Leadership Effectiveness in Public Service Organizations of Ethiopia: Perceptions of Leaders in Public Service Organizations

Abstract

In Ethiopian context, the government has shown committeement to improve public service leadership by launching different initiatives under the scope of CSRP. Public service leaders at different level advocate transformational agenda to achieve growth and transformational plan (GTP) goals. However, public service organizations’ performance highlighted a number of implementation deficiencies in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and a leadership practice has not been up to expectations. Therefore, the objective of this article was to investigate the extent of leadership effectiveness in Ethiopian public service organizations at federal and regional levels. The study was employed focusing on the top management sub component  of the reform program by evaluating its projects to what degree it enables /transforms the public organizations to be efficient and effective. The descriptive survey by using mixed method (quantitative and qualitative) research approach was applied. The categories of respondents were from demand side and supply sides. Among the nine regions of the country, two regions and one city administrations were selected. Analysis of documents, interviews and responses to both open and close-ended questions was made using SPSS software.  The key findings revealed that the changes in Ethiopia enabled to create demanding society for improved services. However, leadership effectiveness is not at its required level to transform public service organizations in terms of striving for performance in order to be globally competitive and manage changes. Lack of motivation and communication of the vision and the commitment to reform is often criticized as inadequate, since many institutions are lacking visionary leadership, and the accountability relationship between government and public service providers has not been clarified. There is high degree of variation among managers of different levels in the areas of organizational performance. Finally, the recommended solutions, is to develop leadership development program that can initiate system based thinking in order to realize the vision of the country.

Key Words: Effective leadership, organizational performance, public service organization, civil service reform program,