
to specific details, conceptual knowledge refers to principles, procedural knowledge refers to
methods, and metacognitive refers to knowledge of self (Baartman & de Bruijn, 2011;
Krathwohl, 2002). It is reasoned that the BLR’s most prominent knowledge influences most
closely associated with its performance were related to goal clarity and task proficiency.

12
Therefore, the conceptual and metacognitive dimensions were not explored. A review of the
literature focused on factual and procedural knowledge was conducted to provide insight into
performance improvement opportunities for the BLR Service Center staff based on the
challenges associated with achieving its organizational and performance goals.
Goal clarity. Chun and Rainey (2005) analyzed survey results of 31,975 federal
employees across 49 federal agencies and confirmed a negative correlation between employee
productivity and organization goal ambiguity. These findings support the BLR Service Center
staff having a clear understanding (factual knowledge) of their specific performance or work
goal of serving 80% of their customers within 30 minutes of arrival.
Task proficiency. Despite what their stakeholder goal might be, as their primary job
function, BLR Service Center staff need to be able to effectively and efficiently execute all the
various tasks associated with the credentialing of individuals and vehicles. As is true for any
stakeholder group, carrying out a series of sequenced activities requires that the stakeholder
group possess specific knowledge of how these tasks are performed and sufficient motor and
cognitive skills to do these tasks (Baartman & de Bruijn, 2011).
Motivation. To improve performance, however, knowledge and skills can become less
relevant in the absence of sufficient motivation. Motivation and knowledge exist in symbiosis in
the human psychological system (Clark & Estes, 2008). While knowledge is focused on
providing a mechanism for understanding how something is done, motivation is related to
mechanisms for actively making choices, persisting, and gauging the amount of mental effort
required to achieve a specific objective (Clark & Estes, 2008). Motivation theories are
ultimately trying to assess how to get someone moving and in what direction they move

13
(Pintrich, 2003). While there are various types of motivation, utility value, attribution, and self-
efficacy were assumed to be germane to the BLR Service Center staff.
Utility value. Utility value is assessed based on the stakeholder’s motivation to actively
choose to achieve their specific stakeholder goal and possessing the persistence, and exerting the
mental effort, to reach this objective (Clark & Estes, 2008). The ultimate question is how much
importance does the stakeholder place on achieving the goal (Pintrich, 2003)? This question is
germane because the value placed on achieving the goal by the stakeholder has a direct bearing
on performance and the staff’s commitment to the goal (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002).While BLR
Service Center staff may have valued achieving their stakeholder goal, they may not have been
motivated to exert the mental effort necessary to achieve the goal because they may not have
believed that their efforts made any substantive contribution to success or failure of the agency.
Attribution. As a stakeholder group, the BLR Service Center staff is comprised of
approximately 300 people. While their performance is reported at the service center, district, and
the agency level, each of those 300 people makes a unique contribution to the overall
performance of the BLR. The BLR Service Center staff may have been more motivated if they
felt empowered through increased employee engagement and the ability to attribute goal
achievement to their individual efforts. This concept of attribution is meaningful because when a
person performs an activity, that is associated with personal success and accomplishment, then
they are more motivated to continue that activity (Weiner, 1972).
Fernandez and Modogaziev’s (2011) empirical analysis of employee empowerment and
its attribution to the employee’s perception of performance improvement confirmed that
government employees attribute improved performance to being empowered. This

14
empowerment is often evidenced by being providing with knowledge, skills, and the discretion
to modify how their work is performed.
Self-efficacy. Beyond having awareness of a clear stakeholder goal and recognizing the
importance of their individual contribution to achieving the goal, the stakeholder must have
confidence in their ability to perform the tasks which contribute to improved performance
(Pajares, 2006). The confidence to perform these tasks is not a proxy of self-esteem. It is not
concerned with self-worth; it is concerned with an individual’s beliefs and expectations
regarding their ability to contribute to perform specific tasks at defined levels of performance
(Bandura, 2005). Self-efficacy relates to an individual’s conceptualization of self and embraces
the notion of individual self-regulation and self-reflection (Bandura, 2005). Previously, the
BLR’s goals were ambiguous and virtually unattainable. The combination of the goals being
unclear, and their unreasonableness might have been discouraging. The clarity of the current
stakeholder goal should have been a positive impact on overall performance if the BLR Service
Center staff believed the new goal was truly attainable.
Organization. In addition to knowledge and skills, motivation and organizational
influences can also hinder performance (Clark & Estes, 2008). When a gap has been identified
between the current and desired levels of organization performance, and the knowledge, skills,
and motivation of the stakeholders are deemed to be sufficient, then some form of organizational
barrier is likely the source of the performance deficit (Clark & Estes, 2008). While there are a
variety of theoretical approaches, there is no universally accepted truth to regarding the optimal
way to remove organizational barriers to service improvement in the public sector (Boyne,
2003).

15
Decision making and shared accountability. There are varying perspectives regarding
the definition of organization culture, but a comprehensive view of organizational culture
identifies it as
a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its
problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to
be considered valid, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to
perceive, think, and feel in relation to these problems. (Schein, 2004, p. 17)
Historically, the culture of the BLR Service Center staff was one in which decision making was
slow and required multiple individuals to agree before finalizing decisions. The BLR Service
Center staff’s form of decision making, however, would not be characterized as consensus-
driven but, instead, as motivated by the need for shared accountability. The decision making
model within the culture of the BLR Service Center is counter-intuitive because, while decision
making is, in practice, decentralized, the organization structure is hierarchical. Typically, public
sector organizations with a vertical hierarchical management structure and clear lines of
authority tend to have limited participation in decision making in the areas of internal policy or
resource allocation (Andrews et al., 2007). Andrews et al. (2007) contended that organization
structure has a direct impact on the organization’s effectiveness, efficiency, and, by extension, its
performance outcomes. It was therefore reasonable to assert that a misalignment between culture
and structure contributed to the BLR Service Center staff’s performance deficiencies. This claim
was supported by evidence that, in public sector organizations, a positive relationship exists
between service performance and a centralized organization structure (Boyne, 2003). The BLR
Service Center staff’s culture of decentralized decision making could have negated benefits that

16
accrue from the high level of centralization evidenced in their hierarchical organization reporting
structure.
Resource allocation. Staffing levels were perceived to play a significant role in the BLR
Service Center staff’s ability to achieve their performance goals. While throughput is correlated
to supply, there is limited empirical evidence to support the notion that a positive correlation
exists between resource levels and service performance (Boyne, 2003). Perception, however,
can influence reality. Using a mixed-methods approach involving nearly 1,000 interviews and
ethnographic observations along with over 700 surveys and performance data from over 600
clinical teams in the public healthcare sector revealed employee satisfaction, productivity, and
service delivery innovation increased when employees believed they were provided with enough
resources to successfully accomplish their tasks (Dixon-Wood et al., 2013). The results of the
Dixon-Wood et al. (2013) study demonstrate that the perceived benefit of what employees
consider to be sufficient resources, can translate into real gains across various indicators of
performance. While it is a fact that the absolute number of BLR Service Center staff has
decreased over the last five years, those lost resources were supplemented by increased and
expanded service delivery channels, which, in theory, should have decreased the demand for in-
person service.
Interactive Conceptual Framework
The various KMO influences played an integral role in developing an interactive
conceptual framework for the BLR. In the conceptual framework (see Figure 1), the relationship
between the various factors which influenced the BLR’s performance are described, and the
relationship between these factors (i.e., the BLR’s strategic customer service performance goals,
the key organizational stakeholders and their associated accountability systems, and the linkages

17
to the KMO influences) is graphically depicted. These interconnected factors illustrate how the
KMO influences guided the Service Center staff and their realization of how the strategic
customer service performance goal are bound by the context created through the disparate
accountability systems in which the BLR exists. A more detailed discussion of the BLR’s
interactive conceptual framework begins with an introduction to the BLR’s various stakeholders
and accountability systems.

Figure 1. BLR conceptual framework.

18
Stakeholders and Accountability Systems
In the public sector, stakeholder goals and the resultant KMO influences are established
within a complex and often divergent array of accountability systems. At its core, the concept of
accountability seeks to reconcile the contractual relationship between a director and an individual
or organization that has the authority to establish goals and set expectations on individuals or
organizations: providers (Hentschke & Wohlstetter, 2004). The complication for public sector
agencies is that, as providers, they must manage the expectations of a multitude of directors who
are both internal and/or external stakeholders (Romzek & Dubnick, 1987).
The BLR’s strategic and operational decisions are governed by bureaucratic, managed
market, and political accountability types. Bureaucratic accountability is evidenced by the
BLR’s subordinate relationship to the governor’s administration. In these relationships governed
by bureaucratic accountability, importance is placed on hierarchical and upward reporting
relationships coupled with an emphasis on stability, regulation and centralized governance
(Burke, 2004; Romzek & Dubnick, 1987). The legislature of Commonwealth and the state’s
citizens employ political accountability. Political accountability leverages public policy
priorities to motivate government agencies to support those priorities even at the expense of
efficiency and stability (Burke, 2004; Romzek & Dubnick, 1987). Finally, the BLR is subject to
managed market accountability because of the emphasis placed on the value of the improved
performance outcomes the agency expects to realize through its various public-private
partnerships. These public-private partnerships are often established to help manage supply and
demand through government incentives (Burke, 2004). While the BLR’s stakeholder and
accountability systems primarily focused on external groups, the KMO influences are internally
focused.

19
BLR and Service Center Staff KMO Influences
The BLR’s cultural setting drives management priorities and staffing levels. Priorities
and staffing levels can influence underlying performance because they directly impact the
organization’s ability to execute against the tasks necessary to achieve the established
performance goal. Coinciding with the cultural setting is the organization’s cultural model
which influences frontline employee behaviors. The organization’s culture model establishes
policies, procedures, and regulations, all of which affect how the service center staff carry-out
their activities. The cultural model also affects organization decision making, which
consequently influences the knowledge and skills and motivations of the organization’s frontline
staff.
Knowledge and skills influences are factual, procedural, and conceptual, whereas
motivational influences home in on how to drive individuals to perform. Motivational influences
are related to concepts such as utility values, attribution, and self-efficacy (Anderman &
Anderman, 2006; Eccles, 2006; Krathwohl, 2002; Pintrich, 2003). When performance is not
meeting expectations, or is trending downwards, management can benefit from identifying which
specific influencers require treatment to obtain the desired performance outcomes. These
treatments, necessitated by the current organizational performance and/or specific facets of the
organization’s setting and model (e.g. management priorities and decision making norms), are
directed towards addressing any identified variance between the staff’s current and desired levels
of knowledge and skills or motivation.

