An Analysis of the Impact of Good Corporate Governance on Service Delivery in Mashonaland Central Rural District Councils

Abstract

This research is an analysis of the Impact of Good Corporate Governance on Service Delivery by Mashonaland Central Rural District Councils. It first established what good corporate governance is and then identified its characteristics in Rural District Councils. As if this is not enough, it ascertained what service delivery in local authorities is and its relationship to good corporate governance. It also sought to establish if there are any other factors which affect service delivery in RDCs other than good corporate governance.

For this research four (4) Mashonaland Central Province Rural District Councils out of eight were sampled randomly. The selection was done randomly to avoid a bias towards certain councils as opposed to others. The sampled councils included Mazoe, Bindura, Pfura and Rushing a. Of these Rural District Councils, forty participants were again sampled to complete questionnaires and be interviewed to get the desired data. Questionnaire respondents and interviewees were a mixture of both councilors and council employees so as to cast the net for data wider. As a follow up for this, questionnaires and interviews were used as research instruments. Participant observation of the researcher as a former council employee also came into play here. In addition the descriptive survey method was used to ascertain the Impact of Good Corporate Governance on service delivery by councils.

The research revealed that there was a positive correlation between good corporate governance and service delivery by councils. It shows that good corporate governance ensured a full staff complements in a council and this promoted integrity, transparency, accountability and efficiency in councils. These factors would make stakeholders have faith in their councils, hence would cooperate with them which makes it easy for the later to provide services. A full staff compliment means presence of implementers for council policies. Other factors that affect RDC service delivery like inconsistent economic policies and lack of government funding were also identified.

After concluding that there was a positive correlation between good corporate governance and service delivery and on the need to have a full council staff compliment, many recommendations were also made. It was recommended that the same research be also done in urban local authorities so that it will be easy to compare and contrast the impact of good corporate governance on urban and rural councils service delivery. It was also recommended amongst other things that councils should have a full staff complement if service delivery to communities is to be guaranteed. Establishment of internal audit departments and embracing other revenue source by RDCs were the other recommendations. Lastly it was revealed that other than good corporate governance, other factors like government policies, natural disasters and politics also had an impact either negative or positive on service delivery by Rural District Councils.