LITERATURE REVIEW - The Relationship between the Human Resource Practices of the Civil Service

Chapter Overview

This chapter covers the background to the reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa in general and then Malawi in particular. Theories on motivation are also discussed: the (Motivator- Hygiene) or two-factor theory being the most prominent. Human Resource Development theories on job enrichment and job autonomy strategies are discussed as well since there are variables that are related to the two. Other concepts under discussion include what have been termed as High Performance Work Practices. In relation to these are employee job satisfaction issues, job stability (security), salary strategies issues and employee commitment issues. Thus the chapter looks at the works that other people have done before.

Civil Service Reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)

Civil Service reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa started as early as 1970s when governments of the developing countries were under pressure to reform their economies.

During this time governments in SSA took the leading role in carrying out economic stabilization reforms. These reforms took many forms but most of the governments had similar approaches to the reforms as they were mostly pushed by the Breton Wood Institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund). There were factors that led to the reforms and most of them had similar reasons despite that the governments were affected in different ways. Among the common factors that led to the reforms include,

“chronic budget deficits, a fall in the value of goods and services, persistent balance of payments deficits, and increasing recourse to external borrowing as a source of revenue for the government” (Leniger-Gumaz, 1993, p.12). Other factors also included big unproductive and unsatisfied civil services which drew a lot of money from the government coffers. This was not all as Lienert explains:

BEFORE 1985, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa had seen their nominal wage bills expand. This was due, in large part, to a rapid increase in civil service employment—in some countries, the number of civil servants rose by as much as 10 percent a year. This expansion reflected the high degree of government intervention in the economy as well as the need to educate and provide health care to burgeoning populations. Additionally, the state often guaranteed civil service

jobs for graduates of institutions of higher education. Civil service employment was also a reward for political patronage (Lienert, 1998, p.8).

The problems above brought with them many other problems. For instance, the rapid increase in employment was made possible with the reduction in salaries especially for those at the top of the pay scale. There was also a considerable drop in Management-level salaries during this period. For instance in “Zambia in 1971 an assistant director's salary was 17 times the salary of the lowest-paid employee; by 1986, it was only 4 times as much. This is just one good example among the many other similar examples” (Lienert, 1998, p.9).

Overstaffing and low salaries also had other adverse results including poor staff morale and a decline in work effort; difficulties in recruiting and retaining technical and professional staff; non-transparent forms of remuneration, especially nonwage benefits in cash or in kind;

and strong incentives to accept bribes. Additionally, the nominal wage bill increasingly contributed to growing fiscal deficits in many African countries. Its increase relative to nonwage expenditures also had negative results in that most of the civil servants could not perform their duties properly since there were no enough resources for them. All these compounded the already existing problems of worker efficiency and morale (motivation) according to (Lienert & Modi, 1997).

Every problem demands a solution at any point in time and so did the SSA problems.

There arose a need to address all the problems especially cutting down government expenditures and budget deficits as well as improving the productivity of the civil service.

This then demanded a strategy on how to reform the whole civil service. There were a number of strategies that were adopted in most of the SSA countries in order to reform the civil service. The strategies were cross-cutting in all the regions in SSA because the reforms were mostly donor-driven as such they donors prescribed measures to be implemented in order to effect the reforms. It should however be noted that civil service reforms in SSA have taken place in at least two distinct periods of time: soon after the independence and then later in the 1990s. To this end (Therkildsen, 2001, p.18) explains that “the earlier reforms aimed at shaping a public administration that could spearhead national development, albeit in the mould of the colonial age.” The earlier reforms may also be referred to as post-independence reforms. These are quite different with the current reforms that have been going on since around 1990s. On the other hand, “the current reform efforts aim to reduce

the costs and refocus the activities of the public sector, to change the way it works, and to promote the role of the market and non-governmental actors both in service provision and in the economy at large”, (Therkildsen, 2001, p.19). It should be noted that although the aims of the post-independence era and the current reforms seem to have different aims, there is an overarching aim of reducing government costs and expenditures against their revenues. Due to this factor both reforms had similar starting points in their approach as Lienert, puts it:

In implementing reforms, governments sought to (1) downsize the civil service to make it more affordable and to bring it into line with a new, scaled-down role for government in economic activities; (2) provide civil servants with appropriate incentives, skills, and motivation; and (3) enhance management and accountability (Lienert, 1998, p.9).

Following the above aims/agendas, governments took different steps in each step although in most governments what was very clear was the downsizing as opposed to providing appropriate incentives for the civil servants and enhancing management. In essence there was more activity in downsizing than in the other two however most governments also managed to do something on enhancing management and accountability in the civil service. There were steps in downsizing the civil service with more caution to the political environment of that particular country. Different countries realized that there are a lot of different potential risks in carrying out downsizing exercises. Political consideration occupied much space than economic and social precautions in every country. Below is an outline of the most common measures that were used in the increased order of their perceived political risk and protecting the integrity of the profession according to (Kiggundu):

1. Removal of ‘ghost’ or non-existent names and workers from the government pay roll.

2. Elimination of officially sanctioned posts that are not currently filled.

3. Retrenchment of temporary or seasonal workers.

4. Enforcement of retirement age.

5. Freezing of recruitment.

6. Elimination of guaranteed entry to the civil service from the educational or training system.

7. Suspension of automatic advancement.

8. ‘Voluntary’ incentive-induced retirement of surplus workers.

