The Impact of Human Resource Development on Public Employee Performance in Ethiopia: The Case of Konso District

Public organizations in Ethiopia are investing a massive amount of resources for the purpose of enhancing the knowledge, skills, and behavior of their employees. However, public managers lack knowledge regarding the actual impact of human resource development on the performance of employees. The main purpose of this article is to analyze the effect of training and development on the performance of public employees at the local level. This article employed a mixed research approach and estimated the impact by using simple regression model. Data were collected from 250 employees drawn from sixteen public organizations. The article finds that despite poor achievements in the areas of training need assessment, administration, and evaluation, training and development has a significant positive impact on the performance of employees. It is recommended that public managers should make training and development their top priority responsibility and create supportive and collaborative environment for such initiatives.

of structure, institutions 1 , and manpower) in such a way that achieves national socio-economic goals and objectives (Adebabay & Perkins, 2010). Human Resource Management Reform (HRMR) has been one of the key components of CSRP designed to renovate the mechanisms, systems, and institutions through which employees are acquired, trained and developed, and retained. And so, the government of Ethiopia had identified HRD as a pillar of CSRP in general and HRMR, in particular. Since the introduction of CSRP, public organizations 2 at all levels of the government (federal, regional, and local) have focused on HRD and injected substantial amount of public resources for the purpose of building the capacity and competency of their employees.
Konso (previously Woredas 3 and lately upgraded to Zone 4 ) being one of the local governments, located in Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Regional State (SNNPRS), had accepted the direction and plan of CSRP that was pushed down from the federal and regional governments and implemented the program since its inauguration. The local government had invested a huge amount of resources to develop the capacity of the public employees. However, public managers lack knowledge about the actual impact of the investment on the public employees' performance (that is, they lack information about Return -On -Investment). There is also an intense debate among community members, politicians, and civil servants concerning the contribution of T&D to performance of employees due to numerous complaints on the quality of services delivered by public organizations. Public organizations are also criticized for their ad hoc and fly-by-night practices of T&D (need assessment, design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation).
Therefore, the purpose of this article is to scrutinize the actual impact of T&D on the performance of public employees 5 and contribute to fill knowledge gaps as well as add value to ongoing debates in the literature. The research question that this article tries to answer is 'what impact, if any, does T&D have upon employee performance? This article tests the hypothesis asserting 'T&D has a significant positive impact on the employee performance'.
The rest of the article is organized into four parts. Part two and three describe literature review and research methodology, respectively. Part four presents the results of the study. Section five provides conclusion and recommendations.

Literature Review 2.1. Definitions and Concepts
HRD is defined as a set of systematic and planned activities designed by an organization to provide its members with the opportunity to learn necessary skills and meet rapidly changing current and future job demands (Desimone and Harris 1998). It also involves setting up of a system through which employee capabilities and potentials can be tapped to the mutual satisfaction of the individual's and organization's needs (Desimone and Harris 1998). In the context of this study, HRD is defined as a framework designed to support the workforce in developing its knowledge, skills, and attitude and improve organizational effectiveness (Desimone and Harris, 1998). T&D is operationalized as a strategic tool of HRD for enhancing employee current and future competences (knowledge and skills) and behavior in such a way that improve organizational effectiveness (Hill & Lent 2006).

Purpose and Objectives of Training and Development
The purpose of T&D differs from organization to organization (mainly due to differences in context, culture, structure, purpose, type of the organizations, etc.). However, the primary purpose of training and development in all organizations is to enhance knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the workforce or to facilitate acquisition of new skills, knowledge, and attitudes which could lead to improvement in individuals and organizational performance (Kraiger 2002;Hill & Lent 2006;Satterfield & Hughes 2007). Besides, the major objectives of T&D in every organization include to: upsurge the knowledge of workers; systematically impart new skills to the human resources; change the attitudes of the workers; make employees to handle materials, machines and equipment efficiently and reduce wastage of resources; enable employees to be acquainted with safety rules and procedures and reduce the number of accidents; prepare employees for higher jobs: and improve the overall performance of individuals and organizations (Quinn et al., 1996;McNamara, 2008;Sharma, n.d.). The main implication is that organizational development (improving organizational effectiveness and efficiency) is the outcome of T&D.