20
Data Collection
Interviews
The primary qualitative data collected for the study were gathered during nine interviews.
Interviews were used as the primary tool for unearthing the study’s findings.
Sample
A purposeful maximum variation sampling approach yielded nine interviewees. The
sample strategy was based on the results of the initial quantitative analysis of pre-collected
service center performance data, which included the percentage of customers served within 30
minutes during the 18-month period before and the 18-month period following the introduction
of the strategic customer service goal. None of the service centers included in the sample were
achieving the strategic customer service goal (before or after its introduction). The focus,
however, was to identify and interview those staff from service centers whose before and after
performance demonstrated the greatest level of performance improvement, irrespective of
whether they were yet achieving the strategic customer service goal. As such, the final sample
was comprised of staff from service centers whose results placed them in the top 10 service
centers based on performance improvement before and after the strategic customer service goals
were established. This approach is best used when there is benefit in gaining insight from the
widest range possible (Merriam & Tisdale, 2016).
Recruitment of the sample was done using two convenience approaches. In the first
approach, an email from the executive in charge of was sent to all managers and customer
service representative in target service centers. The email included a link to a website where
BLR Service Center staff could express an interest in being interviewed. As a secondary,
follow-up approach, managers from the BLR Service Centers in the selected pool were asked to

21
recommend employees whom they believed meet the criteria. There was potential for response
bias because it would be more likely that the managers would select employees whom they
favored based on performance. If, however, the high performers validated the existence of a
specific performance need, then it could be easily hypothesized that the inputs of weaker
performers would only service to further expose the existence of that performance need. As an
incentive to participate, all interview participants were offered a $5 lottery scratch ticket for their
participation. Appendix A provides an overview of the sampling criterion and rationale along
with the related recruitment strategy and rationale.
Protocol
The interviews followed a semi-structured protocol using questions which were like those
illustrated in Appendix B. The protocol was developed to align with the conceptual framework
in Figure 1 and to support answers to the first and second research questions: To what extent
were the BLR Service Center staff aligning their daily activities to achieve the organization’s
strategic customer service goal? What were the knowledge, motivation and organizational
influences related to achieving this organizational goal? The semi-structured approach was
determined to be most appropriate because the goal was to gain a deeper understanding of the
underlying reasons for the results of the analysis of the pre-collected performance data (Merriam
& Tisdale, 2016).
Approach and Location
The interview approach was formal, and the duration of the interviews ranged from 25-60
minutes. The interviews themselves were recorded, but the interviewees were assured of
anonymity. To support this anonymity, interviewees were identified by a unique identification
number. A separate roster was created which matched identification numbers to individual

22
interviewees. The roster remains in the physical possession of the principal researcher and is
maintained in a locked file drawer and will be destroyed within three years of the date the
interviews were conducted. Since the BLR Service Centers are geographically dispersed across
Commonwealth, for practical reasons, the interviews were conducted by telephone – an
appropriate medium to conduct interviews.
Data Analysis
Document Analysis
To gain insight into the impact of providing goal clarity on the performance of the BLR
Service Center staff required establishing a valid and reliable baseline of performance. The
baseline was developed by reviewing the performance of the BLR Service Center staff before the
introduction of their stakeholder goal and comparing it to their continued performance
afterwards. As a means of evaluating the before and after performance, pre-collected
performance data, generated by the agency’s management information system were gathered and
analyzed. The data set included performance data across all 30 service centers and spanned from
18 months before the introduction of the stakeholder goal (January 1, 2015 – June 30, 2015) and
continued for 18 months thereafter (July 1, 2015 – December 31, 2016). The specific
performance metrics which were collected and evaluated included the percentage of customer
served in 30 minutes or less, the average time to process a transaction by transaction type,
transaction volume by transaction type, and the average customer volume by transaction type.
This data collection exercise was used to inform how the population for the interview sample
was determined.
The results of the quantitative analysis of the BLR’s service center data allowed for the
ranking of service centers based on how much their overall performance improved over the 36-

23
month period. The study’s interviewees were selected from the 10 service centers who ranked
highest in performance improvement.
BLR Annual Reports and Strategic Planning Artifacts
A review of various BLR documents and artifacts was performed to supplement the
interview data. As a division of the department of transportation, the BLR was required to
contribute a section regarding their operations to the legislatively mandated annual report for the
department of transportation. The annual reports from 2014–2016 were reviewed. The reports
were selected because they covered the entire quantitative data collection period. Reviewing
these reports provided additional context to the analysis of the pre-collected performance data
and were directly connected to the key performance indicators component of the conceptual
model. The performance goals and key performance indicators components encompass the
stakeholder goal as well as the organizational influence exerted by policies, procedures, and
leadership priorities. Additionally, these reports provided triangulation to enhance the reliability
of the quantitative data.
The annual reports are published by the department of transportation and are part of the
public record. As official, primary source documents that are part of the public record, they are
considered to have high authenticity (Merriam & Tisdale, 2016). Given the nature of these
documents, they were readily accessible and were obtained by downloading them directly from
the state’s official website. The use of highly believable sources was an important component to
ensuring the study is perceived as credible.
In addition to the annual reports, internal BLR documents evidencing communications to
the service center staff regarding the BLR’s strategic customer service performance goal and
other supporting internal BLR documents and artifacts were reviewed. Email is used as a

24
standard means of internal communications. As a government agency, these internal
communications are considered part of the public record and subject to requests submitted under
the Freedom of Information Act. Given that these are internal government documents, they
should be perceived as believable and credible sources of information for the study.
Findings
Employing the aforementioned data collection techniques provided a wealth of
information which was used to evaluate the BLR’s performance needs and assets. The
influences which were believed to contribute to performance needs and assets in knowledge,
motivation, and/or organization (assumed influences) were identified using information gleaned
from nine individual interviews from staff across three separate BLR Service Centers (See Table
3). The BLR Service Center experience of the interview subjects spanned from two to 27 years
with a mean of 11 years. Six of the interviewees were frontline customer service representatives,
and the remaining three were BLR Service Center managers. A review of the collective
responses to each interview question revealed that no response segregation was found between
the groups as the answers varied across the two interview subject position types. No significant
response variance existed between the two interview subject position types. In addition to the
interviews, supplemental information was obtained from an analysis of internal BLR documents.

25
Table 3
Interview Subjects
ID BLR Service Center Position BLR Service Center
Experience
A1 A Customer Service
Representative
5 years
A2 A Customer Service
Representative
11 years
A3 A Manager 2 years
B1 B Customer Service
Representative
6 years
B2 B Manager 5 years
C1 C Customer Service
Representative
15 years
C2 C Customer Service
Representative
9 years
C3 C Customer Service
Representative
27 years
C4 C Manager 20 years
Using the KMO as an organizational construct, the BLR’s assumed influences which
were associated with performance needs were identified. The assumed influence was considered
relevant if the preponderance of evidence supported the assertion that a performance need or
asset was present. In those instances where performance needs were evidenced, specific
recommendations for addressing those needs are discussed in the solutions and recommendations
section.

26
Knowledge
Performance needs influenced by missing or incomplete knowledge and performance
assets were evaluated by an analysis of internal documents, artifacts, and interview responses.
Interview questions explored the extent to which the interviewees understood the agency’s
strategic customer service goals and the relationship between execution of their daily tasks and
achievement of the strategic customer service goal. In addition, these needs, and assets were
further evidenced through a review of internal documents related to the introduction of the
agency’s strategic plan. Table 4 identifies the assumed knowledge influences and the summary
of findings for each assumed influence based on a review of the data.
Table 4
Assumed Knowledge Influences, Performance Needs Identified, and Summary of Findings
Assumed Knowledge Influence Performance Need Identified Summary of
Findings
BLR Service Center staff need to know the
organization’s strategic customer service goal.
Performance Need Identified. The evidence
indicated that while BLR Service Center
staff realize the importance of customer
service, they do not know the agency’s
specific strategic customer service goal.
BLR Service Center staff need to know how
to concurrently provide customers with
positive experiences and efficiently execute
common transactions to achieve the
organization’s strategic customer service goal.
Performance Need Identified. The evidence
indicated that the BLR Service Center staff’s
understanding of delivering positive
customer experiences varied significantly
and that transaction execution training was
necessary to maintain low wait time.

BLR Service Center staff need to know the organization’s strategic customer service
goal. A review of the strategic planning artifacts revealed that an organization-wide campaign
was launched to ensure that all BLR Service Center staff knew the agency’s specific customer

27
service goal. The campaign spanned nearly two months, during which time, over 30 one-hour
sessions were held at the BLR’s operational and administrative headquarters as well as the
service centers which are geographically dispersed across the state. Over 70% of the BLR
Service Center staff attended at least one of the sessions. In addition, each session participant
received a handout which outlined the BLR’s stated strategic customer service goal.
Despite the efforts of the BLR leadership team to educate the Service Center staff on the
agency’s strategic customer service goal, no interviewee demonstrated factual knowledge of the
actual strategic customer service goal. While eight of the nine interviewees associated the goal
vaguely with a focus on customer service or wait time, no one articulated the agency’s desire to
become the industry’s customer service gold standard. The interviewees did, however,
demonstrate that they possessed conceptual knowledge of the strategic customer service goal’s
intent.
These same eight interviewees identified the strategic customer service goals’ underlying
concepts of good customer service and reduction in customer wait times. Their responses ranged
from “I would have to say customer service” to “well, they like to improve the wait time” to
“[BLR’s] goal is always customer service.” The closest response to the agency’s strategic
customer service goal came from interviewee A3 who responded, “Their goal is always customer
service. That is their main goal.” Echoing their colleagues’ sentiments, when interviewee B2
was asked what they believed the BLR’s strategic customer service goal was, they replied,
“Customer service. So, I would like to have customers think of us as customer focused.”
Interviewee A1 seemed to concur, as they responded to the question by saying, “I would have to
say customer service.” Similarly, other interviewees described the strategic customer service in
terms of wait time, specifically wait time reduction.

28
The daily rubric by which a BLR Service Center is measured (and by extension the BLR
Service Center staff) is by the percentage of customers who wait in the queue for 30 minutes or
less. Therefore, it is easy to understand why some of the BLR Service Center staff defined the
strategic customer service goal as an operational metric as opposed to thinking in the higher-
level, strategic context. Interviewee A2 states plainly that “the goal is to…well they like to
improve the wait time.”
Customer service is a process, while wait time is a result. The process and the result do
not, however, have a consistently positive relationship; in fact, the two could be at odds with one
another (i.e. negatively correlated). Delivering good customer service may require providing
additional time and attention to a specific customer, thereby extending the wait time for the next
customer in the queue. Therefore, given the specific strategic goal of being considered the leader
in customer service, a focus by some, on the operational metric of reducing wait time may, in
fact, work at cross purposes with the strategic goal. One interviewee, C2, combined the two in
saying, “I think the main goals of the BLR really is the customer service and to actually get
customers in and out here, you know, under 30 minutes.” Similarly, interviewee A3 took a
blended approach by responding that “their goal is always customer service. That is their main
goal to get them in and out of the service center in a decent amount of time, but definitely
customer service. That is their number one priority.” Interviewee A3 recognized that, while
timeliness was important, customer service should be the primary concern if a trade-off needed
to be made between customer service and wait time.
The lack of evidence to support the BLR Service Center staff’s knowledge of the
strategic customer service goal is not surprising. A review of the campaign materials shows a
clear absence of any explanation of the rubric by which success is defined. While the BLR

29
Service Center staff demonstrated that they knew customer service was important, there was no
acknowledgment that being perceived as the “best in class” was a specific objective.
BLR Service Center staff need to know how to concurrently provide customers with
positive experiences and efficiently execute common transactions to achieve the
organization’s strategic customer service goal. Customers come to a BLR Service Center to
execute the transactions necessary to legally operate motorized vehicles. Given that visits to the
BLR are obligatory, the service center staff associated both their comportment and their
competence with providing good customer service.
When discussing alignment of their daily activities with the strategic customer service
goal, a few of the interviewees seemed to home in on the behaviors that one needed to exhibit to
achieve said alignment. Interviewee A2 spoke of effort and the belief that the essential elements
of her role required knowledge, attitude and skills: “I try to do the best possible I can. And
remember that all that counts is knowledge, attitude, and skill. You don’t have all three and you
can’t deliver customer service if you try hard.” Along the same line as Interviewee A2’s
reference to “attitude,” Interviewee C4 focused on “treat[ing] people with compassion and
empathy.” While Interviewee A1 spoke of the being an ear to customers: “Well, you definitely
have to be understanding, be an ‘ear’ because a lot of people they just want [you] to hear them.”
B1 spoke to how BLR Service Center staff should treat customers evenhandedly by saying,
“Customer service should be fair and equal. Consistent. Always favoring the customer, unless
the customer is wrong.” Ultimately, C4 summed it up by saying, “the goal for the agency is to
service people in a timely manner but also, you know, accurately and be kind.” Their comments
speak to the duality of both transaction execution and treating people with due consideration.

