Gaining Productivity

Not only while cruising on a sunny breezy highway in a balmy day but also trudging on a wet windy winding road, productivity awareness helps one navigate through a sudden twist in the howling wind, a blinding thunderous driving rain and a screaming cliff lurking around a treacherous bend. Jamal Khan and Wayne Soverall pull no punches in this probing work when they question the desiccated myth of immeasurability of public sector productivity. The authors mount a sustained and impressive attack on uninformed and cynical blather about productivity, narrow technicism, and shallow instrumentality. The headlong momentum of their discourse, propelled by narratives, graphics, data, evidence and analyses, jumps and hums with a bracing vitality.
Widely accepted as a bellwether of overall development direction, productivity capability makes country development, socioeconomic achievement, mass wellbeing and technological innovations possible as well as attractive. The concept of productivity - what it is - and measuring productivity - how one knows whether one has it and how much it is - are challenging. The challenge lies in targeting and achieving higher productivity levels, higher output quality, reduced resource costs, and shorter timeframes. With productivity measurement being basic to good management and continuous accountability and work being an activity that produces value for people, a further challenge rests in public sector productivity focusing on increasing outputs at a given cost.
With a model-focused approach and supporting empirical evidence, Gaining Productivity presents commanding research, wide-ranging analyses, monitorable indicators, compelling findings, useful insights and fresh vitality in relation to the core issue of productivity in Barbados within the larger context of the Caribbean and the international community. The work recognizes not only competitiveness and leadership but also equity, participation and empowerment, does not overplay the instrumental-managerial orientation to productivity, and opposes productivity s reduction into power, control and hegemony. With motivation and productivity - the central bastions of the work - Gaining Productivity aims at searing deep into mass consciousness.