The perceived knowledge and attitudes of administrative staff working in supply chain management in a South African Provincial Department of Health

Abstract

The Provincial Department of Health envisions an optimal status of health for all persons in the Province, and its mission is to develop a sustainable, co-ordinated, integrated and comprehensive health system at all levels, based on a primary health care approach, and operating through the District Health system. However, for the Department to achieve its vision and mission, it requires more than health professional staff. It requires effective and efficient supporting programmes which are non-core services, but crucial to its efficient functioning. The study focused on the Supply Chain Management (SCM) administrative staff and their end-users. The SCM section supports all departmental programmes in terms of facilitating the procurement process of assets, medical equipment and all other goods and services required to provide services to the public. The study only targeted the following SCM sub-sections: Acquisitions and Quotations Management, Demand Management and Contract Management. All end-users in the Department were targeted. The researcher believed that the study was necessary in order to identify critical factors apparently negatively affecting the work of the SCM administrative staff in facilitating the procurement of the goods and services required by the end-users.

The purpose of the study was therefore to examine the perceived knowledge and attitudes of administrative staff towards their work within SCM with the aim of contributing to the achievement of the goals for the Department. A lack of knowledge and skills could be responsible for certain negative attitudes encountered or perceived from these administrators. The following problems had been identified: loss and misplacement of procurement documents; a lack of proper accountability; Provincial hospitals not receiving goods timeously due to SCM inefficiencies; staff attitudes to service quality and commitment to stakeholders being experienced as poor; and frequent under-expenditure by various sections often due to SCM staff not implementing and adhering to the correct policies and procedures. However, the problem statement indicated that in the Department of Health, the perceived level of knowledge, skills and attitudes of SCM staff was still unknown in terms of their procurement activities for various programmes and within different sections.

The conceptual framework for the study was drawn from du Toit and Vlok’s Supply Chain Management Theoretical Framework (2014:33). A mixed-methods research approach was adopted, which enabled the researcher to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. The researcher designed two sets of questionnaires, one for SCM end-users and one for SCM administrative staff. Both questionnaires had closed- ended, structured questions and one open-ended question. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and content analysis were used for analysing the data. The data revealed a range of factors that affect SCM administrative staff in their work, as well as SCM end-users’ dissatisfaction with the service received from the SCM section. The failure of the Department to obtain a clean audit record for departmental expenditure was also noted.

The study therefore concluded that a relationship does exist between staff knowledge and attitudes and their performance in the work place. Recommendations included that training sessions and workshops should be provided by the Department to equip employees with the relevant skills for the SCM to function more effectively, and also that team-building exercises be offered to improve staff attitudes. It was also recommended that an online system such as LOGIS be introduced for the tracing of all SCM functions. The researcher also advised the Department to create a post at Deputy Director level to monitor the SCM section, and, lastly, she suggested that skills audits should be conducted before the approval of internal employee transfers.