30
Coupled with the soft skills associated with delivering a positive customer experience are the
technical skills associated with transaction execution.
In the BLR’s context, efficiently executing customer transactions directly impacts
customer transaction times, which are directly correlated to the wait time of customers in the
queue. While all interviewees realized that providing a positive customer experience was
essential, no one talked about the need to be proficient in transaction execution as a means of
delivering said experience. Interviewee C4 came closest when she spoke of the importance of
serving customers “in a timely manner but also in an accurate manner.” In line with the
sentiments of C4, C3 stated, “If they [BLR Service Center staff] aren’t efficient in that
[transaction execution] when they get to the counter due to lack of training, it’s really a
disservice to both themselves and the customer.”
Training seemed to be viewed as the lynchpin which ensures that the BLR Service Center
staff possess the procedural knowledge to achieve the BLR’s strategic customer service goal. As
reinforced by the interview with B2, transactional training should be coupled with customer
service training to provide new BLR Service Center staff with the knowledge necessary to not
only execute their daily transactions but also to deliver a positive customer experience:
When someone comes in brand new, and they’re trying to learn the job, it’s not really,
they’re not really getting’ the customer service umbrella of that. Do you know what I
mean? ‘Cause everybody’s focused on click on this and do this and fill out this form, or
whatever the case may be. There’s an awful lot to assimilate and I think that those [BLR
Service Center staff] would be better served to have actual time on the job and then have
customer service training then to focus strictly on customer service.

31
They identified the value of training extended beyond just training for new hires. The BLR
Service Center staff interviewed also pinpointed that training needed to be regularly updated and
provided to the staff to ensure they remain current on policy, technology, or other changes that
directly impact their transaction execution. B1 said, “And refresher training, I personally think
that everybody should have refresher training at least once a year for everything that they do. So
registration, licensing, suspension, sales tax, consistently need to have refresher training.” A3
reinforced the need to retraining as a means of remaining current, thereby ensuring efficiency:
Okay, last time I was in a licensing training class was 20 years ago, or registration.
There’s so many updates that happen daily that a refresher for a license or even a
registration course might be beneficial because, sometimes, I may not know about the
update, or, sometimes, the customer may know before I really know it’s out there.
Knowing the BLR’s strategic customer service goal and knowing how to simultaneously
provide customers with positive experiences and efficiently execute the agency’s transactions
represent some of the declarative and procedural knowledge that the BLR Service Center staff
require to achieve the BLR’s strategic customer service goal. While the interviewees came from
BLR Service Centers whose performance had most significantly improved since the introduction
of a clear set of strategic and operational goals, even they supported the notion that there
remained some performance needs that needed to be addressed to enhance current performance.
While these identified knowledge influences uncovered some continued performed needs, these
influences are also complemented by additional performance needs associated with motivational
influences.

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Motivation
Performance needs and assets influenced by the motivation of BLR Service Center Staff
were evaluated by an analysis of interview responses to questions which explored the extent to
which interviewees valued the agency’s strategic customer service goal. In addition, motivation
was analyzed through interview data by assessing the interviewees’ attribution of the agency’s
success or failure to their individual effort and by their self-satisfaction in being able to achieve
the desired goal. Table 5 identifies the assumed motivation influences and the summary of
findings for each assumed influence.
Table 5
Assumed Motivation Influences, Performance Needs Identified, and Summary of Findings
Assumed Motivation Influence Performance Need Identified and Summary
of Findings
BLR Service Center staff need to see value in
achieving the organization’s strategic
customer service goal.
Performance Need Identified. The evidence
was mixed; only some of BLR Service
Center staff clearly saw value in achieving
the organization’s strategic customer service
goal.
BLR Service Center staff need to feel
confident in their ability to achieve the
organization’s strategic customer service goal.
Performance Need Identified. While the
responses of the interview participants were
mixed, the evidence did not indicate that
BLR Service Center staff felt confident in
their ability to achieve the organization’s
strategic customer service goal.

BLR Service Center staff need to see value in achieving the organization’s strategic
customer service goal. The strategic customer service goal asserts that the BLR will lead the
industry in customer service. Very few interviewees affirmatively acknowledged the importance
of achieving the specific goal of leading the industry. Considering the identified performance

33
need for the BLR Service Center staff to understand the strategic customer service goal, it is
therefore not surprising that it was difficult to discern if they actually valued achieving
something they seemingly did not know. Despite their lack of knowledge of the specific
strategic customer service goal, the interviewees did demonstrate a clear understanding of the
importance of good customer service and, more significantly, how they perceived it as a valuable
part of performing their jobs.
When asked if they valued the BLR’s strategic customer service goal, B2’s response was
both compelling and insightful: “It’s absolutely important to me. That’s part of why I come to
work.” B2 not only acknowledged the importance of achieving the BLR’s goal, but they
revealed that their desire to achieve the goal motivated them to continue working at the agency.
While no other interviewee expressed placing this much significance on the strategic customer
service goal, there were others who spoke of how important the delivery of good customer
service was to them throughout their career.
Interviewee C3, for example, discussed how customer service had been consistently and
explicitly valued by them for the entire 27 years they worked at the BLR: “Even prior to when I
was a CSR 1 [customer service representative], a CSR 2, and moved my way up. I always
[knew] the [customer service] goal of the entire agency and this branch is, is number one.” C3
illustrates that while the BLR’s strategic customer service goal may have lacked clarity and
focus, and that they may not have knowledge of the full breadth of the goal, the concept of
excellence in customer service had ever been present.
While not necessarily apparent to customers, it seems that many of the BLR’s Service
Center staff have even made personal sacrifices for the benefits of providing their customers with
positive experiences. A1 stated, “Absolutely, I’ll give you another example. There was a time

34
where I won’t even take a lunch because I’m trying to get things done for somebody or a
customer. Yeah, it’s a high priority, always has been.” In another instance, one interviewee
discussed the value of customer service in conjunction with the overall performance of their
service center.
When C1 spoke of the personal importance of delivering good customer service they
said, “It’s important. We usually have a meeting every day with everybody in the branch
[service center], and we go over, like, our percentages, and everybody seems to be curious to
know how we did the day before.” The management of this service center helps to motivate the
staff to value their performance by incorporating a review of their results as part of the daily
routine. Given the context in which this was discussed, C1 clearly saw the direct relationship
between service center performance and customer service delivery. The interview findings were
mixed as not all respondents explicitly stated, nor did they make it plainly obvious, that
achieving the strategic customer service goal was of value to them personally.
B1 seemed unmotivated and non-committal when they responded by saying, “I guess I
would say yes, from what I do, you know, mostly it helps in the big customer service picture.”
While B1 did not negate that achieving the strategic customer service goal was valuable, they
similarly did not seem to ascribe it any personal importance. Also, B1’s response seemed
focused more on how the quality of their work performance contributed to the BLR overall and
seemed to intimate that they felt it should be valuable to them. A2 responded in what seemed a
similar spirit as B1’s response by saying, “I would say so, especially with customer service yes.”
Unlike their colleague A1, A2’s response seemed neither enthusiastic nor an endorsement of
their being any value in achieving the BLR’s goal.

35
When asked if they valued the BLR’s strategic customer service goal, C2 responded, “I
think so because, at the end of the day I feel like, you know, I’ve accomplished something. I’ve
contributed something to, you know the improvement of customer service here in the ‘C’ service
center.” C2 seemed almost uncertain of whether they truly valued the goal, as their response did
not invoke confidence. Their response did, however, illuminate that, despite finding some very
explicit affirmations of the utility value BLR Service Center staff see in achieving the BLR’s
declared strategic customer service goal, there are still those whose motivation seemed uncertain.
This uncertainty was also evidenced when discussing the BLR Service Center staff’s sense of
self-efficacy.
BLR Service Center staff need to feel confident in their ability to achieve the
organization’s strategic customer service goal. The ability of the BLR to achieve its strategic
customer service goal is influenced by the motivation of the BLR Service Center staff. In part,
the motivation of the BLR Service Center staff is affected by their belief that they, individually,
can contribute to achieving the agency’s goal.
Reviewing the responses to the interview questions regarding the interviewees’
confidence in their ability to achieve the BLR’s strategic customer service goal illustrated while
most interviewees expressed confidence in their customer service abilities, only half of them
acknowledged their confidence in their ability to specifically help the BLR become the industry
leader in customer service.
Interviewees who were confident were very confident. When these interviewees rated
their confidence level on a scale of 1 to 10, with a 10 being extremely confident, the typical
response was an 8 or higher. For example, interviewee C3 did not provide a self-rating, but
responded to the question by saying, “I’m very confident. I’m very. I’m very.” This response,

36
while not an exact number, clearly intimates that a rating of 8, 9, or 10, would be a fair
representation of their confidence level. Participants A1 and C2 quantified their responses with
A1 responding, “I am probably about an 8” and C2 responding, “I think, even if I’m not
confident, I pretend as if I am confident. I think, on a scale of 1 to 10, confidence is probably
about 8 or so.” C4 went further by articulating their confidence in the entire staff at their BLR
service center: “They kill it every day. I am completely confident.” B1, while confident,
articulated that their confidence level was conditional: “Oh, I feel very confident, as long as I
have technology that works. As long as the technology’s working and I have staff, I feel very
confident.” Taken in isolation, these respondents would not have validated the existence of a
performance need for this assumed organizational influence. Paired, however, with the
responses of other interview respondents, the level of confidence across the interview pool seems
to weaken.
“I’m confident. I have to be” was the response of interviewee A2. While responded in
the affirmative, inclusion of the statement “I have to be” was interpreted to relate to a
professional expectation versus a personal belief. The response from interviewee B2 similarly
failed to engender a feeling of confidence. B2 simply stated, “So, personally, I think I’m pretty
well.” In this same cadre of non-enthusiastic responses was C1’s: “I’m very comfortable.” The
only real outlier was A3 who, as previously mentioned, stated,
I think refresher [training] would be good because, for me, for instance. Okay, last time I
was in a licensed training class was 20 years ago, or registration. There’s so many
updates that happen daily that a refresher for a license or even a registration course might
be beneficial because, sometimes, I may not know about the update, or, sometimes, the
customer may know before I really know it’s out there.

