ABSTRACT
Productivity in every organization is the primary concern of employers
in both public and private organizations. The attitude of workers therefore
becomes a major factor. The objective of the study is to assess the effect of
leadership on staff productivity in Delta state civil service. The study which
was arranged in five chapters relied much on primary and secondary data. The
survey research method was adopted in eliciting information through
questionnaire. The population of the study comprised both the junior and senior
staff and other category of staff that are on political appointment in the
seventeen ministries (17) and thirty two (32) extra ministerial departments of the twenty five
local government councils (25) of Delta state totaling 39,256 (thirty nine
thousand, two hundred and fifty six) The major findings showed that there was a
reduction in staff productivity in the state civil service as a result of
leadership ineffectiveness and autocracy which according to the study has
resulted to inefficiency, low staff morale, truancy and migration of staff to
other states of the federation. Based on the findings, the study recommended that
because of the negative consequences of bad leadership on staff productivity,
morale of staff, migration and labour turn over, Deltans must ensure that those
to be appointed into leadership positions in the state meet some basic
leadership requirements. checks and balances mechanism must be put in place to
regulate the behaviour of our leaders at all times whether while in the office
or after leaving the office and any one that violates any of the laws must be
punished to serve as deterrent to others.
CHAPTER ONE
1.1 BACKGROUND OF
THE STUDY:
The word leadership has been defined by many scholars
particularly in the field of public administration, to be one who exerts
influence or makes things happen that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. If the
leader causes changes that he intended, he is said to have exercised power, but
if he causes changes that he did not intend or want, he has exercised influence
but not power (McFarland 1969).
Chukwuemeka (2008) defined leadership simply as the art or process
of influencing people.
Generally leadership has to do with influence and power, and
any person who is endowed with these qualities in the context of a group,
community or Nation has the personality of a leader. There are different types
of leaders, some of which include intellectual leadership, opinion leadership,
group leadership, social leadership, executive leadership, and administrative
leadership.
Leadership can also be looked at from their styles and task.
Fiedler (1969) identified two types of leadership which include task oriented
leadership and interpersonal relations oriented leadership. He also identified three
leadership styles (based on the use of authority) which include autocratic
leadership, democratic leadership and independent leadership. But in this work,
we shall categorize leadership into two types which are common in contemporary
African societies, we shall consider their attributes and how they affect
changes in the society.
According to Dike (2003), he identified two types of
leadership that is common to African society. These are instrumental leadership
and societal leadership. The main concern of the instrumental leader is how to
use his office/position to achieve personal gains/goals (personal, close
friends, cohorts, etc) community or National objectives are secondary to him.
He may not be lacking in social or community commitment, but in practice, he
gives more considerations/attentions to self over the interest of the society
he governs. Such leaders will hold on to power for as long as their selfish
private objectives are achieved. They do not care whether the community or
region derives anything/benefit from their rule or not.
The “societal” leader on the other
hand is a public servant first and only secondary a private person. He uses his
position to promote community or national objectives. For him, power and
influence are important only if they can be used to solve societal or human
problem. He is ready to resign when he is convinced that he cannot influence
changes to the benefit of the public. Given the antecedents of the nation’s
post and present leaders, it is clear that the majorities of them were and are
still, instrumentalists and naked opportunists.
It is only societal leaders that can motivate people to work
because they have the interest of the work, Nation and the people, but
instrumental leaders cannot motivate, this being the case, we want to see the
type of leaders we have in Delta State whether instrumentalists or
societalists. From time immemorial, this had been the case with most of our
leaders and all efforts to make them see reason and change for better proved
abortive.
Some of these factors are:
The guaranteed loyalty of the masses to leaders in Africa,
and indeed in Nigeria the masses through socialization have come to internalize
the norms of respect for authorities. They find it very different to criticize
or challenge authority irrespective of what they do, although this is gradually
changing.
The title of office (chief, general, minister, commissioner
etc). This allows its holder to insist on being treated like one and if the
behaviour or performances of the leader and expectation from the public of the
present leader is the same as that of the past leader, people may not worry
about any change. They see it as the usual thing. (What is called the usual
behaviour).
The deeds of Nigeria leaders-they are showered with lengthy
eulogies composed during his life time by men who recite them in his honor at
public gathering. As one man pointed out. Musicians have a tendency to sing the
praises of leaders and men of wealth, not minding how corrupt they might be.
Seeing the leader as the “first
citizen” or the “great comrade” the omnipresence and omnipotence leader. These
were demonstrated in Zik and Awo of Nigeria, Nkrumah of Ghana and Idiamin of
Uganda.
Weak or absence of institutional checks and balances. This
has been a very big and serious problem in Nigeria. Both the military and the
politicians are corrupt and treasury looter, because of the weak institutional
checks and balances.
