A Civil Servants’ Work Ethics and Its Implication on Public Service Delivery in Some Selected Towns of Civil Service Institutions in Oromia

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the public servants‟ work ethics and its implication for service delivery in some selected town of institutions in Oromia ’’. Samples of 305 public servants were selected for the study using systematic and simple random sampling technique. Key informant interview and focus group discussion was done on purposely selected officers from 3 institutions of two towns namely Shashamane and Burayu. From each town 3, i.e. 6 leaders and 24 civil servants participated in interview and focus group discussion respectively. The collected data was analysed using, simple descriptive techniques and description narratives in presenting qualitative data. The finding of the study showed that the selected institutions have common codes of conduct and its enforcement was low. The finding on the attitude of public servants indicated that the public servants viewed those unethical behavioural problems like violating rules and regulations considered as positive practices. The study also indicated that lack of capacity and training; lack of trust between employees, customer and the management; low salary of employees, and permissive leadership, as major reasons that caused the prevailing ethical problems among the study population. Finally, the study indicated that the public servants work ethics based service delivery is less in the enforcements of honesty, integrity, respecting the law, and accountability. Hence, it was recommended that the public servants in the selected organization should give more attention to serve the public interests while enforcing work ethics during carrying out their duties at different institutions.