TITLE:
Decentralisation, Institutional Characteristics and Public Sector Governance in Tanzania
AUTHORS:
Nuru Kalufya, Riziki M. Nyello
KEYWORDS:
Decentralisation, Human Resource Management Reforms, Public Sector Governance
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.11 No.3,
July
13,
2021
ABSTRACT: Public sector governance has been the primary
focus of the developing countries to ensure that they realise their
developmental goals. In ensuring the public sector governance, decentralisation
has been considered as the primary initiative. However, most of the previous
empirical studies concentrate on political decentralisation meanwhile excluding
administrative decentralisation and mediation effect of contingent factors i.e.
technological capacity and institutional culture as institutional
characteristics. In view of the aforementioned missing knowledge, the article
investigated the influence of administrative decentralisation on public sector
governance considering the mediation effect of institutional characteristics adopting
Stewardship theory and Contingency theory. The article collected data from Dar
es Salaam, Dodoma and Kigoma through self-administered questionnaire and
analysed by using Mean scores and Structural Equation Model (SEM). The results
revealed that administrative decentralisation had significant positive
influence on public sector accountability and transparency. Moreover,
technological capacity and institutional culture partially mediated the
relationship between administrative decentralisation and, public sector
accountability and transparency. In view of such results, among others, the
article recommends that there is a need of developing the National
Decentralisation Strategy (NADIS) to guide the decentralisation process and
ensure its effective implementation for the sake of achieving public sector
governance goals.