Practice of Good Governance Principle and Service Delivery: The Case of Micro and Small Enterprise Agency in Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Almost all government of the developing nation today say that promoting good governance and effective public service delivery is an important part of their agendas. Despite this consensus, the practice of ‘good governance' and service delivery of public sector institution gives different meanings to different organizations and to different actors within these organizations. Hence, this study is aimed to investigate public opinion on the practice of good governance principles and extent of service delivery in microand small enterprise (MES) agency in Oromia regional state, Ethiopia. In the region, various public reform program has been implemented to ensure good governance and effective service delivery of public sector institutions in order to meet the needs of demanding citizens. Within this context, good governance principles and services delivery, according to the public reform, means securing justice, participation, consensus, fairness, and equity, and transparency, effectiveness and efficient service delivery of public sector institutions and MSE agency, in particular. Thus, this study deals with these principles of good governance packages as well as extent of service delivery in terms of responsiveness, efficiency and effectiveness of the region's micro and small enterprise agency.

The study employed both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Qualitative data were generated through conducting focus group discussions and key informant interviews. The quantitative data collected through semi structured questionnaires were checked, classified, arranged, organized and summarized in tables and standardized formats. The results of qualitative data analysis were triangulated against quantitative data analysis result to reach at plausible findings. And also, the analysis of the findings was also supplemented with secondary data collected from various sources. The study has employed multistage clustered sampling technique. In the first stage, all zones were grouped into four clusters (East, West, South and Central) purposively based on similarity of their geographical location. In the second stage, four zones one from cluster,namely,West Arsi, West Wollega, West Hararge and East Seaware selected purposively. In the third stage, two districts from each selected zone were selected purposively based on their number of population and MSE agency performance. In the third stage, list of population of the respective district were taken from regional bureaus of finance and economic development. Finally, 480 respondents were randomly selected using simple random sampling technique while only 240 respondents were used for quantitative analysis. Further, secondary data were collected from sources such as official performance reports micro and small enterprise institutions, past research reports, policy documents and published literature related to the topic under investigation. Data gathered through questionnaires were entered into SPSS software and analyzed with statistical tools such as percentages, proportions and Chi-square tests whereas data generated through FGDs and key informant interviews were analyzed using qualitative descriptions. Secondary data from official reports and document reviews were analyzed using quantitative or qualitative methods depending on the nature of the data obtained from each source.

The survey result indicated that despite some sort of public participation and consensus in the work of micro and small enterprise, the extent of leaders' accountability, fairness, equity and transparency in the organizing and benefiting youths and unemployed citizens in particularwere a big problem.Specifically, regarding extent of accountability of leaders/employees and those who organized under MSEs Activities, the result indicated the existence of great disparity in measures taken for their malpractice. Similarly, the extent of efficiency and effectiveness, access to loan and working place and responsiveness of the agency service delivery system were rated below average by the majority of the respondents. Therefore, more has to be done to change the work culture and attitude of employees and leaders towards ensuring the practice of good governance principles and service delivery through implementation of various reform tools in line with the current one.