Public Servants‟ Attitude towards Professional Ethics and Its Implication for Service Delivery in Selected Bureaus of the Oromia Regional State
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2018-05
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to assess the public servants‟ attitude towards professional ethics and its implication for service delivery at Oromia Regional State in the selected Bureaus. Moreover, detail investigations were made on the codes of conduct adopted, the common ethical problems prevailing and the major causes of unethical behavioral problems prevailing in the selected bureaus. Samples of 178 public servants were selected for the study using systematic and simple random sampling technique. Key informant interview was done on purposely selected officers from 3 bureaus and from each 5 and totally 15 officers participated in the key informant interview. The collected data was analyzed using simple statistical techniques, simple descriptive techniques and description narratives in presenting qualitative data. The finding of the study showed that the selected bureaus don‟t have their own codes of conduct but they have common codes of conduct and its enforcement or implementation was relatively low. This low enforcement is resulted because the codes of conduct were not introduced to employees, management bodies and hence the civil servants don‟t follow its procedures while performing their duties. The finding on the attitude of public servants indicated that the public servants viewed those unethical behavioral problems like violating rules and regulations considered as positive practices. Furthermore, misuse of power, non-observance of rules and working procedures, personal use of work-related resources, falsifying work (time and expense) reports, fraud in performing duties, wasting, mismanaging or abusing organizational asset and resources were found to be the common ethical problems identified in this study. The study also indicated that lack of capacity and training, lack of trust between employees and the management, low salary of employees, permissive leadership, and inadequate political interference as major reasons that caused the prevailing ethical problems among the study population. Finally, the study indicated that the public servants professional ethics based service deliveryis effective in some ethical principles and less in the enforcements of honestly, respecting the law and accountability. This implies that the service delivery system is not based on serving the public interest. Hence, it was recommended that the public servants in Oromia regional state should give more attention to serve the public interests while enforcing professional ethics principles during carrying out their duties at different public institutions.
Description
A thesis submitted to the Department of Public Administration and Development Management of Addis Ababa University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters in Public Management and Policy (MPMP)
Keywords
Attitude, Ethiopia, Public servant, Professional ethics