- Title
- Performance-based strategies for improving service quality in electricity regulation in developing countries: the Nigerian experience
- Creator
- Obi, Chikwerem Ukaobasi
- Subject
- Electricity--Government policy--Developing countries
- Subject
- Public administration
- Date
- 2015-03
- Type
- Doctoral theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/24868
- Identifier
- vital:63665
- Description
- Service quality is a relatively new concept in the regulatory lexicon. It has emerged as a critical factor in post-reform regulation of electricity distribution networks and it is a multi-dimensional concept in regulatory policy that connotes standard of performance in service delivery. Regulators establish performance standards by defining clearly the quality of service the customer deserves given the price paid. It is in recognition of the fact that customers are highly sensitive to the level of service delivered to them, and they value the speed and accuracy with which their requests are handled that have made service quality critical in the electricity value chain. The level of quality provided to individual customers is generally distributed over a range of values. Hence, regulators are mainly concerned with the protection of the worst-served customers and the possibility that a group of customers might receive unacceptably low levels of service quality. The major objective of this study is to ascertain how service quality regulation can improve electricity distribution in Nigeria. In doing this, the research gave a general overview of the study as an introduction in chapter one; it went on to review the available literature in chapter two. Chapter three conceptualizes the framework of the study by identifying the New Public Management (NPM) as a catalyst for effective regulation, followed by a case study of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission in chapter four. In chapter five, the study employed the Likert attitudinal scale sampling technique and the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) as the methodologies for data analysis in the research. The data presentation and interpretation were carried out in chapter six by presenting the results of the customer survey and outlining the key performance indicators (KPIs) based on the following three areas of service quality: technical indicators, financial indicators and customer-service indicators, which finally dovetailed into the summary, recommendations and conclusion in chapter seven. The performance of the privatized DISCOs was assessed by means of descriptive analysis by administering questionnaires, trend analysis and technical efficiency estimations using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) techniques. The estimates were carried out by means of the Frontier 4.1 software and were based on three assumptions of returns to scale. The findings revealed that the average industry performance for DISCOs dropped from 95% before privatization to 82% after privatization. This relatively poor performance may well have been caused by the reluctance of the private investors, who now own majority shares in the DISCOs, to invest in the retrofitting and upgrading of the network infrastructure existing before they took over. The implication of this finding is not a condemnation of the recentlyconcluded privatization of the power sector in Nigeria, but probably the private investors’ desperation to recover their investment at the expense of public interest for quality service given that most of the investors acquired the utilities with shortterm funds.
- Description
- Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Management and Commerce, 2015
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (xvi, 258 pages)
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Management and Commerce
- Language
- English
- Rights
- rights holder
- Rights
- All Rights Reserved
- Rights
- Open Access
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Collections
UFH Department of Public Administration
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details | SOURCE1 | Chikwerem Final Thesis.pdf | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details |