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This article examines some of the challenges facing senior public officers in a plural society such as Trinidad and Tobago. Published studies and data collected for this article suggest that in divided societies, it is not unusual for the public sector to be dominated by the group that maintains political control. In the case of Trinidad and Tobago, for example, while the Indo-Trinidadian group constituted 40.3% of the population during the period considered, members of this ethnic group held very few senior positions in the bureaucracy. This article discusses the factors that led to ethnic imbalances in the civil service of Trinidad and Tobago. Much of the article is devoted to advancing explanations for the imbalance. The article also presents an examination of the challenges that emerged with the introduction of New Public Management within the country's government, suggesting that the major challenges that may emerge in divided societies will be introducing mechanisms that will bring about changes in attitudes and behaviors among public sector employees. The article concludes with the recommendation that government leaders may need to implement mechanisms to establish trust in order to see changes to public management succeed.

This article examines the challenges and problems that emerge during the introduction of a system that attempts to link performance to pay in the public services of three countries, namely Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Jamaica. It briefly discusses the merits of introducing pay B related perfor mance appraisal systems and argues that while such systems may attain success in the more developed countries, in ex-colonial societies, implemen tation will be constrained by other factors. The article proposes that the more critical constraints are the rigidity of the structures under which the services operate and the cultures of the institutions themselves. In addition the imperatives of structural adjustment would also be a critical constraint to the successful implementation of a new appraisal system. The article, however, concedes that the special circumstances of Jamaica allowed a greater measure of success; yet in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago it clearly failed.T he purpose of this article is to examine three issues; first, the way that the structures of the public sector might prevent the successful implementation of a new pay-related system of reporting and appraising personnel; second, the way in which culture might inhibit these attempts; and third, the impact of struc tural adjustment measures on systems which attempt to link pay to performance. The article will examine the implementation of "new" appraisal systems in three countries of the Commonwealth Caribbean, namely Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Jamaica. It will emerge that Jamaica has had a greater measure of success in the implementa tion of a new appraisal system than has Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana due largely to the differing cultures of their bureaucracies.Basically, the structures of a public sector would include the laws, regulations and practices governing recruitment, promotions, and the principles of the bureau cratic hierarchy. The culture of the organization, on the other hand, will embrace the informal codes, rules, norms, and behavioral practices of public servants in relation to the overall structure of the bureaucracy.

The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which the adoption of New Public Management (npm) in the public services of four islands of the Commonwealth Caribbean was influenced by the forces of globalization. It evaluates the extent to which the features of npm have been successfully introduced in these countries and proposes that the countries under review may be classified along a continuum. For instance, while many of the features of npm have been introduced in Barbados, npm has not been introduced in Guyana. Both Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, however, have had partial success in introducing some features of npm. The article suggests, therefore, that while the primary catalyst for reforming public management systems may be similar, yet the success in adopting them is largely dependent on a number of factors operating within the domestic political system such as the governmental structures, the ethnic composition of the society, the way in which the governmental systems operate and the state of the economy in the various territories. 1