An Inquiry to Transform Servant Governance in Ethiopia a Structural Equation Modeling Approach
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Date
2020-12
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A.A.U
Abstract
A remarked paradigm shift of Public Administration from Traditional Public Administration to New Public Management and recently to Governance approach has occurred. For more than a century the issue of state-society bifurcation, politics-administration dichotomy, and instrumental versus institutional perspectives are still the continued unsolved puzzles. The purpose of this study is to develop a pragmatic institutionalized ‘servant governance’ model of public administration through reconstructing, re-conceptualizing, and reinterpreting state-society bifurcation, politics-administration dichotomy, and instrumental orientations. Following post-positivist paradigmatic position, this study used Theory-then research theory building approach and Structural Equation modeling analytical tool for verification. 1200 cross-sectional survey data was used to develop and verify the proposed servant governance model and to examine the level of Government Performance, Citizens’ satisfaction, and Political trust. The model was tested and assured for its fitness towards the diagnostic assumptions, dimensionality, construct validity, and reliability. The study revealed that the overall level of government performance, citizens’ satisfaction, and political trust in Ethiopian public administration was significantly low. Servant Governance as higher order construct composed of nine first order dimensions theoretically sound and empirically validated. The newly constructed Servant Governance Model positively and significantly determine the level of political trust, with a path coefficient of 0.972 (t-value 19.199, p=0.000), performance, with a path coefficient of 0.90 (t-value 19.077, p=0.000), and satisfaction, with a path coefficient of 0.701 (t-value 16.628, p=0.000). The study concluded that the Servant Governance Model significantly explains and captures 94.4% of the variance in Trust; 80% of the variance in Performance and 48.4 percent of the variance in Satisfaction. Based on the findings and conclusions, this research suggests that restructuring governance through the verified ‘Servant Governance Model’ overcomes the limitations in previous governing models and results in high level of political trust, government performance, and citizens’ satisfaction.
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Servant Governance, Traditional Public Administration, New Public Management, New Public Service, Political Trust, Citizens’ Satisfaction, Structural Equation Modeling