An Assessment of Strategic and Administrative Policies Towards Service Delivery in A Bureaucratic Environment: The Case of Nigeria (Published)
The need to demonstrate managerial excellence by public and private administrators in Nigeria cannot be overemphasized. Bureaucrats are saddled with the responsibilities of managing public funds, budget implementation/performance integration, amongst others; as such there is the need for strategic policies to regulate and enhance their activities for effective/efficient service delivery. These strategic and administrative policies are targeted towards pressing issues in the public domain. Previous policies have been overly ambitious with government employing substantive strategies, which have proven quite successful in some other climes, to achieve large scale industrialization, whilst much attention has not been given to providing the necessary framework conditions to support the growth of strategic and administrative policies. The study provides an insight to strategic and administrative policies. The study is thus expected to enlighten/sensitize administrators to adhere strictly to carefully laydown governmental policies that are geared towards improving efficient service delivery. The study took its research methods from the empirical perspectives, and its theoretical framework from administrative policy. The study recommended, that policy pronouncements by the government and its’ agencies should conform with human and environmental devolvement in both public and private sectors in the country. Hence government is expected to deal more specifically with policies that are strategic in nature.
Keywords: Bureaucracy, Service delivery, administrative policy, strategic policy
Assessing University Students’ Satisfaction with Service Delivery: Implications for Educational Management (Published)
The study investigated students’ satisfaction with service delivery in universities in Akwa Ibom and Cross River States, Nigeria. Five areas of service delivery namely library, health, transportation, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and hostel services were considered in the study. The extent to which students’ satisfaction with service delivery varied with types of institution was also examined. Survey research design was adopted for the study. Five research questions and one hypothesis guided the study. The population of the study comprised all the undergraduate students in four universities in the study area. Simple random sampling technique was used to draw a sample of 1466 (915 from federal owned and 551 from state owned universities) students for the study. The instrument for data collection was titled “Students’ Satisfaction with Service Delivery Questionnaire (ASSSDQ)”. The reliability of the instrument using Cronbach Alpha method was 0.85. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) and independent t-test. The hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. Findings obtained revealed that majority of the respondents indicated dissatisfaction with library, hostel, as well as Information and communication services, while they showed moderate satisfaction with health and transport services. It was also found that students’ satisfaction with service delivery in terms of library and health services significantly differed by their institution’s affiliation, while they did not show significant difference in their satisfaction with transport, ICT and hostel services. Recommendations for improvement in service delivery in universities were made one of which being that all services that contributes to students’ academic life in the universities are delivered to an acceptable and satisfactory standard.
Keywords: Educational Management, Service delivery, Students’ Satisfaction, Universities