Examination of individual performance in the application of Markov models in the Hellenic Navy's officer-performance evaluation system

Abstract

The recent financial-crisis that Greece (Hellas) suffers has restricted and reduced the budgets of many organizations. Among those, the Hellenic ministry of defense has begun examining ways to reduce costs while maintaining operational readiness. Retirement legislation is the first area the Hellenic ministry of defense is examining. Variables such as years of service required to receive a pension, years of service by pay grade, and the skills officers should possess for promotion were examined and recorded in ordinances (directives) issued by the president of the Hellenic Republic. However, these ordinances are expected to expand the number of officers in the middle pay grades. In an attempt to deal with potential increases in middle and higher pay grades of officer inventory the Hellenic Ministry of Defense is examining an alternative plan of two parallel officer force structures war and auxiliary. The primary structure will consist of war officers. These officers are considered top performers whose careers stop at the pay grade of flag officer. The auxiliary inventory includes those officers exhibiting lower performance with the terminal pay grade of captain. The purpose of these parallel paths is to ensure all officers serve 35 years in order to receive full pensions. This thesis analyzed job performance from the perspective of experience, ability, motivation, and accomplishment of advanced degrees. It concluded that experience should be combined with education level as a reliable evaluation field. Through the use of weighting priorities, the Hellenic navy should establish job performance as a single number, or officer ranking. Thus, top performers are distinguished from officers with lower performance on periodic evaluations. Using Markov-chain models and officer scores on job performance, the war and auxiliary inventories were examined. The war inventory was then adjusted to corresponding billets at every pay grade during a five-year period. The auxiliary officers were examined for future vacancies in the war inventory.