The ecology of Nigeria’s public administration and employee motivation in the plateau state civil service (2004-2014).
Date
2016
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Abstract
From a general perspective, workers’ motivation gained prominence with the abolition of the
slave trade and the advent of the industrial revolution. The latter was to be anchored on
legitimate trade as opposed to illegitimate trade that was characterised by the
commodification of the people of African descent who were enslaved in the Americas and
Europe. This new development led to the proposition of several theories by various Western
scholars attempting to rationalize workers behaviour or misbehaviour in industrial settings.
Thought processes alongside other factors are upheld as common denominators responsible
for positively or negatively affecting workers morale, work ethic and productivity within the
workplace. This is the belief and common practice across the globe. Within the broader
context outlined above, the primary objective of this research was to examine the ecology of
Nigeria’s public administration to determine the possibility of its effect on employee
motivation. To achieve this goal, the Plateau State civil service was investigated and raw data
generated for analysis. While not disputing the validity of the existent content and process
organizational motivation theories, this study specifically evaluated the extent to which the
output of the Plateau State civil service staff was affected by factors extraneous to their
immediate workplace environment and unaddressed by the theories. The research highlighted
the influence of prevalent phenomena and diversities in the socio-cultural environments of a
developing society like Nigeria that challenge the tenability of the major motivation theories
in wholly explaining public sector workers motivation. It drew from the postulations of
Riggs’ fused-prismatic-diffracted model with focus on the non-administrative criteria present
in the environments of most developing (prismatic) societies and from the primary notion of
the contingency theorists that there is ‘no one-best-way’ in administration. These constituted
the theoretical bases on which the re-evaluation of the motivation theories in the light of the inherent characteristics of Nigeria’s public administrative ecology was carried out. The
research relied on data derived from primary and secondary data sources and analyzed using
the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (Version 20) and thematic content analysis
respectively. The results show that Nigeria’s ecology has an effect on employee motivation.
Based on the findings of this research, target-oriented strategies for enhancing the Plateau
State civil service employees’ motivation and quality of work life were proffered. The
dissertation report was concluded with suggestions for further research beyond the selected
case study of Plateau State for clarity on the impact of a country’s ecology on employee
motivation.
Description
Doctor of Philosophy in Policy and Development Studies. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg 2016.
Keywords
Public administration -- Nigeria., Employee motivation -- Nigeria.