Processes of Training and Development
T&D is not one time activity. Rather it is a continuous process that passes through various successive phases. These phases should be linked to the overall organizational mission, goals, and strategies (Bhatia, 2005). T&D has to contribute to the organizational goals by enhancing the capacity of the workforce and increasing the effectiveness of work being carried out. It should enable organizations to achieve the immediate need related to organizations' strategic problems and prepare employees for new challenges, as well (De Cenzo and Robbins, 2005). In order to enhance organizational effectiveness (capacity to achieve their goals), T&D programs need to be carefully designed and implemented. Generally, four phases of T&D process such as T&D needs assessment, T&D program design/planning, T&D program implementation, and T&D results monitoring and evaluation are identified in the literature (Desimone and Harris, 1998;Bohlander and Snell, 2004). Scholars have advised organizations to follow these steps in order to thoroughly identify their employees' knowledge, skill, and attitudinal gaps and devise proper training and development programs.

Theoretical Framework
There are various theories that explain the benefit of T&D to organizations though their approaches and context of learning are differing. For example, learning ttheories (such as, social learning or social identity, reinforcement, resource based, among others) have attempted to explain how T&D generates a drastic benefit for employees and organizations by positively influence their performance. Social identity theory focuses on how group dynamics and social processes influence learning in organizational settings. It explains the interaction between individuals and groups wherein individuals learn new knowledge, skills, and practices from groups and improve their performance (Korte, 2007). The proponents of theory argue that T&D programs directed at either individual or organizational levels, without giving attention to the group to which individuals belong, may be a major contributing factor to the failure of such programs across organizations (Korte, 2007). In general, social identity theory is considered as a key stimulator of learning and employee performance in organizations provided that individuals work in group settings (Hogg and Terry 2000).
Reinforcement theory considered T&D as a strategic tool of making the content of the job attractive to the employees and as the way for the employees to enhance their competencies for attaining high performance (Ahmad et al., 2012). It believed that improvement in competencies and different rewards (promotion, certificate, bonus, etc.) attached to T&D will certainly result in positive outcomes (such as improvement in performance). On the other hand, Resource-Based View (RBV) argues that the bottom line for organizational competitive advantage lies in organization's ability to attract, retain, and train (staffing and T&D) employees and improve the required knowledge and skills for optimal performance (Raghuram, 1994;Falola et al., 2014). The central thesis of RBV of human resources is that there is positive correlation between T&D and employees (organizational) performance (Mayo, 2000;Mabey and Ramirez, 2005). The message coming from these theories is that the development of knowledge, skills, attitude, and competencies of employees is a critical endeavor for maintaining individual and/or organizational performance and competitive advantage.
The majority of empirical works, for example, by Noe (2000) Colombo and Stanca, 2014;Asfaw et al. (2015); Mpofu and Hlatywayo (2015); Long et al. (2016); and Ramya (2016) among the others, confirmed the premises of these theories reporting that T&D positively influence employee and organizational performance though few researchers such as Anlesinya et al. (2015) reported negative impacts. Therefore, in this article it is hypothesized that T&D has a significant positive impact on public employee performance.