9. Containment of wages (restraints or freezes).

10. Dismissal of serving civil servants (Kiggundu, 1997, p.65).

Governments in the SSA region perceived that the reforms had come with both danger and opportunity. The danger involved political risks such as riots and coups;

administrative resistance like strikes or even economic sabotage like smuggling especially in countries with political instability. This consideration was of great importance in places where demobilisation of military personnel would be involved since this is the most serious category of civil servants as opposed to the civilian civil servants. Further considerations on the military demobilisation also had to be made seriously in “countries revolving from war (e.g. Somalia), to absence of war (e.g. Mozambique), peacemaking (e.g. South Africa) and democratic development (e.g. Namibia)” (Kiggundu, 1997, p.7).

Since the main and major step was to reduce the workforce, the steps above were implemented in that order. Ghost workers are those names and workers who appear on the government payroll when in actual fact there are no people bearing those names. Ghost workers were mostly people who either died or resigned from the civil service but were never erased on the payroll because some people responsible for that were benefiting from their salaries. This is just one part of the corrupt practices that rocked most of the civil services in the SSA (Lienert, 1998). In some countries officially sanctioned posts were not filled. During this period, such posts had to be eliminated forthwith. This acted as a softer way of reducing civil service employment since no-one would be recruited anymore.

Retrenchment of temporary or seasonal workers played a big role. These workers are mostly employed at certain season of the fiscal or agricultural calendar to perform certain duties.

Mostly they would not really be removed from their duties when the work is done, as a result they would find their way on the civil service payroll. Retrenching these workers meant reducing the number of employees considerably. The other important task was to enforce the retirement age. In most governments it was noted that when people reach retirement age they would not retire. They would keep on working as long as their health permitted. This also contributed to the burgeoning of the civil service. The other problem with this group of people is that most of them were in top positions and hence at the apex of the pay scale which means they were consuming even more money from the government. Retiring these people reduced the government budget in the long run although at first it proved to be expensive since they had to be given their severance packages as well as the golden-handshake in some countries. Another method was to freeze recruitment. This means that

governments stopped recruiting any more civil servants. There were other governments that offered automatic jobs to new graduates from the university and other higher institutions of training. In some countries like Central Africa Republic one person would be recruited for every three who have left which still proved to be expensive such that the policy had to be revisited. For every three services that would be rendered to the public, there had to be one Franc to be paid for it (Kiggundu, 1997).

There is however some variations in how the Civil Service Restructuring (CSR) was carried out. Some authors divide the aforementioned ten points of restructuring into basic three with the others as the instruments of the three main ways of the CSR. For instance (Liendert & Modi, 1998) explain that generally there were those strategies focussing on reducing employment and real wages which can be grouped into three main groups:

employment-reducing measures; restraining wages and rationalizing the pay structure; and finally, improving Civil Service Management. Each one of the three therefore had several steps or actions that were taken in order to accomplish the set goal.

The measures for reducing employment included the following: censuses and removal of "ghost" workers; restraint or freeze regarding recruitment; enforcing retirement or lowering the retirement age; voluntary early retirement; retrenchment on existing civil service employees; assistance to departing workers; redeployment within the civil service, decentralization, contracting out and military demobilisation. The second measures that aimed at restraining wages and rationalizing the pay structure include: wage freezes or partial indexation; limit automatic increments; consolidating non-wage benefits into salaries;

wage decompression to keep highly skilled staff; performance-related promotions and pay.

Most of the civil servants benefited a lot from non-wage benefits like government housing schemes and others which were not really commensurate with either their positions or salaries. This created a lot of problems as such non-wage benefits and to be monetized. The final step of improving Civil Service Management took its own measures which in most of the cases have not really been realized due to financial problems. However there has been relatively limited progress in the following few measures: the establishment of computerized links between the payroll and establishment registers, and the completion of the first rounds of functional reviews. In some countries it also involved setting up good measures on

auditing and procurement procedures which in other countries was referred to as Public Finance Management Reforms (Durevall & Erlandsson, 2005).

The results of civil service reforms in SSA are somewhat mixed. Different authors suggest that it is not plausible to conclude that the results were either promising or not but rather it is better to look broadly at different issues that surround the whole process of reforms. For instance, Lienert explains:

Although reforms aimed at improving both the level of real wages and the salary structure, very few countries achieved these objectives. On the contrary, real wages have continued to decline, by 2 percent a year on average during 1990–96.