37
A3 was clear that their level of confidence might improve if provided with additional training.
The responses of A2, B2, and C1 seemed to imply that while they could not commit to being
confident, they did suggest they were at least competent in performing their jobs. Despite their
stated or perceived level of confidence, one performance asset that was observed across all
interviewees was their commitment to providing good customer service.
While they rated their level of confidence in achieving the BLR’s strategic customer
service goal an 8, A1 made their dedication to meeting customer needs unambiguous: “If I don’t
know the answer, I’ll call somewhere to get the answer. I’ll try to make sure I get the customer
their information that they need to get their things done in here.” This commitment to customers
was further evidenced in the words of B2 who said, “So, I am doin’ whatever the customer in
front of me needs for their good customer service.” Even though they were less confident than
other interviewees, A2 seemed committed to putting forth an honest effort: “I have to be
positive. I can’t put my own self down. I got to pat myself on the back. I try to do the best
possible I can.”
Notwithstanding the responses of those participants who seemed less confident, the
interview findings should not be construed to mean that the BLR Service Center staff lack self-
confidence in their ability to achieve the BLR’s strategic customer service goal. While the
finding from the interviews were mixed, there was not sufficient evidence to warrant eliminating
individual confidence in achieving the strategic customer service goal as a performance need.
Organization
Following the validation of the motivational influences, the performance needs and assets
influenced by organizational considerations were evaluated by an analysis of internal documents
and artifacts and interviews. The interview questions explored the extent to which the cultural

38
model or cultural setting related to individual accountability and resources hampered the BLR
Service Center staff from achieving the agency’s strategic customer service goal. Table 6
identifies the assumed organization influences and the summary of findings for each assumed
influence.
Table 6
Assumed Organization Influences, Performance Needs Identified, and Summary of Findings
Assumed Organization Influence Performance Need Identified and Summary
of Findings
BLR Service Center staff need to be
individually and collectively held accountable
for achieving the organization’s strategic
customer service goal.
Performance Need Identified. The evidence
supported collective accountability at the
service center level, but individual
accountability was lacking.
BLR Service Centers need to have sufficient
levels of fully trained staff to achieve the
organization’s strategic customer service goal.
Performance Need Identified. The evidence
indicated that staffing levels were a key
factor in achieving the organization’s
strategic customer service goal and that
historically the BLR Service Centers were
understaffed and while the current staffing
levels were sufficient, these staffing levels
were achieved through recent hires who
didn’t have sufficient knowledge to be
completely effective and.

BLR Service Center staff need to be individually and collectively held accountable
for achieving the organization’s strategic customer service goal. The governor of
Commonwealth established the performance goal as a means of keeping his campaign promise to
improve the BLR. As such, reporting of service center performance has high visibility and each
service center’s results are emailed nightly to a group of over 20 executives, including the
Commonwealth Secretary of Transportation. These performance results are also aggregated

39
monthly, and service centers are rated red, yellow, or green based on their average performance
for the month. Service centers that are rated red are given a performance improvement plan.
Overall, a service center’s performance is determined by taking the average of the
individual performance of its entire staff. While the performance results are only evaluated at
the collective, BLR Service Center level, there was, no explicit evidence provided regarding the
evaluation or importance of individual performance and its direct impact on BLR Service Center
performance.
A common theme across interviews was the collegial environment in the service centers
and the important role that teamwork played in achieving the service center’s daily performance
goal of service 80% of customers served within 30 minutes of their arrival. This notion of
collegiality also seemed to extend to the other service centers in their respective regions as they
spoke of the friendly competition they have with other area service centers.
A2 spoke of how “we try to work as a team, try to help each out each other,” and C1
mentioned how “everybody works together. Everybody helps each other out.” Even C3 said
“We all work together very well. We’re a very well-oiled machine.” Their emphasis on
teamwork was consistent with the presence of collective accountability at the service center
level.
The staff in BLR Service Center C spoke extensively about the benefits of their daily
morale and team-building meetings. Interviewee C2 set the tone when they stated,
You know what I like best about [BLR Service Center C] though, in the mornings, we do
have a little debriefing before we start our day, and, you know, this is what’s going on
and either people could have problems the day before, and they will talk about it so we all
aware of it, and you know, we can act on that. Or, something happened that we all didn’t

40
know, so we inform everybody about it, so yeah. I like that part of it. I like the little
meetings in the morning.
As outlined by C4, it seemed that these morning meetings were useful in helping to set
expectations for the day by providing a recap of performance from the previous day:
We have a morning huddle every morning. We end it with a cheer. We all put our hands
in. You know, we all say, yeah, we all. It’s a morning huddle. We’ve been doing it for a
while and we all talk about, you know, yesterday and what we could have done better or
what would work today and who’s going to be doing what, you know, and who you can
go to for what, and we share funny stories.
The morning meetings seemed to informally reinforce collective performance accountability and
also benefited the BLR Service Center staff by helping to build comradery.
Teamwork was important in this environment because, in instances when an individual
staff member may be having difficulty serving a customer or may not have the requisite
knowledge to address a specific customer issue, other members of the BLR Service Center staff
provided assistance, thereby reducing the overall time it took to meet the customer’s need. As
discussed by C3, accountability across individuals is an important element in timely customer
service: “And then it all really comes down to your coworkers knowing what the policies,
procedures, and what they need in order to get the customer processed.”
Individual and collective accountability are not mutually exclusive. Although explicit
measures to evaluate individual accountability for achieving the strategic customer service goal
were neither observed nor identified, the importance of collective accountability was indirectly
evidenced in the value that was placed on team building. Work queues at the BLR were not
distributed by teams, they were distributed individually, and overall service center performance

41
was determined based on averaging across individuals. As emphasized by interviewee C4, “We
pass out the numbers every day. In other words, we let every employee in here know how they
did the day before.”
While instances of informal attempts to promote individual and collective accountability
were evidenced at the BLR Service Center level, the cultural model of the BLR was devoid of
any formal measures of individual accountability focused on the stated strategic customer service
goal. The only direct measures of performance accountability for the attainment of the strategic
customer service goal were aggregate at the BLR Service Center level.
BLR Service Centers need to have sufficient levels of fully trained staff to achieve
the organization’s strategic customer service goal. In any system, there is a correlation
between output and capacity. This correlation between output and capacity is also a fundamental
tenet of the basic microeconomic principle which espouses that optimal production levels are
based on achieving equilibrium of supply and demand. In the context of the BLR, demand is the
number of customers who enter a service center, and the supply is the number of service center
staff members available and capable of serving those customers. Achieving equilibrium between
the customer demand and service center staff supply requires enough staff available to serve the
customers. When asked if staffing levels impacted the BLR Service Center’s ability to achieve
its strategic goals, interviewee C1 put it best: “It does. Especially our wait time. Yeah, when we
have less clerks the wait time are higher.” Echoing this sentiment, B1 felt that “Staffing is one of
the greatest impacts” to achieving their strategic customer service goals.
At the BLR Service Centers, however, the common sentiment was that their current
staffing levels were sufficient, but, in times past, that had not been the case, and performance
suffered as a result. With the governor’s focus on BLR performance, the secretary of

42
transportation provided operating funds to increase capacity in the service centers. A1 said it
plainly, “I think, the last couple of years, we have the most employees we’ve had in years.” A2
echoed her colleague’s sentiment by saying, “We have enough people.” In agreement with A1
and A2, A3 stated, “So, now, we have, and it’s great, an overabundance of clerks.”
Increased capacity can be achieved by adding more people or by allowing the existing
people to work additional hours, or a combination of the two. Interviewee B2’s response also
confirmed the secretary’s generosity as it relates to increasing operational capacity in the service
centers: “Especially lately, with all that’s been going on, there’s unlimited overtime, unlimited
comp time.”
Even though current staffing levels seem to be adequate, the interview participants were
clear in reiterating the importance of having sufficient capacity to meet customer demand. As a
follow-on to their earlier comment, B2 also stated that “staffing is one of the greatest impacts.”
C2 admitted that “staffing is the number one thing that we need here because without it we’re
overworked. So, I think staffing is actually the number one.” While interviews confirmed that
staffing levels were important, they also illuminated that it was not simply the number of staff
that was important: the abilities of those staff were also a significant factor.
Unfortunately, just having a high enough headcount is insufficient. The BLR Service
Center has a multitude of transactions, many of which can be complex. The breadth and
complexity of the BLR’s offerings require staff to be proficient across the most common
transactions to improve overall service center performance. This point was underscored by
interviewee B1:
So when we have new hires, they are trained in, well, the most recent new hires I have
been trained in license only. And they have not been trained in registration. So, I’m

43
limited with what I can do with them. They don’t know registration. If we’re slow on
license, I can’t use them on registration. So, my hands are tied there.
While bringing the staffing up to optimal levels is desirable, the BLR Service Center
performance is unable to immediately reap the benefits when new staff are hired because they
have yet to navigate long learning curve required to make them effective in satisfying customer
demand across all key transactions. Employees who have yet to become proficient across the
full range of BLR Service Center transactions cannot be fully deployed, so their utility is limited.
Despite the BLR’s identified performance needs, it is important to acknowledge the
presence of the performance assets found in the higher-performing service centers. The
interview responses highlighted that across the subject BLR Service Centers, the importance of
customer service and teamwork were consistent themes that seemed to positively impact overall
performance.
The analysis of the findings confirmed the first two research questions, validated the vast
majority of the assumed performance needs, and revealed some of the BLR’s various
performance assets. The final research question pertained to recommendations for organizational
practice in the areas of knowledge, motivation, and organizational resources.
Solutions and Recommendations
Based on the evaluation of the BLR’s performance needs and assets related to achieving
the agency’s strategic customer service goals, the study’s findings yield six recommendations in
the knowledge, motivation, and organization domains:
1. The BLR should provide information to service center staff in the form of town-
hall-style workshops guided by a PechaKucha presentation and a job aid outlining

44
the strategic customer service goals associated with the current operational
context.
2. The BLR should expand existing staff transaction execution instruction to include
customer service training with coached role-playing exercises.
3. The BLR leadership should model enthusiastic behaviors coupled with feedback
and social recognition to reinforce the rationale and importance of achieving the
strategic customer service goal.
4. The BLR should set individual performance metrics which are aligned to the
broader performance objectives.
5. The BLR should ensure that individual performance evaluations include progress
against individual targets and service center level targets which advance the
organization’s strategic customer service goal.
6. The BLR should conduct systematic and empirical forecasts of customer demand
using industry best practices and ensure that there is a sufficient supply of staff to
satisfy the demand for in-person service provision.
The conceptual gap analysis framework posited by Clark and Estes (2008) provided the
basis for recommending solutions to improve the BLR’s performance. This framework frames
organization performance into knowledge and motivational influences and organization barriers.
Improved performance is achieved by bridging the chasm between current and desired
performance at both the individual and organizational level (Clark & Estes, 2008). The methods
by which this bridging is achieved forms the basis on which performance improvement
recommendations are developed and implemented. Developing these context-specific
performance improvement recommendations begins with the systematic analysis of the discrete

45
influences and barriers in the KMO domains. While each domain must be considered in turn,
this study began with a review of the knowledge influences.
Knowledge Recommendations
Knowledge influences can be categorized into four distinct types: factual or declarative,
conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive (Krathwohl, 2002). Krathwohl (2002) considers
factual or declarative knowledge to be the basic information required to have familiarity with a
subject, conceptual knowledge as the understanding of how various components which
contribute to the make-up of a subject inter-relate, procedural knowledge as mastery of the
activities and methods necessary to accomplish a task, and metacognitive knowledge to be an
awareness of the individuals own understanding of how to employ higher-level thinking and
problem solving. Ideally, the performance needs associated with the knowledge influences are
addressed by improving or increasing the provision of relevant information, job aids, training, or
other forms of education (Clark & Estes, 2008).
Given the findings previously discussed, the knowledge influences listed in Table 7
proved to be important. Table 7 provides an overview of interviewees’ knowledge influences,
the related information processing and cognitive load theories and their corresponding context-
specific recommendations. Implementation of the recommendations is expected to address the
identified performance need and leverage the performance assets to best align the current and
desired staff knowledge.