Conceptual Framework
This study investigates the impact of T&D (independent variable) on employee performance (dependent variable) in some selected public organization in Konso area. Based upon the literature reviewed, the following conceptual framework portrayed in Figure 1 is developed.
Source: Own construction based on the literature Need assessment is the first phase of T&D program. This phase involves collecting data to decide what T&D needs do employees have so that T&D can be designed in such a way that improve the capacity of employees and help the organization to meet its objectives. This phase need be carefully planned and carried out based on the organizational, group, individual, and task levels analysis. After this phase is completed, administration of T&D begins. In this phase, the organization is expected to set T&D goals and link them to organization's goals and strategies, identify and select competent trainers, identified and select trainees based on the results of needs assessment, develop T&D contents and lesson plans, design T&D delivery methods or techniques; decide T&D location, facilities, accessibility, timing, and equipment; and implement T&D programs. Finally, monitoring and evaluation need to be carefully and systematically carried out. If this activity is wisely carried out, it could provide key feedback regarding the success or failure of the program and the experience and practices to be scaled up to improve future design of the program. It enables the organizations to know whether or not the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the employees are improved. It also enables the organizations to make sure whether or not employees are applied what they learned from the T&D programs on their job and improved their performance. It is hypothesized that if public organizations passes through these phases and implement activities planned at each stage properly, T&D will improve the performance of the employees (will have a positive effect on employee performance).

Materials and methods
2.6.1. Research Approach, Population, and Sample size This article employed a mixed (a combination of quantitative and qualitative) approach. Mixed approach is often considered as a tool to triangulate the result of the study through multiple approaches (Johnston, 2010). All employees working in Konso public organizations are considered as the target population of the study. To select study participants, a multi-stage sampling technique was used. First, public organizations were grouped into three sectors: economic, social, and administrative. Following this, sixteen organizations were found as the major ones that have played key role in socio-economic development of the Konso community. And so, all of them, that is, seven organizations from the economic sector, six organizations from the social sector, three organizations from the administrative sector were included in the study (Table 1). According to Konso civil service office data, there are about 352 public employees (comprising political appointees, processes owners, experts, and those who provide common services). However, in this study 102 employees who are providing common services (guards, messengers, cleaners, drivers, laborers engaged in gardening) were excluded due to the fact that this segment of employees did not participate in any T&D programs.
Finally, all of 250 public employees (often called the core employees) from the three sectors (16 public organizations) were included in the study. Besides, six key informants, one each from agriculture, education, health, tax and revenue, civil service, and women and children offices were purposively selected for interview purpose. The detail information is summarized in Table 1. 2.6.2. Data Source and Analysis Data were collected from both primary and secondary sources. Primary data were collected by using structured questionnaire (developed in the form of Likert Scale) and interview checklist. Secondary data were collected from various sources including books, journal articles, and other relevant documents. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software was used for data management and analysis purpose. Descriptive statistics (such as percentages, mean, and standard deviation) as well as inferential statistics (simple regression analysis) were employed to analyse the data. To analyse qualitative data, content analysis was used. Indexes were created for both dependent (employee performance) and each component of independent variable (T&D needs assessment, administration, and monitoring and evaluation) by using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) 1 . 2.6.3. Model Specification For the estimation of the impact of T&D on employee performance, this article uses a simple regression model. The basic relationship dependent variable (Y i ), independent variable (X i ), and error term (ɛ i ) can be expressed as: stands for the performance of i th employee, x i denotes T&D practices of i th employee, ɛ i is error term, and β 0 (the intercept) and β 1 (the slope) are unknown regression parameters to be estimated. More specifically, Y is the dependent variable which is measured by seven indicators intended to capture employee performance (Table 4). These indicators were converted into index via PCA. A vector of explanatory variables (x) that is expected to determine the performance of employees comprised: T&D practices (such as needs assessment, T&D administration, and T&D monitoring and evaluation practices). T&D needs assessment component is measured by six indicators, T&D administration by nine indicators, and T&D monitoring and evaluation by five indicators (Table 4). An index is computed to each component through PCA. The average of the three components is used as independent variable in regression model.