(...) In the countries experiencing strong declines in real wages, the evidence suggests that there was a further compression of upper-grade salaries. In contrast, some countries—Uganda being the most prominent example—made a conscious effort to increase real wages from low levels and improve incentives for higher-paid staff (Lienert 1998, pp.7-8).

There were also other countries like Ghana, The Gambia and Guinea which managed to set decompression structures and managed to reach their targets. It is noted that these countries and other few ones made significant change in raising real wages for their employees. Despite all this success, their wage bills as a percentage of GDP either did not rise significantly or did not rise to the intended levels or were still under the SSA average. This was usually because salary increases were accompanied by significant declines in civil service employment. On the other hand, in some countries, especially in southern Africa (for example, Lesotho, Malawi, and Zimbabwe), governments were unable to resist large real wage increases and made little headway in restructuring salaries and employment, this is according to (Lienert, 1998). It is important therefore not to conclusively say that the reforms were a success or a failure.

Civil Service Reforms in Malawi

While the rest of the SSA was having all the reforms, Malawi was no exception at all.

There were reforms of a similar kind, aimed at reducing the civil service employment in a bid to cut down government wage bills and improve the civil service incentives. It is important however at this point to give a brief definition of what a civil service in Malawi.

Definition of the Civil Service and the Civil Servant

It is difficult to give one clear definition of the civil service in Malawi because of several reasons. In the first reason is historical problem of defining the civil service. In the first, place soon after the country’s independence the police and the teachers were not considered to be in the civil service but for all legal and practical reasons today they are considered as civil servants. And then although the law provides for judiciary offices to be outside the administrative mandate of the Public Service Commission, which is vested with the specific responsibility for the recruitment, promotion and discipline of civil servants (as stipulated in the Constitution of the Republic of Malawi, chapter 20), in virtually all other administrative aspects, the judiciary officers are treated as civil servants. Finally, the Government underwrites the payroll of employees in Treasury Funds and non-commercial parastatals. Therefore, a budget or payroll-based definition of central Government employees would normally include employees in these categories.

The second problem rises from the definition of civil service given by the Malawi Public Service Regulations (MPSR). By definition, the MPSR says civil servants are those Government employees on permanent and pensionable posts yet there is a disparity between the definition and what happens in practice. In practice, there have been large numbers of industrial class employees who would ordinarily be on temporary and wage-based employment contracts, have been admitted into permanent and pensionable status without any upgrading into established posts. Not only that most of the industrial class employees who were retrenched at the onset of the second phase of the reforms as noted by (Lienert, 1997). The second problem on this is that the regulations approve the appointment of temporary employees against vacancies in the established permanent and pensionable posts, and many such temporary employees have remained in employment for periods as long as

10 years thereby making them qualify practically as civil servants. The other problem is that in the case of military personnel, employment is not guided or constrained by establishment positions as established in the (Civil Service Pay and Employment Study, 1994).

The third problem has more to do with the control mechanism that deals with the issues of the civil service than anything else. The Civil Service Pay and Employment Study reports that:

...the absence of an effective system for control and monitoring of recruitment in all cadres of the civil service results in a situation whereby at any point in time, it is impossible to reliably establish the actual numbers of all central government employees. In particular, since there are no central records of non-established employees, their total number cannot be correctly determined. Available evidence suggests that the number is a significant proportion of the total number of those in the central government payroll. As further elaborated below, these "non-established" employees in the main comprise “industrial class” workers, but also include personnel employed in development projects who have not yet been transferred to the payroll under the recurrent budget, and other temporary and seasonal employees. In all, these employees constitute about a third of the total number of government employees. The exact status of these categories of government employees has to be clarified before the size of the civil service could be determined (The Civil Service Pay and Employment Study, 1994, p.8).

There are other researchers too who have expressed concern over the unreliability of the data concerning the total number of civil servants Malawi. This is however a simplified problem with the current report that Malawi now has a confirmed number of 151,000 civil servants. This figure does not however explain whether it includes the employees on non-established positions as well as industrial class positions. Due to the above discussed issues in defining the civil service and also accurate figures of the total number of civil servants, this paper uses the term civil service to broadly describe employees on the government pay roll whether or not they occupy established, non-established and industrial class positions.

However, this definition excludes employees in parastatals and local government whose salaries may be funded by the central government through subsidies and grants. This definition has also been used in the (Civil Service Pay and Employment Study of the World Bank, 1994).

Malawi like the rest of the SSA countries carried out similar strategies in her civil service reforms. For instance, the elimination of the ghost workers from the pay roll,

retrenchment of temporary or seasonal workers who constituted the larger part of the civil service, enforcement of retirement age as well as freezing of recruitment. In addition to this

在文檔中 The Relationship between the Human Resource Practices of the Civil Service and Turnover Intentions among the Middle Range Civil Servants in Malawi (頁 20-48)