46
Table 7
Summary of Knowledge Influences and Recommendations
Knowledge
Influence
Knowledge
Type
Principle and Citation Context-Specific
Recommendation
BLR Service
Center staff need
to know the
organization’s
strategic customer
service goal.
Declarative

Increasing germane
cognitive load by
engaging the learner
in meaningful
learning and schema
construction
facilitates effective
learning (Kirschner et
al, 2006).
Provide information to BLR
Service Center staff in the
form of town-hall-style
workshops to include a
PechaKucha-style
presentation which outlines
the agency’s strategic
customer service goals and
associates it with the BLR’s
current operational context
and defines what it means to
be “…the industry leader…”
BLR Service Center
staff need to know how
to concurrently provide
customers with positive
experiences and
efficiently execute
common transactions to
achieve the
organization’s strategic
customer service goal.
Procedural Information learned
meaningfully and
connected with prior
knowledge is stored
more quickly and
remembered more
accurately because it
is elaborated with
prior learning
(Schraw &
McCrudden, 2006).
Expand existing BLR
Service Center staff
transaction execution
instruction to include
customer service training
with coached role-playing
exercises.

Declarative knowledge solutions. Service center staff need to know the BLR’s strategic
customer service goals if the agency expects to achieve its stated objectives. Kirschner (2002)
outlines the importance of ensuring instructional design contributes to germane cognitive load to
support the development of schemata which are retained in long-term memory and avoid overly
taxing working memory. To achieve the objective of increasing germane cognitive load,
instructional designs that favor less formal information delivery mechanisms, incorporate multi-
media, and draw linkages between the learner’s prior and desired knowledge, will yield better

47
results (Mayer, 2011). Therefore, the declarative knowledge recommendation is a town-hall-
style information session with a PechaKucha-style presentation (a clear, concise and fast-paced
presentation comprised of exactly 20 slides, each of which are displayed for exactly 20 seconds)
in which senior BLR leaders explain the correlation between the BLR’s strategic customer
service goals and current operational context, policies, and procedures.
Lehtonen (2011) asserts that a learner’s knowledge can be deepened by delivering
explicit knowledge through a PechaKucha presentation and a follow-on, informal discussion
session during which learners can ask questions to reinforce their understanding of the more
complex concepts. To provide goal clarity to public sector employees, Pandey and Rainey
(2006) reinforce the importance of providing clear internal communication regarding the
organization’s goals and objectives. As such, providing information to the BLR Service Center
staff using an informal format and the clarity of PechaKucha is the recommended approach to
addressing this knowledge related performance need.
Procedural knowledge solutions. The BLR will have limited success in achieving its
aims unless service center staff know how to both provide customers with positive experiences
as well as how to efficiently and effectively execute the agency’s most common requested
transactions. Schraw and McCrudden (2006) also emphasize connecting learned information
with prior knowledge through their information processing model. Because a learner’s ability to
store information in working memory is limited, Schraw and McCrudden (2006) highlight
ensuring that new information and the knowledge in the learner’s long-term memory have a
logical connection to increase the speed with which prior knowledge can be retrieved from long-
term memory and actively integrated with new knowledge. By providing opportunities to role-
play case examples of new concepts coupled with existing knowledge, learners can more

48
meaningfully gain mastery of the new knowledge (Kirschner et al., 2006; Mayer, 2011; Schraw
& McCrudden, 2006; Van Gerven, Paas, Van Merrienboer, & Schmidt, 2002). This theoretical
principle supports the recommendation that customer service should be integrated into the
existing training modules for the BLR Service Center staff to easily draw the connection between
their existing knowledge of transaction execution and the new procedural knowledge of effective
customer service.
Baldwin (1992) researched the use of scenarios as a technique for behavior modeling to
support employers’ need for effective ways to teach interpersonal skills. In the peer-reviewed
study, empirical research techniques were employed to ascertain the benefits of training which
includes single versus multiple scenarios and whether those scenarios should only demonstrate
positive results or should also demonstrate negative results (Baldwin, 1992). Using an
experimental group of 72 business school students, Baldwin (1992) concluded that the optimal
approach to instructional design for behavioral reproduction training was to demonstrate multiple
scenarios which yielded positive results. Given that good customer service delivery is directly
related to an individual’s interpersonal skills, the use of role-playing and modeling of positive
scenarios should improve the overall training effectiveness.
Motivation Recommendations
The motivational influences are the second of the three elements in Clark and Estes’
(2008) gap analysis framework. Considered to be the most difficult performance needs to
address, motivational influences represent the individual processes of active choice, persistence,
and mental efforts (Clark & Estes, 2008). Active choice denotes an individual’s decision to
achieve a goal, persistence is evidenced by an individual’s continued drive to achieve a goal, and
mental effort represents the cerebral activity required to actively chose and/or persist (Clark &

49
Estes, 2008). The influences that motivate an individual to actively choose, persist, and expend
mental effort can be segmented into three theoretical categories: expectancy value, self-efficacy,
and interests.
Expectancy values can be segmented into utility value, attainment value, intrinsic value,
and cost belief and are related to the associated benefit or cost an individual expects to receive by
engaging in a specific activity (Eccles, 2006). Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s beliefs
about their ability to achieve specific goals (Bandura, 2000). While interests can be a leading
indicator of each of the three motivational influences of active choice, persistence, and mental
effort, Clark and Estes (2008) posit that building confidence, removing organizational barriers to
success, creating a positive work environment, and alignment of values and performance goals
are all means by which motivation can be enhanced to address performance needs and exploit
performance assets related to the relevant motivational influences.
A review of the findings confirmed that the motivational influences in Table 8 were
important. Table 8 provides an overview of the interviewees’ motivation influences, the related
expectancy value and self-efficacy theories, and their corresponding context-specific
recommendations. Implementation of the recommendations is expected to address the BLR
Service Center Staff’s identified performance shortcomings related to motivation.

50
Table 8
Summary of Motivation Influences and Recommendations
Motivation Influence Motivation
Type
Principle and Citation Context-Specific
Recommendation
BLR Service Center
staff need to see value
in achieving the
organization’s strategic
customer service goal.
Utility
Value
Rationales that include
a discussion of the
importance and utility
value of the work or
learning can help
learners develop
positive values (Eccles,
2006; Pintrich, 2003).

Feedback as well as
actual success on
challenging tasks
positively influence
people’s perceptions of
competence (Borgogni
et al., 2011).
Provide positive
reinforcement coupled with
feedback and social
recognition to emphasize the
rationale and importance of
achieving the organization’s
strategic customer service
goal.
BLR Service Center
staff need to feel
confident in their
ability to achieve the
organization’s
strategic customer
service goal.
Self-
Efficacy
Learning and
motivation are
enhanced when learners
have positive
expectancies for
success (Pajares, 2006).

Feedback and modeling
increase self-efficacy
(Pajares, 2006).
Set individual performance
metrics that are aligned to the
broader performance
objectives.

Expectancy value solutions. The need for the BLR Service Center staff to see value in
achieving the organization’s strategic customer service goals is the principal motivational
influence associated with utility value. Pintrich (2003) emphasizes providing clear rationales
that motivate the development of higher utility values while Eccles (2006) focuses on the
benefits of modeling values, enthusiasm, and interest in task performance as a means of
increasing motivation. The extension of Pintrich and Eccles’ work is to recommend to the BLR

51
that modeling of desired behaviors by executives, managers, and supervisors, and the delivery of
timely feedback and appropriate social recognition of accomplishment should contribute to
service center staff gaining a greater appreciation for the organization’s strategic customer
service goal.
Stajkovic and Luthans (2003) performed an empirical meta-analysis with 13,301
participants and found that the combination of money, feedback, and social recognition
synergistically (the combination is greater than the sum of the individual parts) improved
workplace performance. Specifically, the probability of success that a reinforced employee
would outperform a non-reinforced employee was 90% because they are more motivated to
value performance. While the BLR is unable to provide performance bonuses, they are able to
leverage cash incentives through salary increases in grade or promotions to higher grades with
higher salaries.
Self-efficacy solutions. To be motivated to achieve the agency’s strategic customer
service goals, the BLR Service Center staff need to have confidence that they can meet or exceed
performance expectations. To help increase self-efficacy, Pajares (2006) stresses learners must
expect that they will be successful and that feedback and modeling are legitimate means by
which to improve self-efficacy and motivation. Given the strategies posited by Pajares, the
recommendation to the BLR leadership is to set individual performance metrics which are
aligned to support the broader strategic customer service goal and are supported by the notion
that concrete goal setting can provide staff clear markers of success.
Wright, O’Halloran, and Stukas (2016) conducted an empirical study of 96 people to
determine if self-efficacy and skills could be improved through performance-enhancing
techniques. Two of the performance-enhancing techniques explored were instructional self-

52
statements and goal setting. Wright et al. (2016) found that, although there was a positive
relationship between goal setting and performance, instructional self-statements (e.g., a focus on
results) had the greatest impact on performance improvement. The use of instructional self-
statements in feedback that coincides with the evaluation of individual performance metrics
could be used to address the remaining BLR Service Center Staff’s motivation related
performance needs and further strengthen their associated performance assets.
Organization Recommendations
Organizational barriers represent the third component of the Clark and Estes (2008) gap
analysis framework. Policies and procedures, resources, cultural models, and the cultural setting
are all elements that can hinder an organization from upgrading its performance to its desired
level. Policies and procedures are governance mechanisms an organization establishes to
manage risk. Resources are the people, money, and/or materials necessary to deliver an
organization’s outcome. Cultural models are shared norms that define the behaviors and actions
expected by employees, contractors, or volunteers. Finally, cultural settings represent the
context in which cultural norms are evidenced. While there is a multitude of ways to close
organizational gaps, Clark and Estes identified six axioms for bridging organizational divides to
facilitate organizational change: goal clarity and distinctly defined measures of performance,
alignment of organizational structures and business processes with the clear goals, consistent and
frequent communication with internal stakeholders, visible involvement and an obvious
commitment to success by management, dedication to ensuring steps are taken to address
knowledge and motivational performance needs, and recognition that each organizational change
initiative is unique and cannot be generalized.

53
Based on a review of the findings, the organizational influences listed in Table 9 proved
to be important. Table 9 provides an overview of the BLR Service Center staff’s organizational
influences, the cultural model and resources theories and their corresponding context-specific
recommendations. Implementation of the recommendations is expected to address the BLR’s
performance needs and accentuate their performance assets related to organizational influences.
Table 9
Summary of Organization Influences and Recommendations
Organization
Influence
Organization
Type
Principle and Citation Context-Specific
Recommendation
BLR Service Center
staff need to be
individually and
collectively held
accountable for
achieving the
organization’s
strategic customer
service goal.
Cultural
Model
Effective organizations
ensure that organizational
messages, rewards,
policies and procedures
that govern the work of
the organization are
aligned with or are
supportive of
organizational goals and
values (Clark & Estes,
2008).
Ensure that individual
performance evaluations
include progress against
targets that advance the
organization’s strategic
customer service goal at
the individual and service
center levels.
BLR Service Centers
need to have
sufficient levels of
fully trained staff to
achieve the
organization’s
strategic customer
service goal.
Cultural
Setting
Effective change efforts
ensure that everyone has
the resources (equipment,
personnel, time, etc.)
needed to do their job,
and that if there are
resource shortages, then
resources are aligned with
organizational priorities
(Clark & Estes, 2008).
Conduct systematic and
empirical forecasts of
customer demand using
industry best practices and
ensure that there is
sufficient staff to satisfy
the demand for in-person
service provision.

