The Ethiopian Public Sector Leadership Profile Unveiled: Determining the Leadership Profile of the Ethiopian Federal Civil Service Organizations

The PhD dissertation entitled ‘’The Ethiopian Public Sector Leadership Profile Unveiled:  Determining the Leadership Profile of the Ethiopian Federal Civil Service Organizations’’ is motivated by calls for Afro-specific leadership research and pragmatic leadership problem in Ethiopian federal civil service organizations. It dealt with profiling the civil service leaders contrasting how the leaders are expected to act in terms of contextual antecedents vis-à-vis leaders’ role preferences. It aimed to reconcile the differences between them (if any), to enable leaders to lead effectively. To this end, the study looked at leadership through the lens of the 3Cs model: context, content, and conduct.  We first assessed the antecedent conditions ((cultural–, political–, organisational-administrative– level factors) and explored their ramifications for the leaders’ role. Then, we studied role preferences of the leaders. Finally, we contrasted the expected– with the preferred– leadership roles and suggested needed measures at the individual as well as institutional levels to reconcile the observed incongruence. The conduct of leadership action is left for future research.

With an intention to pay attention to context, the institutional approach to research is applied. More specifically, the study is informed by two theoretical traditions: ‘historical new institutionalism’ and its central explanatory idea of ‘path-dependency’, and ‘sociological new institutionalism’ and its notion of cognitive and cultural links.

On the continuum of the positivists– and the interpretive– ways of knowing, our research, in general, took the position of interpretive approach. Indeed, our research also benefits from theories and concepts in the field. Thus, in this work, we boldly claim that a mixed approach is applied. Such methodological choices require multiple data from both primary and secondary sources.

 The interview was mainly conducted to support our Q-methodological inquiry. Q‑methodology is a method designed to investigate subjectivity. In the present work, we used Q-methodology to examine how the civil service leaders conceptualise their roles in their setting. Yet, Q- results lack generalizability. We, therefore, went on further and extended the Q finding with a survey. Of the possible approaches of extending Q with a survey, the Brown’s SFIS and the SCtAFDs were deliberately combined to compensate for the limitations of using a single approach. With a survey, we do not only secured information concerning the prevalence of the perspectives but also explained those factors using external variables, particularly the background characteristics of both the survey participants and the organisations.

Additionally, documentary evidence was gathered from multiple sources and used throughout the research process. Although it forms the main source of some of the information, for instance, historical data, it was also applied to substantiate the data gathered through a survey and interview. More importantly, we have extended the scope of material sources by using non-textual information, namely indigenous aphorisms or proverbs, as needed. The non-textual information is quite helpful because sometimes a single expression can tell the whole story.

As just mentioned, we first studied antecedents and its ramifications for leaders’ role. With reference to culture, Ethiopia, among others, is a multi-ethnic and multi-culture state. Ethiopians are hierarchical, collectivistic and a largely masculine society. They are a society in a ‘synchronic culture’ as well. Concerning the political setting, the country has been holding a maximalist view of the state; politicisation of the civil service is almost a norm, and politicians highly expect loyalty and political responsiveness from TCSs. Likewise, Ethnicisation of the civil service, stasis of patrimonial authority, and politicians’ dominance on the policymaking process, among others, are uncovered. At the organizational-administrative level, various reform measures, although overwhelmed by political concerns, have been implemented. The civil service allows permanency for the tenure of TCSs; the civil servants, at all levels, receive a standardised salary based on the civil service pay scale, and civil service pays less compared to NGOs (both for-profit and not-for-profit), even when contrasted to parastatals. There is a weak performance–pay link. Competition among civil service organisations is almost non-existent. Regardless of their type, organisations have low autonomy and mainly rely on the government treasury to run their operations. The public support for civil service is low and etcetera.

The foregoing antecedents affect how administrative leaders are likely to act; that is, they set beliefs as to how the leaders are ideally expected to act. Based on the analysis of the foregoing contextual factors we have approximately identified 11 distinct but interrelated expected leadership roles: (1) diversity-oriented leadership, (2) community-based/cohesive leadership, (3) Ubuntu, (4) paternalistic leadership, (5) group/relation-oriented leadership, (6) directive/autocratic leadership, (7) result-oriented leadership, (8) political loyalty leadership, (9) rule-following leadership, (10) integrity-oriented leadership, and (11) change-oriented leadership.

Then next we studied the leadership roles that Ethiopian civil service managers preferably embody in their setting. The study was informed by Q-methodology. Using Q‑methodology, we examined the belief system of 51 managers from federal civil service organisations covering a diverse policy field. As a result, three distinct yet interrelated archetypes of leadership roles were identified. These perspectives were labeled as change agents, affective leaders, and result-oriented realists. Briefly, those ascribed to the change agents loaded high on the thoughts related to the leader’s behavioral dimensions aimed at change; the affective leaders stressed people and relationship management, and result-oriented realists emphasised goal accomplishments. The study, however, demonstrates that although the ostensible echoes of each of these perspectives were professed, there were overlooked functions that are needed to be performed for full practice of each.

As Q-results are not generalisable, a follow-up survey was also conducted, among other reasons, to test the commonness of Q‑typologies in the population. The result revealed that although the affective leadership perspective comes out on top, there is almost a balanced distribution of the TCSs over the Q-methodologically identified role preferences. Then again, we did not stop asking about the prevalence of the Q‑perspective only. We have added meta-questions to uncover important but hidden viewpoints. Through this exercise, additional roles, although not highly cited, were identified. The new views reflected the ‘rule-following’–, ‘political loyalty–’, and ‘accountability–’ leadership.

As can be observed from the foregoing findings, we uncovered a clear incongruence between the expected– and the preferred– leadership roles. Indeed, the preferred roles are the subset of the broader expected roles. The expected roles are identified based on the analysis of the context. Their exhaustiveness, however, is the subject of further research. In fact, as the public sector environment is changing, new competencies to play new roles to cope up with it should continually be added. Likewise, the listed roles are not one-size-fits-all functions. Some of these roles may be more important in some organisations than in others. Indeed, in a highly changing and ambiguous environment, a single approach to leading may not be appropriate. Such context necessitates ‘both. . . and’ thinking rather than ‘either. . . or’ thinking.

Then next, we examined how the TDIs plan and implement their training programme for civil servants in general and TCSs in particular. The exercise to examine whether the TDIs’ training programmes embrace the competencies that lead to mastery of the expected– and preferred– leadership roles uncovered that the content of TDIs training programmes is narrowly focused. It appears to boldly enhance the competencies to exercise result-oriented leadership and change-oriented leadership. The topics that uphold the ideals of Ubuntu, ‘diversity-oriented leadership’, ‘paternalistic leadership’ and so forth are completely absent in the catalogue of the TDIs’ open training programmes.

We therefore dealt with the how of reconciling the incongruence between the preferred– and expected– leadership roles. Such attempts call for building the capacity of both the individual leaders and the institutions. These two actions are inseparable. For the former, we suggested developing individuals’ skills, for instance through training and development, and for the latter, measures for developing the institutional ‘capacity utilisation and absorptive capacity’ are proposed.

 To conclude, the present work is motivated by calls for context-specific research and to unravel the pragmatic leadership problems in Ethiopian federal civil service organisations. We hope to contribute to both and expect that the insights developed in this dissertation invite further research and discourse.