COMMUNITY CENTRES IN SINGAPORE WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON EFFICIENCY

Abstract

The assessment of goal realisation of organisation is not easy, and this problem is no less pronounced for Community Centres of the People's Association of Singapore. For example, in this study it was revealed that few centre staff could provide a complete interpretation of the goals of the People's Association. The majority viewed the community centres' role as middlemen or bridges between the government and the people or as providers of organised activities. Because goal realisation was shown to be difficult to measure, we attempted to focus attention on Efficiency which is associated with goal realisation. Efficiency was operationalized as:- a.) Winning Competitions b) Funds Raised; and c) High Ratings by centre staff on a Five Point Scale. Structural variables were operationalized and measured in the context of community centre operations and their relationships with Efficiency were then examined with results as follows:- *Complexity proved to be the best predictor of Efficiency with epsilons of:- 12%, with Competions Won 27%, with F unds Raised ($5,000 and above) 50%, with Obtained High Ratings (Rank 3 and above). *Effectiveness had almost the same relationships:- 6%, 30% and 45% respectively. *Formalization correlated as follows: - 10%, 12% and 12% respectively. *Job-Satisfaction had negative correlations:- -6%, -5% and -14% respectively, *Adaptiveness had even higher negative correlations: - -3%, -15% and -14.5% respectively. *Stratification had very strong relationship with Efficiency with epsilons of:- a) 19% (for Standard type) with Funds Raised ( $5, 000 and above) 31% (for Key type) with Funds Raised ($5,000 and above) b) 38% (for Standard type) with High Ratings (Rank 3 and above) 60% (for Key type) with High Ratings (Rank 3 and above). Another dimension studied was Leadership. This was to distinguish between the Organising Secretaries who had the benefit of leadership training and the Assistant Organising Secretaries who had none. Our hypothesis that the Organising Secretaries will score higher than the Assistant Organising Secretaries on the Leadership Opinion Questionnaire was not well supported. Differences between the Organising Secretaries and the Assistant Organising Secretaries on educational attainment, linguistic competence and interaction pattern were examined and found to be marginally to the advantage of the Organising Secretaries. Findings of the relationship between Leadership and the structural variables, and Efficiency revealed:- *Positive relationship with Foramlization, Adaptiveness and Complexity. *Negative relationship with Effectiveness and Job-Satisfaction. *No and marginal negative relationships with Stratification: (Key type) and (Standard type) respectively. *Positive relationship with Efficiency (Competitions Won). *No relationships with Efficiency (Funds Raised:$5, 000 and over) and ( Obtained High Ratings: Rank 3 and above).