Checking the Consistency of the survey instrument
The reliability test is an important instrument to measure the degree of consistency of an attribute which is supposed to be measured. Cronbach's alpha is one of the most commonly used and accepted measures of reliability. It measures the internal consistency of the items in a scale (Nunnally, 1978). The normal range of Cronbach's alpha coefficient value ranges between 0 and 1 and the higher values reflects a higher degree of internal consistency. The Cronbach alpha reported in Table 2 (ranged from 0.87 to 0.94) indicates high internal consistency of the items of the survey and assures that the instrument is a reliable for estimating the impact of T&D on employee performance.  Table 2 for all variables are far higher than 50% showing that the first few variables retain most of the variation present in all of the original variables and so the first principal component can be used as an index for each component. Before computing indexes, KMO & Bartlett's Test was carried out to test whether or not the sampling is adequate. For KMO to be 1 PCA is a type of factor analysis that often used to reduce dimensions of data, or find out hidden variables, by digging out a linear combination that pre-eminently depicts the co-variance among all components (Abeyasekara, 2005). Intrinsically, PCA decreases the dimensionality of a dataset with a large number of correlated variables, whilst keeping as much variation as possible, by transforming to a new set of variables, the principal components, so that the first few retain most of the variation present in all of the original variables (Joliffe, 2004). Employee performance, T&D needs assessment, T&D administration, and T&D monitoring and evaluation indexes are typically assumed to be the first principal component (the efficient component) that is related to the largest eigenvalue due to the reason that the first principal component explains the highest variation in the original data set. Index scores were standardized in relation to a standard normal distribution with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one.
acceptable its values should be at least 0.6 and statistically significant with a 'p' value less than 0.05. The results of KMO & Bartlett's Test reported in Table 2 are significantly higher than 0.6 indicating that adequate items are available for each factor (component) and the correlation matrix is significantly different from an identity matrix (at p<0.001).
The researcher had distributed 250 questionnaires of which 201 (80.4%) were properly filled, completed, and returned. Nine questionnaires were found as incomplete and thus excluded from analysis and the remaining 40 were not returned. 2.7.2. Descriptive Statistics 2.7.2.1. Demographic Characteristic of the Respondents The demographic characteristics of the respondents reported in Table 3 indicates that the majority of public organizations is dominated by males (84.6%) implying that a lot of assignment is pending to narrow gender gaps. Likewise, the majority (82.6%) of employees got married showing that they have multiple responsibilities as civil servants and family leaders. Regarding the educational level, the result indicates that the greatest number of employees (94.5%) attained diploma and above level implying that the Konso has a good stock of human capital. Relating to work experience, 30.3%, 27.9%, 14.4%, 15.9 %, and 11.4% of respondents had 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, and more than 20 years of work experience, respectively. This indicates that public organizations are staffed by employees who have diverse work experiences. The age of the respondents was found to be between 22 and 58 years with an average of 33.83 years showing that the majority of the employees are in their productive age group.

. Practices of Training and Development
Respondents were asked to express their opinion regarding the practices of T&D need assessment, administration, and monitoring and evaluation in their respective organizations using an instrument developed based on ordinal Likert scale with measurement value '1' indicating strong disagreement, '2' disagreement, '3' Neutral, '4' agreement, and '5' strong agreement. The percentage and mean of various question items are reported in Table 4. In the subsequent discussions, the mean of the responses to question item and responses of the majority of respondents (percentage) are indicated in the parentheses. Percentages in the bracket show the responses reported by the majority of respondents. To simplify the analysis, response such as strongly agree and agree were merged given that both indicate agreement. Likewise, strongly disagree and disagree were merged as both indicate disagreement.
The first six items in Table 4 were meant to capture T&D needs assessment. Need assessment system installed (2.59, 61.2%), need assessment is conducted regularly (2.43, 68.6%), need assessment is participatory (2.49, 66.2%), individuals & organizational needs are assessed (2.46, 66.2%), knowledge and skill gaps are reasonably identified (2.55, 63.2%), and need assessment methods are effective (2.42, 65.2%). As can be seen from the results, the mean of each item was found to be below the average (ranged from 2.42 to 2.59) and the majority of the respondents (between 61.2 and 68.6) were disagreed to each question item. These imply that the practice of need assessment in the public organizations is insubstantial. Almost all interviewees confirmed that public organizations lack a clear system to assess training and development needs on regular basis mainly due to low attention from the ISSN 2422-8397 An International Peer-reviewed Journal Vol.69, 2020 33 concerned bodies and lack of professionals in the area of human resource development.
The practice of T&D administration (which comprises planning and implementation aspects) is addressed by nine different indicators. T&D goals are set (2.64, 57.7%), T&D is linked to organizational goals (2.72, 55.7%), favorable work environment is created (2.57, 58.7%), T&D is valued and legitimized (2.67, 54.7%), adequate budget is allocated (2.38, 63.7%), competent trainers are identified and selected (2.53, 62.2%), facilities & logistics (location, accessibility, comfort, equipment, timing) are carefully determined (2.45, 61.7%), trainees are carefully selected (2.79, 58.2%), on and/or off the job T&D is given (3.00, 55.4%). The mean response of each item was below the average which is ranged from 2.38 to 2.79 (except for on and/or off the job T&D which was 3.00). Similarly, the majority of respondents (54.7% to 63.7%) disagreed (except for on and/or off the job T&D item where 55.4% of respondents agreed) with the items designed to measure T&D administration (Table 4). This finding implies that the practice of T&D administration in public organizations appears to be low.