Cultural model solutions. The BLR Service Center staff need to be individually and
collectively held accountable for achieving the organization’s strategic customer service goals.
Clark and Estes (2008) assert that, to achieve optimal effectiveness, an organization must align

54
its messaging, rewards structures, policy and procedures, and its goals and objectives. The
recommendation that individual and service center level performance measures and targets are
reflective of and advance the BLR’s strategic customer service goal ensures this alignment. As a
means of continuously evaluating the alignment of the enterprise-wide strategy and business
processes discussed by Clark and Estes, it is important that measures of performance are
considered.
While confirming a clear line of causality between actions and results continues to elude
researchers, Buller and McEvoy (2012) affirm that organization performance is affected at the
organizational, group, and individual levels, and, as such, performance measurement should be
balanced and include measures of productivity, customer service, and quality. It is important to
recognize the direct influence of individuals on the organization’s performance success (Clark &
Estes, 2008). Kim (2004) confirms that individual job satisfaction has a directly proportional
relationship to organization performance as evidenced by an empirical analysis of the results of a
survey administered to 1,739 Korean public sector employees. An extension of Kim’s work is
that dips in performance could indicate a decline in employee satisfaction. By continually
monitoring progress against individual performance measures, organizations can identify when
performance begins to degrade and address inconsistencies or opposition in their strategy,
governance structure, or business processes (Clark & Estes, 2008).
Cultural setting solutions. If the BLR hopes to achieve its strategic customer service
goals, then it needs to maintain sufficient staffing levels to meet customer and organizational
demands. Clark and Estes (2008) concur that to effectively implement organizational change,
the organization needs to ensure the availability of the requisite number of human resources.
This need for sufficient staffing levels supports the recommendation that effective demand

55
forecasting should be performed to ensure that enough resources are available to achieve the
BLR’s strategic customer service goal. In the event there are resource shortages, then supporting
the strategic customer service goal should be prioritized over other operational needs.
Schneider and Bowen (1993) reinforce using demand forecast for effective human
resource management based on their finding of a strong positive correlation between customer
perceptions of adequate employee staffing levels, employee perceptions of overall HR quality
and the availability of the tools and supply required for effective service delivery. This
relationship between customer and employee perceptions and sufficient staffing levels reinforces
the notion that the likelihood of the BLR achieving its strategic customer service goal increases
as the organization accurately forecasts customer demands and brings the supply of service
center staff into equilibrium. In support of the recommendations and solutions, a detailed
implementation and evaluation plan is provided in Appendix E.
Limitations and Delimitations
At the outset of the study, there were several limitations which were known to, and
delimitations established by the researcher. Three key limitations were identified by the
researcher at the outset: participation, forthrightness, and resources. BLR Service Center staff
volunteered to participate in the study, which could have yielded some participation bias. The
majority of the interview participants were frontline staff at the BLR Service Centers, and there
may have been some hesitation to respond in ways that may have reflected poorly on their
superiors. Limited resources were available to conduct the study which constrained the sample
size.
In addition to the limitations, the study was bound by a set of researcher-imposed
delimitations. This was a qualitative study. While quantitative data were used to identify the

56
BLR Service Centers to be included in the study, no other quantitative data were used to inform
the study’s findings. Lastly, the scope of the study was limited to the BLR Service Centers
which ranked highest in performance improvement.
Recommendations for Future Research
Government organizations are typically created through legislation or regulation and have
a specifically defined function. As such, their goals and objectives should remain linked to the
primary purpose they were meant to serve. While this study was focused on the impact of goal
clarity on performance results; going forward, similar studies should be conducted on the impact
of goal identification on performance results. Goal clarity is important, but the BLR’s recent
past demonstrated that becoming too narrowly focused on a specific goal like customer service
can be detrimental and yield negative performance results across other mission critical areas.
While BLR leaders were keenly focused on the strategic customer service goal of being
considered the industry leader in customer service, they neglected a key element of their overall
mission “to enable driver safety across Commonwealth.”
This future research should delve into how agencies ensure that their strategic planning
and goal refinement efforts remain aligned to the organization’s broader mission and the
potentially adverse impact of overly contracting their attention. The study should ideally include
multiple agencies and focus on quantifiable evidence of organization performance across all
facets of their overarching mission.
Conclusion
Government, at all levels, plays a vital role in the health, well-being, safety, and security
of its citizens and residents. To deliver against these mandates, government agencies need to
function both effectively and efficiently. They need to be effective in meeting constituents’

57
needs and efficient in consuming the finite resources of their jurisdictions. In times of crisis
especially, unambiguous goals should be established to abate the situation and mitigate potential
harm. Those charged with execution and service delivery need to have a clear understanding of
their organization’s goals so that their actions are in concert with achieving the desired
outcomes.
The objective of this study was to explore the problem of performance improvement
efforts in public sector agencies and programs, which are hampered by ambiguous goals and
objectives. Other scholarly works demonstrated the positive impact of goal clarity on public
sector agency performance. This study yielded a similar conclusion by applying the Clark and
Estes (2008) gap analysis framework to a state government motor vehicle agency.
By investigating three of the agency’s service centers, the study illuminated how
knowledge, motivational, and organizational influences impacted performance. Specifically, the
study found that the complete goal, not merely one of its key aspects, need to be clearly
understood by the staff. In addition, the goal needs to resonate with staff and the service center’s
leadership team should encourage the staff to rally around the goal and see it as important.
Finally, the agency needs to allocate enough resources to its service centers if it expects to
achieve the goal consistently.
Government agencies are expected to be good stewards of taxpayer monies. This
stewardship is called into question when the services that citizens expect are delivered poorly or
not delivered at all. To uphold their fiduciary obligation, government agencies need to develop
clear and unambiguous goals that meet the needs of the jurisdictions they serve, are actionable,
and can be reasonably executed by their staff when provided with the necessary knowledge,
motivational, and organizational support.

58
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Appendix A: Participating Stakeholders with Sampling Criteria for Interviews
Interview Sampling Criteria and Rationale
The qualitative research data were gathered from one-on-one, semi-structured interviews
with select BLR Service Center managers and customer service representatives.
Criterion 1. Primary work location was in a service center which demonstrated
significant performance improvement during the period of the study.
Criterion 2. Individual work performance was in line with the performance of their
service center.
Criterion 3. Employment with the BLR began before and continued after the period of
the study.
Interview Sampling (Recruitment) Strategy and Rationale
Purposive. The interviewing began immediately following the analysis of survey and
the pre-collected performance data. The interview sample strategy was purposive in that a
participant needed to meet very specific criteria (Johnson & Christensen, 2015). BLR Service
Centers were selected to participate in the interviews because the criteria for inclusion was based
on the individual working at one of the top 10 service center locations which demonstrated the
greatest performance improvement against the goal of serving 80% of customers in 30 minutes
or less within a 36-monith window (18 months before and 18 months after the goal was
established).

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Appendix B: Interview Protocol
1) How many years have you been working in a BLR Customer Service Center?
2) In your opinion, has the BLR changed during your tenure? If so, how? If not, why
not?
3) If the BLR has changed during your tenure, do you believe it has been for the better or
are for the worse? Can you provide some examples?
4) What are the BLR’s strategic customer service performance goals? (K)
a. What is their [the BLR Leadership team’s] approach to ensuring these goals are
met?
5) In your opinion, what are the beliefs of the BLR Leadership about customer service (O)
6) What things do you think influence the achievement of the BLR’s strategic customer
service performance goal? (O)
a. What about staffing?
b. What about training?
c. What about communication?
7) How confident are you in your ability to achieve the BLR’s strategic customer service
performance goal? (M)
8) How confident are you in your service center’s ability to achieve the BLR’s strategic
customer service performance goal? (M)
9) How important is it to you to achieve the BLR’s strategic customer service performance
goal? (M)
10) What do you feel is the relationship between your daily activities and the achievement
of the BLR’s strategic customer service performance goal? (K)

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Appendix C: Credibility and Trustworthiness
Credibility
Maxwell (2013) outlined a checklist of items that help to promote the credibility of the
study and its researchers. Applying Maxwell’s checklist to the study yielded the following
results.
Involvement. The principal researcher (PR) for the study previously served in a
management consultant capacity to the BLR for three years and to the department of
transportation for two years prior to being engaged directly with the BLR. As a trusted advisor,
the PR was paid to be an objective third party whose person biases are subordinate to their
fiduciary obligation to maintain professional objectivity.
Data. As a qualitative study, the data collection was purposive and illuminated the
sentiments of the stakeholder group.
Respondents. The goal of interviewing was to gain the insight and perspectives of
members of the stakeholder group.
Intervention. In the case of the BLR, the intervention or treatment was the
establishment of the stakeholder goal. During the interviews, the interviewees were asked to
provide context to differences in performance results before and after the treatment.
Discrepancies. Once the interviews were completed, no significant discrepancies were
identified between the pre-collected performance data and the interview responses. As such, no
further exploration was required. Therefore, no targeted follow-up interviews were performed.
Multi-round interviewing was accounted for with the interviewees but was not required. In the
introduction, the interviewees were asked to be available to provide answers to any follow-up
questions which may arise from their responses.

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Triangulation. Multiple interviews were conducted within each of the selected service
centers to reduce the risk of bias (Maxwell, 2013). In addition to being isolated by service
center, the results were cross-checked again the results from the interviews at other service
centers. While variation was expected based on the differences in performance results, no
unexpected findings required informal vetting with other sources within the BLR.
Numbers. In coding the results from the interviews, patterns were identified, and, to the
extent possible, frequency of themes was quantified.
Comparisons. As discussed previously, both pre-collected performance data and
interview data were compared across service centers. The goal was to ensure that the findings
could be reasonably generalizable across service center and their staff. As expected, the
commonalities outnumbered the differences.
Trustworthiness
The PR has no vested interest in the results of the study. As an independent third party
who is compensated to provide objective analyses, the PR is highly trained to manage personal
and professional biases that come through working closely with members of an organization over
an extended period. The personal character and culture of the PR can never be completely
suppressed (Maxwell, 2013). Therefore, having a close relationship with the BLR over a three-
year period has led to the PR having a specific point of view. The PR, however, did not go to or
work in the service centers or with the BLR Service Center staff. In addition, the daily tasks
performed by the PR were rarely related to the service centers directly but to the BLR broadly.
To provide transparency, the PR’s personal beliefs would have been openly discussed had they
diverged from the study’s findings.

