SHIFTING MANAGEMENT FOR PERFORMANCE IN THE ETHIOPIAN CIVIL SERVICE

Effective management influences organisational performance. In private firms, CEO traits and management practices impact performance but there is limited research exploring how managerial styles affect performance in the public sector. In public administration many activities are non-contractible and tenures are long, making management styles particularly important but potentially difficult to modify. 

This project evaluates how exposing public sector officials to different management styles influences their beliefs about effective management and organisational performance. The project aims to improve our understanding on ways to build state effectiveness through the improved performance of public administrators, estimating the demand for training and learning in the workplace, and the mechanisms by which managerial style can be changed in public sector organisations.

Image

Researchers have partnered with the Ethiopian Federal Government's core training centres - the Ethiopian Management Institute [EMI] and Civil Service University [CSU]- and plan to expose public-sector middle managers to different management styles during their training sessions. Trainings at EMI and CSU generally aim to upgrade the skills of public servants towards new government processes and are therefore a key component in public sector performance.

The core intervention exposes officials to novel management approaches through videos that are educational but entertaining (known in the literature as 'edutainment') and an additional social media campaign.

In an initial experiment with 500 mid-career public servants in Ethiopia, using an incentive-compatible Becker–DeGroot–Marschak (BDM) mechanism to elicit willingness-to-pay (WTP) for professional development, researchers examined how public workers choose to invest in their own capacity. This experiment focused on the role of individual motivations and organisational context in shaping these decisions.

Interventions

1. First, researchers examined whether demand depends on the organisational environment in which new skills would be used. Before bidding, each participant watched one of three short movies set in the Ethiopian public service. The movies shared the same cast and plot and differed only in how a senior manager behaved: granting autonomy to their team, including over how they applied their skills, or emphasising close monitoring. A third, placebo film described the training institute and made no reference to management.
2. Second, researchers tested whether investment choices reflect self- or other-regarding motivations. In a follow-up survey a year later, participants heard one of two recorded messages from the Civil Service Commission, emphasising either their own career advancement or the benefits of training for citizens.

Demand is generally positive but low. Almost all participants (94%) would pay something for at least one of the three activities offered, but the median bid was 100 Ethiopian Birr, or about a tenth of the cost of a day of executive training.

Increasing the salience of an enabling managerial environment shifted demand for professional development. Participants who saw the enabling-manager movie bid 87 ETB more than those who saw the placebo when asked again almost a year later, close to the average bid in the original round. In contrast, emphasising benefits to citizens rather than workers’ own careers did little to change demand. These results suggest that civil servants see professional development mainly as an investment in their own skills. They are more willing to invest when they expect their organisation to give them opportunities to put those skills to use.