Source: Own survey
Qualitative information obtained from the interviewees is consistent with the result discussed above. For example, all of the interviewees reported that rather than considering T&D as their core responsibility, managers in public organizations push it either to regional bureaus or NGOs. Besides, the interviewees reported lack of budget as one of the critical bottlenecks that hindered the proper administration of T&D programs. As reported by all of the interviewees, the practices of creating a favorable environment (such as of identifying and selecting proper location, facilities, accessibility, comfort, equipment or timing of T&D) are either non-exist or awfully weak. Key informants also revealed that the majority of T&D programs are dominated by top-down approach where regional line bureaus used to call trainees at any time without having sufficient information regarding the actual problem (gap) on the ground.
These findings are consistent with empirical studies that identified lack of T&D skilled and experienced experts (Bing et al, 2003) and lack of capacity to administer the specialized function of HRD across organizations (Eidgahy 1995;Buyens et al., 2001;Garavan et al., 2002) as the major bottlenecks of HRD program management. The findings are also in line with the results of studies conducted in developing countries and reported pervasive unplanned and disorganized practices of T&D programs (Asfaw et al., 2015).
As far as T&D monitoring and evaluation is concerned, five indicators were developed to measure the variable.  Table 4). The result shows that T&D monitoring and evaluation seems to be rarely performed activity which is evident from the low mean scores (ranged from 2.31 to 2.57) and disagreement of the majority of the respondents (64.7% -69.7%) with the question items intended to capture this component. All interviewees stated that except an ad hoc practice of M&E that is carried out for formality and reporting purpose, public organizations lack M&E system. According to them the practice of encouraging returnees to share what they learned is very weak. One of the interviewees said, "Many employees including myself took training and development in different areas at different times, but I cannot remember the time when employees shared what they have learned. Nobody asked the returnees to do so." These results are in line with that of Amare (2014); Asfaw et al. (2015); and Imran and Tanveer, (2015) who reported that the majority of T&D programs in public organizations are failed to pass through the logical phases of T&D.
As indicated in methodology part, employee performance is dependent variable which was measured by seven indicators. T&D facilitated promotion (2.49, 64.2%), improved job satisfaction (2.60, 58.7%), improved service quality (2.68, 54.2%), reduced turnover (2.56, 60.2%), reduced wastage of resources (2.47, 66.2%), improved individual's performance (2.84, 50.7%), and improved group performance (2.87, 48.7%) ( Table 4). The majority of respondents (48.7% -66.2%) perceived that T&D does not improve employee performance. However, some of the interviewees (mainly from health, education, and agriculture office) reported that even if T&D programs are not well managed, some committed employees had tried to properly apply what they learned in their actual work and showed improvement in the performance. Nonetheless, mere descriptive statistics and opinions could not explain the actual effect of T&D on employee performance. Therefore, in the following section, the results that show the impact is presented. 2.7.3. Impact of T&D on Employees performance This article estimates the effect of T&D on employee performance by using simple regression analysis. Before estimating the effect, correlation between T&D and employee performance was examined by using Pearson correlation. As reported in Table 5, the correlation coefficient for the two variables was 0.64 (strong positive association) showing that as T&D score increases so does that of employee performance. The association between the variables is statistically significant at p<0.01. The characteristics of the regression model as well as whether or not the model is significant enough to determine the impact was also assessed by using R 2 (Adjusted R 2 ) and ANOVA. The results are presented in Table  5 & 6. R 2 shows that 40.5% of the total variations for the dependent variable (employee performance) is explained by the independent variable (practices of T&D) implying that the model is sufficient to determine the relationship between two variables. The result of ANOVA (Table 6) shows that the value of F statistics (135.53) is highly significant at p<0.001 implying that the model is significant enough to determine the impact of T&D on employee performance.  Table 7 show positive β value indicating that a higher T&D score is associated with higher employee performance. In other words, one percent increase in T&D is associated with 80.5% increase in employee performance. The result, generally, shows that T&D has a statistically significant (at p<0.001) impact on employee performance (Table 7) confirming the hypothesis of the study. The result is consistent with the learning theories which argue that T&D positively influence the performance of the employees. The result is also in line with the majority of empirical studies conducted in different countries and settings which reported the positive impact of T&D on employees and so organizational performance (Noe, 2001;Oguntimehin, 2001;Aguinis and Kraiger, 2009;Ahmed and Din, 2009;Appiah, 2010;Aroosiya and Ali, 2013;Khan et al., 2011;AL Damoe et al., 2012;Muzaffar et al., 2012;Colombo and Stanca, 2014;Madukoma et al., 2014;Asfaw et al., 2015;Mpofu and Hlatywayo, 2015;Long et al., 2016;and Ramya, 2016) to mention some. It is also consistent with response of some of the interviewees (particularly, from health, education, and agricultural offices) who reported that T&D brought some improvement in knowledge, skills, and attitude of health workers, teachers, and agricultural experts and enabled them to enhance their performance. However, it contradicts with the descriptive analysis discussed above (that reveals weak practices of T&D and so low contribution to employee). However, it should be noted that even though T&D practices are weak, employees who got opportunity to enhance their skills, knowledge, and attitude could contribute to performance improvement due to their intrinsic motivation (the satisfaction that they expect from applying the T&D in their actual job and improving their performance) as well as extrinsic motivation (the rewards in the form of promotion, praise, etc. that they expect from high achievement). That is why Imran and Tanveer (2015) argue that organisations may be successful in applying T&D and improving employee's and organizational performance even if they fail to go through all phases of T&D process.