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Appendix D: Ethics
Context
The PR responsible for evaluating the performance of the BLR Service Center staff is a
management consultant who was previously contracted by the agency to provide
recommendations on the effective and efficient management of the organization change
associated with the BLR’s enterprise-wide transformation program. The BLR management and
frontline staff consider the PR to be a trusted advisor and an independent and objective third
party whose compensation is neither directly nor indirectly based on the performance of the BLR
Service Center staff. Therefore, the PR has no vested interest in the performance of the
stakeholder group. Given the consultative nature of the PR’s relationship to the BLR, the BLR
Service Center staff are accustomed to the PR collecting, analyzing, and reporting on
quantitative and qualitative data. In addition, the PR has no history as an employee of the BLR
or of the Commonwealth Department of Transportation.
Having advised the BLR over multiple years, the PR, however, guarded against allowing
observations and findings from previous or concurrent studies to influence the interpretation of
the data collected to inform this study. As a management consultant with over 25 years’
experience, the PR is ever vigilant about maintaining objectivity as the PR has a fiduciary duty to
the BLR to provide an unbiased and fact-based perspective.
Obligations to Human Subjects
The absolute reliance on the contribution of human subjects to inform a research study
can bring into question the ethical practices of the researcher (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). While
performing qualitative research, the researcher’s first obligation is to ensure that neither the
collecting of data nor publication of results compromises the well-being of the human

70
participants in the study (Rubin & Rubin, 2012). The PR can erect barriers to ethical breaches in
this study by making sure to obtain informed consent, ensure voluntary participation, maintain
data confidentiality, and secure all stored data (Rubin & Rubin, 2012). In addition, the PR will
uphold his obligation to keep all information confidential and unattributable.
Consent and Participation
The qualitative data collection consisted of nine semi-structured interviews of BLR
Service Center staff lasting up to 60 minutes. As part of the interview protocol, an explanation
of the purpose of interview as part of a dissertation research project was shared with each
participant and verbal acknowledgment of consent was requested and obtained. The participants
were reminded that participation was voluntary and, at any time, they could discontinue
participation in the study without penalty. As an incentive to participate, each interview
participant was offered one $5.00 lottery scratch ticket.
Confidentiality and Information Security
Interview participants were ensured confidentiality. As a means of identification, each of
the nine interview participants was assigned a unique alpha control number. The control number
was a combination of letters and numbers.
Given the small pool of interviews and the similarity in position, the only demographic
information collected was title and years of service. Original interview notes were digitized and
password-protected. All hard copy documents were shredded and discarded.

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Appendix E: Implementation and Evaluation
Context
Implementation and Evaluation Framework
Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2016) developed the NWKM, which is the framework upon
which the implementation and evaluation plan for this study is built. The NWKM is comprised
of four distinct levels and correctly asserts the primacy of outcomes and improved performance
(Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). In numeric order the four levels of the NWKM are reaction,
learning, behavior, and results (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016).
The first level, reaction, focuses on assessing how satisfied the learner was with any
training or performance support tools that were provided (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). By
conducting objective evaluation of their efficacy, training and performance support tools can be
continuously improved to better meet the needs of future learners. The second level, learning, is
concerned with determining if the training and performance support tools lent themselves to
increasing the knowledge, improving the attitude, building the confidence, and/or obtaining the
commitment of the learners (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick
(2016)’s third level, behavior, determines to what extend the learning from the training and
performance support were beneficial enough to the learn that they were put into practice when
the learner returned to the workplace. Lastly, Level 4, results is rooted in the answering the
fundamental question regarding whether or not the training and performance support directly
contributed to achieving the desired performance outcomes (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016).
Although it may seem counter-intuitive, in line with their assertion that performance
improvement is the ultimate goal, Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2016) recommend that the

72
resultant implementation and evaluation plan be developed opposite their sequential order by
first implementing the results level and implementing the reaction level last.
Organizational Purpose, Need and Expectations
The BLR strives to “enable customer mobility and consumer safety across
Commonwealth by credentialing and delivering driver, non-driver, and vehicle services in
multiple channels.” In addition to its mission, the agency aspires to be considered the industry
leader in customer satisfaction.
Historically, the BLR’s customer service was abysmal. Customer wait times regularly
exceeded one hour and, in many instances, approached the two-hour mark. Shortly following
Commonwealth’s installation of a new administration, the governor declared that improvement
of customer service at the BLR was imperative. Based on the governor’s decree and the BLR’s
stated strategic customer service goal, it is important that the BLR Service Center staff align their
daily activities such that their performance advances the agency’s progress towards this strategic
customer service goal.
As the face of the organization to Commonwealth’s 5 million residents and the agency’s
principal stakeholder, performance of the service center staff defines how the public perceives
the BLR’s level of customer service. Therefore, it is critical that the service center staff execute
their job responsibilities in a manner which demonstrates the BLR’s commitment to providing
exceptional customer service.
Based on the study’s recommended ways to achieve the stakeholder’s performance goal,
the BLR should expect to experience decreased customer wait times to acceptable levels,
improved customer satisfaction scores which consistently meet or exceed expectations, and
increased employee engagement.

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Level 4: Results and Leading Indicators
To evidence the effectiveness of the recommendations, 10 specific external and internal
outcome measures have been identified. Results associated with the measures shown in Table 10
will demonstrate the BLR’s progress towards achieving its strategic customer service goal.
Table 10
Outcomes, Metrics, and Methods for External and Internal Outcomes
Outcome Metric(s) Method(s)
External Outcomes
Improved customer
experience
75% of customers are satisfied or
very satisfied with their experience
with the BLR
Review results from annual
customer satisfaction survey
Decreased customer wait
times
80% of customers are served
within 30 minutes or less
Review daily management
information system (MIS) data
Internal Outcomes
Increased service center staff
productivity
Average transaction time is reduced
to five minutes or less
Review daily MIS data
Improved transaction quality Average transaction error rate is
reduced to 5% or less
Review quarterly MIS data
Increased staff knowledge of
strategic customer service
goal
100% of service center staff attend
strategic plan town hall workshop
Review workshop sign-in sheets
Improved service center
staff customer service skills
Consistently increasing customer
satisfaction results
Review results from annual
customer satisfaction survey
Improved service center
staff performance
90% of service center staff achieve
their performance targets
Review monthly MIS data
Increased appreciation for
the strategic customer
service goal
80% of service center staff agree or
strongly agree that it is important
for the BLR to achieve its strategic
customer service goal
Review results from annual
employee engagement survey
Improved alignment
between service center staff
performance evaluations and
strategic customer service
goal metrics
100% alignment between
individual performance evaluations
and strategic customer service goal
metrics
Review annual performance
evaluation forms and strategic
customer service goal metrics
Maintained equilibrium of
service center staff supply
with customer transaction
demand
100% of customers are served in
one hour or less
Review daily MIS data

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Level 3: Behavior
Critical behaviors. As the BLR’s principal stakeholder and the group who has primary
responsibility for service delivery, the service center staff will need to demonstrate distinct
behaviors to achieve their performance goals. As identified in Table 11, there are five critical
behaviors that staff will be expected to exhibit: proficiency, positivity, timeliness, helpfulness,
and pride. To exhibit proficiency, they will need to efficiently execute all customer transactions.
Positivity will be displayed through their demeanor while working. Their timeliness o will be
evidenced by their adherence to the BLR’s time and attendance policies. Helpfulness comes in
the form of dedication to achieve successful outcomes for customers. Finally, pride will be
found in the service center staff’s ability to articulate their contribution to the achievement of the
BLR’s strategic customer service goal during individual performance reviews.
Table 11
Critical Behaviors, Metrics, Methods, and Timing for Evaluation
Critical Behavior Metric(s) Method(s) Timing
1. Service Center Staff
execute customer
transactions efficiently
The average
transaction time
The service center manager will
review the average transaction
time data by individual and by
service center and provide
monthly feedback to the service
center supervisors regarding
overall results and the results of
individuals are significantly
above or well below the
average
Daily for the
first month,
thereafter,
weekly so long
as the number
does not increase
2. Service Center Staff
exhibit positive attitudes
with customers
The average
percentage of positive
point-of-service
(POS) customer
satisfaction ratings
The district manager will
review the POS customer
satisfaction data and provide
monthly feedback to the service
center manager regarding
overall results and results of
individuals are significantly
above or well below the
average
Daily for the
first three
months,
thereafter,
monthly so long
as the number
does not
decrease

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Table 11, continued
Critical Behavior Metric(s) Method(s) Timing
3. Service Center Staff
adhere to time and
attendance policies
The average number
of violations to the
time and attendance
policies
The service center manager will
review the employee time
keeping data and provide
monthly feedback to the service
center supervisors regarding
overall results and results of
individuals are significantly
above or well below the
average
Weekly for the
first three months,
thereafter monthly
so long as the
number does not
increase
4. Service Center Staff
strive to achieve
successful outcomes for
customers
The average
percentage of
customer who
received a rejection
or were unsuccessful
in completing their
transaction
The district manager will
review the customer rejection
and application status data and
provide monthly feedback to
the service center manager
regarding overall results and
results of individuals are
significantly above or well
below the average
Weekly for the
first three months,
thereafter,
monthly so long as
the percentage
does not increase
5. Service Center Staff
articulate their
contribution to the
strategic customer
service goal during the
performance review
process
The percentage of
service center staff
who report their
contribution to the
strategic customer
service goal on their
self-evaluation form
The service center manager will
report to the district manager
the percentage of employees
who report their contribution to
the strategic customer service
goal on their self-evaluation
form
Semi-annually
during the
preliminary and
final performance
evaluation

Required drivers. Achieving the desired stakeholder outcomes will require the BLR to
leverage the aforementioned KMO influences. First, the BLR needs to reinforce the behaviors
necessary to achieve the goals of an improved customer experience and increased service center
staff productivity. These reinforcing drivers are delivering the strategic priorities newsletter (a
monthly publication which reviews the BLR’s activities related to its strategic goals and
objectives), furthering the development of and encouraging the use of existing asynchronous and
synchronous learning mechanisms, and providing visual reminders of the agency’s time and
attendance policies. In addition to reinforcement, two drivers should be used to encourage
service center staff to exhibit the behaviors described above. The encouraging drivers are the
delivery of the PRIDE Newsletter (a monthly publication which recognizes individuals and

76
service centers who have performed noteworthy tasks to support customer needs) and a job aid
which can be used to prompt service center staff with examples of how their individual work
contributes to the achievement of the organization’s strategic customer service goal. Finally, the
remaining drivers are categorized as either rewarding or monitoring. A rewarding driver is
selecting of one of the people recognized in the PRIDE newsletter to be the recipient of the
PRIDE Award for the month. Another rewarding driver is an agency-sponsored lunch for the
service center with the best time and attendance record for the quarter. The last driver, the
monitoring driver, enables management to gain insight into the progress of the service center
staff through a dashboard which provides key operational and performance metrics at the service
center, regional, and agency-wide levels.
In addition to providing an inventory of the required drivers, Table 12 outlines the timing
of each driver and the critical behavior it supports.
Table 12
Required Drivers to Support Critical Behaviors
Method(s) Timing Critical Behaviors
Supported
Reinforcing
Produce and distribute the Strategic
Priorities Newsletter
Monthly 5
Maintain learning labs at each service
center to facilitate availability of
asynchronous customer service and
transaction processing refresher training
Ongoing 1, 2, 4
Establish regular schedule to provide
synchronous customer service and
transaction processing refresher training
Quarterly 1, 2, 4
Post reminder notices regarding the time
and attendance policies and their
importance to the BLR’s performance
Ongoing 3

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Table 12, continued
Method(s) Timing Critical Behaviors
Supported
Encouraging
Produce the PRIDE Newsletter to
highlight outstanding service
Monthly 2, 3
Produce job aid suggesting possible ways
service center staff contribute to the
strategic customer service goal
Semi-Annually 5
Rewarding
Provide a PRIDE Award for outstanding
service
Monthly 2, 4
Provide a lunch to the service center with
the best adherence to the time and
attendance policies
Quarterly 3
Monitoring
Publish an executive dashboard which
illustrates key operational and
performance metrics at the service
center, regional, and BLR-wide levels
Monthly 1, 2, 3, 4

Organizational support. For service center staff to consistently exhibit the desired
behaviors and implement the previously identified drivers, the BLR should ensure that individual
performance evaluations include progress against individual targets and service center level
targets which advance the organization’s strategic customer service goal. This recommendation
reinforces the implementation of the drivers that support the critical behaviors because it keeps
service center staff acutely focused on aligning their activities with the achievement of the
BLR’s strategic customer service goal since this is the rubric by which their individual job
performance will be assessed.
Also, by conducting systematic and empirical forecasts of customer demand using
industry best practices and ensure sufficient supply of staff to satisfy the demand for in-person
service provision, the BLR eliminates a key organization barrier to service center success. If the

78
staffing levels are insufficient, then the wait times will be increased, and the overall customer
experience will be compromised and negatively impact customer satisfaction ratings.
Level 2: Learning
Learning goals. The recommended performance support solutions should provide the
service center staff (the learners) with the ability to
1. Articulate the strategic customer service goal (Declarative)
2. Implement positive customer experiences while concurrently executing common
transactions efficiently (Procedural)
3. Articulate the value the strategic customer service goal (Utility Value)
4. Articulate confidence in their ability to achieve the strategic customer service goal (Self-
Efficacy)
Program. To achieve the prescribed learning goals and provide the service center staff
with the requisite knowledge and motivation to realize the BLR’s strategic customer service
goal, a three-part performance support program should be implemented.
The first part of the performance support program will be an annual series of town-hall-
style learning workshops. These workshops should be held at most of the 30 BLR Service
Centers across the state. Service centers with fewer than 10 employees could be combined.
Each session should be facilitated by the director or a deputy director of the BLR. The workshop
should be scheduled for one hour and should begin with the delivery of a PechaKucha
presentation which is conversational and connected with the audience’s prior knowledge. The
presentation should outline the strategic customer service goals and illustrate how it is realized
with contextually representative case examples.