Availability of resources to tap and steal. African leaders
particularly Nigeria leaders take undue advantage of these short comings and
circumvent the few institutional restraints that are in place. Because the
checked on power is not in place or are not in working order, it gave rise to
instrumental leaders. Because these leaders have tested power and discovered
that National money can be stolen with impunity, they all want to rule, those
that are already there do not want to go and that is why election to position
of authority in Nigeria is described as a “do or die affair” on this basis we
now want to find out, how applicable is this to Delta State and what could be
done to solve the problem so that the state can move forward.
Productivity refers to the rate at
which a worker, a country or a company produces goods and services, the amount
produced, compared with how much time, work and money is needed to produce
them. For productivity to increase, leaders must be able to motivate and
coordinate their subordinates and other factors of production effectively. When
the workers/subordinates are motivated, their morale will increase and they
will be very happy, and when they are happy, productivity will increase.
Motivation on the other hand has to do with the morale of the
staff to channel their behaviour in a given direction for increased
productivity. Motivation is an inner state that energizes or moves and directs
or channels behaviour towards goals. Motivation is a general term applying to
the entire class of drives, desires, needs, wishes and similar forces. So
managers must motivate their subordinates by satisfying their desires and
inducing the subordinates to act in a desired manner. What motivates Mr. A may
not motivate Mr. B, so managers must be able to discern and know how best to
motivate their workers. Motivators are those things which induce an individual
to perform. They may include higher pay, a prestigious title, a
name on the office door, the acclaim of colleagues, provision of official car
with the name of the institution inscribed on it, use of company uniform,
security, opportunity to join clubs or unions in the office and a host of other
things that give people a reason to perform. To be sure, while motivators
reflect wants, they are the perceived rewards or incentives that sharpen the
drive to satisfy these wants. They are also the means by which conflicting
needs may be reconciled or one need maybe accentuated so that it will be given
priority over another.
A manager must be able to set up a very good incentive system
to motivate his workers. For workers to be motivated, we need a good leader who
can actually combine the incentives to meet the needs of both the employer and
the employee so that the worker is happy and productivity increased, if workers
are not happy, productivity will be affected, and a lot of loss or waste will
occur. To avoid such lost and waste, there is the need to have a good leader
that can combine the available resources to achieve set target and goals, and
that is the purpose of this research.
A leader that is autocratic, selfish,
or who does not care about the need of the workers would not be able to
motivate anybody. Therefore there is the need for a societal or a servant
leader to be able to influence and motivate the staff to work. When the morale
of the workers are addressed by meeting their needs, they will be happy to work
and even go extra mile to ensure that the objective of the organization is
achieved because they know that if any thing bad happens to the company, they
will be affected and so will do everything humanly possible to ensure that the
organization succeed.
Before the creation of Delta State in 1991 (27th August, 91)
the state was under Bendel State having it’s headquarter at Benin City, we had
good leaders then. The bureaucrats were concerned with the growth of the state
and the welfare of her workers. The workers then were made to realize that hard
work pays notwithstanding the odds one would pass through. Leadership was then
akin to priesthood. Leadership then means service, integrity, modeling,
responsibility, maturity, partnership and above all, leadership comes first
with a price.
Because we saw our leaders doing the right things then, the
workers were motivated to work praying that one day they will become leaders as well. This brought
rapid growth and developments to the state. There were job opportunities for
every body whether educated or not. While the educated ones were employed to
work in government offices, others were engaged to work on the state farm
settlements, rubber plantations and cocoa farms to mention a few. Standard of
living was very high with very low rate of labour turnover and migration to
other states of the federation. Only very few people were traveling abroad then
because there was no need for it.
Delta state was then one of the largest producers of food
crops like yam, Garri, plantain, potatoes and cash crops like rubber, palm oil,
cocoa, timber and cotton to mention a few. In fact, there was dignity of
labour, value for hard work and value for money.
Shortly after the creation of the state and with the
discovery of petroleum oil, more money was now being given to the state from
the Federation account. In 1998, all the non-Deltas were transferred back to
their various states and those who refused transfer were compulsorily retired.
Having succeeded in driving away the non Deltas, all the top and influential
positions in the bureaucracy were shared by the Deltas. Appointment into and promotions within the civil service
proceeded on ethnic lines, qualifications or technical competence gave way to
place of birth. Under the circumstance it was impossible to speak of
meritocracy, rationality, efficiency, productivity and all the familiar
concepts of Weberian formulation. This adversely affected productivity in the
state. Similarly, the silent struggle for ascendancy between the administrative
and political elite after driving away the non-Deltas succeeded only in merging
politics with administration. Commissioners were appointed to head the
ministries and as the political heads of the ministries, their influence perverted
all the norms of recruitment, promotion, termination and discipline in the
public service. The state civil service now began to experience leadership
problems such as autocracy, inefficiency, corruption, lack of integrity,
injustice, incompetence, embezzlement, mismanagement etc, like their
counterparts in the public sectors which now informed this research to actually
assess the effect of leadership on staff productivity in the state civil
service.
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Item Type: Project Material | Size: 169 pages | Chapters: 1-5
Format: MS Word | Delivery: Within 30Mins.
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