Conclusion and Recommendations
The article examined the influence of T&D on the performance of public employees in Konso. It tested the hypothesis that states T&D has a significant positive impact on employee performance. The article finds that the practices of T&D (such as need assessment, design, implementation, and M & E) are found to be meager mainly due to lack of skilled HRD professionals, low attention of public managers to T&D initiatives, top down approach of T&D and so high dependency of public managers on regional line bureaus and NGOs, and lack of budget. The findings show that T&D is positively related with employee performance. More explicitly, the article finds that T&D has a significant positive impact on the performance of employees. It can be thus concluded that T&D has profound positive impact on the performance of public employees even in the situations public organizations are poorly implementing T&D activities.
Therefore, managerial implication of this article is that to maximize the positive impact of T&D programs, enhancement of public employee's knowledge, skills, attitude, and competencies need to be the top priority of all public managers. In general, public managers should:  in collaboration with HRD experts, develop HRD plan by systematically analyzing task, individual, group, and organizational gaps and link HRD plan with strategic plan of the organizations given that the former uses the information from the later as an input, and utilizes it to envisage what will be required in the future.  closely work with all concerned bodies to mobilize and allocate adequate resources to T&D programs.  give due attention to T&D activities, create favorable environment for planning and implementation of T&D programs, and consider T&D as a legitimate and valued work place activity.  establish a clear system that would enable the organization to effectively monitor and evaluate T&D activities and initiatives.  create a collaborative platform with regional line bureaus, NGOs, and other concerned bodies in such a