79
Following the presentation, the facilitator should engage in a dialogue with the
participants to answer questions. When relevant, a contextually representative case example
should be included in the response. During the decision phase, information knowledge checks
should be taken to gauge knowledge transfer.
The second part of the performance support program should be a substantive revision to
the existing synchronous classroom refresher training currently provided inconsistently. The
revised training should review the execution and underlying regulations governing the execution
of common transactions and be expanded to seamlessly integrate customer service training.
These refresher training sessions should be designed for 12 to 14 hours of classroom instruction,
employ lecture, hands-on, and role-play training delivery mechanisms, and be offered quarterly.
During the training session, a variety of job aids should be reviewed which provide common
computer system short-cuts and scripted language for conveying the common messages that are
difficult for customers to hear, such as those regarding denial of a driver’s license due to
immigration status. At the conclusion of the workshop, a package with all of the job aids
discussed should be provided as well as information on how to find them on the agency’s
intranet.
Finally, a series of computer-based (eLearning) asynchronous training modules should be
designed and made available for on-demand delivery in the learning labs located in the majority
of service centers. The asynchronous training should be web-based to provide maximum
flexibility for delivery and to accommodate employees whose service centers do not have
dedicated learning labs. While also designed as refresher training, the modules should be 45
minutes or less and limited to a single topic. Contextually representative examples should be

80
provided, and customer service principles should be seamlessly integrated in each topic to further
the development of customer service competencies.
Evaluation of the Components of learning. Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2016)
maintain that learning (Level 2) can be disaggregated into five discrete components associated
with learning: knowledge, skills, attitude, confidence, and commitment. The usefulness of the
recommended learning program should be evaluated through the lens of these components
before, during and after the learning events and training sessions. Table 13 prescribes evaluation
methods and activities which, once executed, should provide a clear assessment of the program’s
effectiveness.
Table 13
Evaluation of the Components of Learning for the Program
Method(s) or Activity(ies) Timing
Declarative Knowledge “I know it.”
Knowledge checks during town-hall-style workshops During the learning
event
Multiple choice questions asked during the synchronous customer
service and transaction processing refresher training sessions
During the training
session
Procedural Skills “I can do it right now.”
Practice exercises performed during the asynchronous and
synchronous customer service and transaction processing refresher
training sessions
During the training
session
Survey responses collected before and as a part of the participant
evaluations of the asynchronous and synchronous customer service
and transaction processing refresher training sessions
Before and at the end
of the training session
Attitude “I believe this is worthwhile.”
One-on-one follow-up conversation with the service center manager
or Assistant Manager after the asynchronous and synchronous
customer service and transaction processing refresher training sessions
After the training
session
Survey responses collected as part of the asynchronous and
synchronous customer service and transaction processing refresher
training sessions participant evaluations
At the end of the
training session
Confidence “I think I can do it on the job.”
Informal polling of participants conducted during the synchronous
customer service and transaction processing refresher training sessions
During the training
session

81
One-on-one follow-up conversation with the service center manager
or Assistant Manager after the asynchronous and synchronous
customer service and transaction processing refresher training sessions
After the training
session
Commitment “I will do it on the job.”
Survey responses collected as part of the asynchronous and
synchronous customer service and transaction processing refresher
training sessions participant evaluations
At the end of the
training session
One-on-one follow-up conversation with the service center manager
or Assistant Manager after the asynchronous and synchronous
customer service and transaction processing refresher training sessions
After the training
session

Level 1: Reaction
As important as evaluating the learning program’s effectiveness is essential is assessing
the participants’ reactions. Table 14 identifies methods and tools that can be employed to
discern if the service center staff found the various learning events engaging, relevant, and
satisfactory.
Table 14
Components to Measure Reactions to the Program
Method(s) or Tool(s) Timing
Engagement
Asynchronous and synchronous customer
service and transaction processing refresher
training sessions participant evaluations
At the end of the training session
One-on-one follow-up conversation with the
service center manager or assistant manager
Following the training session
Relevance
Asynchronous and synchronous customer
service and transaction processing refresher
training sessions participant evaluations
At the end of the training session
One-on-one follow-up conversation with the
service center manager or assistant manager
After the training session
Customer Satisfaction
Asynchronous and synchronous customer
service and transaction processing refresher
training sessions participant evaluations
At the end of the training session
One-on-one follow-up conversation with the
service center manager or assistant manager
After the training session

82
Evaluation Tools
Immediately following the program implementation. To capture the service center
staff’s direct feedback, a brief survey will be conducted at the conclusion of the asynchronous
and synchronous training sessions. The survey will be administered electronically, and the
responses will be provided using a five-point Likert scale with an open-end question which
allows the respondent to provide additional comments or feedback (see Example A). The goal of
the survey will be to ascertain if the training participants successfully improved their procedural
skills, found the training session a worthwhile use of their time, and if they were intent on
applying the learnings from the training session when they returned to their workstations.
Additionally, the service center manager or assistant manager will conduct a one-on-one
following conversation with training participants to gain insight into their attitude, confidence,
and commitment (Level 2) as well as their feeling about how engaging, rewarding, and satisfying
(Level 1) they found the training.
Delayed for a period after the program implementation. Similar to the evaluation
instrument used immediately following the asynchronous and synchronous training sessions, a
five-point Likert scale electronic survey instrument with an open-end question which allows the
respondent to provide additional comments or feedback will be developed and administered
annually to all BLR Service Center staff (see Example B). As a supplement to the employee
engagement survey, the annual learning program survey will explore questions across the third
and fourth levels of the NWKM (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). The questions will target the
respondents’ comfort with exhibiting the previously identified critical behaviors as well as their
knowledge of the BLR’s strategic customer service goal.

83
Data Analysis and Reporting
Once the survey results of either instrument have been tabulated, a standard series of pie
charts, frequency graphs and tables as well as a narrative to accompany the qualitative analysis
performed on the open-ended “additional comments” questions will be created for each service
center. These reports will be aggregated monthly at the district level and quarterly at the agency-
wide level. The quarterly agency-wide report will be further aggregated and be included as part
of the BLR’s annual performance management report to the Commonwealth legislature.
The expectation is that the management and senior executive staff will review the reports
and formulate the appropriate course correcting interventions when the results do not meet
expectations. Ultimately, these reports will serve as the basis to determine the BLR’s progress
against achieving its strategic customer service goal.
Summary
The Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick’s (2016) NWKM provided the conceptual structure for a
comprehensive plan which fully integrates the implementation and evaluation of the
recommendations to close the KMO gaps associated with realization of the BLR’s strategic
customer service goal. Beginning with the end in mind, the expected internal and external
outcomes were aligned with the specific recommendations developed by analyzing the BLR’s
assumed influences in concert with the principles of Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis
framework.
Following identification of the desired outcomes, a set of critical behaviors for service
center staff were identified. Ensuring staff possessed the knowledge and motivation necessary to
exhibit desired critical behaviors required the design of a well-reasoned learning program. This
program was devised to educate the staff to provide them, and the BLR, the tools to improve

84
performance by address identified performance needs and exploit performance assets across the
KMO influences.
The objectives of the learning program’s evaluation template were established in
accordance with Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2016)’s five components of learning. Finally, a
method to capture and gauge the reactions of the participants to the learning program was
established with the aim of exposing their attitude towards the program.
By completely aligning and fully integrating the implementation and evaluation methods,
the BLR will possess a rich set of data generated across the four levels of the NWKM. An
analysis of the data should definitively provide insight into reasons the organization’s
performance during and following the implementation of these recommendations meets
expectations (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016).

85
EXAMPLE A
For each of the questions below, circle the response that best characterizes how you feel about
the statement.

Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Neither
Disagree nor
Agree
Agree Strongly
Agree
1. I am aware of how the
BLR expects me to deliver
exceptional customer
service.
1 2 3 4 5
2. I know how to execute
the ____ transaction (s)
discussed during the
training session.
1 2 3 4 5
3. I can apply the lessons
learned during the ____
training session when I
return to my workstation.
1 2 3 4 5
4. I will use the skills I
learned during the ____
training when I return to my
workstation.
1 2 3 4 5
5. The ____training session
was worthwhile.
1 2 3 4 5
6. The ____ training session
was relevant to my primary
job function.
1 2 3 4 5
7. I found the ____ training
session to be engaging.
1 2 3 4 5
8. The ____ training session
met or exceeded my
expectations.
1 2 3 4 5

Please provide any additional comments or feedback you may have.

86
EXAMPLE B
For each of the questions below, circle the response that best characterizes how you feel about
the statement.

Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Neither
Disagree nor
Agree
Agree Strongly
Agree
1. I know the BLR’s strategic
customer service goal.
1 2 3 4 5
2. I can effectively execute all
of the licensing and
registration transactions.
1 2 3 4 5
3. I recognize the value of
having a positive disposition
when serving customers.
1 2 3 4 5
4. I realize that if I have an
unplanned absence or if I am
tardy, that I could negatively
impact the performance of the
service center.
1 2 3 4 5
5. I attempt to do everything in
my power (within the bounds
of the BLR policies) to
provide positive outcomes for
my customers.
1 2 3 4 5
6. I can clearly articulate how
the work I do contributes to
the BLR’s strategic customer
service goal.
1 2 3 4 5

Please provide any additional comments or feedback you may have.

Abstract (if available)

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Asset Metadata

Creator Williams, Alan Richard (author)

Core Title Performance management in government: the importance of goal clarity

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Organizational Change and Leadership (On Line)

Publication Date 07/12/2020

Defense Date 05/18/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag goal setting,Government,OAI-PMH Harvest,organization performance,performance management,public sector,strategic planning

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Hirabayashi, Kimberly (committee chair), Brady, Melanie (committee member), Datta, Monique Claire (committee member)

Creator Email alanrwil@usc.edu,arwilliams1968@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-326155

Unique identifier UC11665363

Identifier etd-WilliamsAl-8663.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-326155 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-WilliamsAl-8663.pdf

Dmrecord 326155

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Williams, Alan Richard

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA