- Title
- Human Resource Development model for cultivating a culture of innovation in local government: the case of Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa
- Creator
- Mutangabende, Shepherd https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3231-7400
- Subject
- Local government -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Subject
- Economic development -- South Africa
- Subject
- Local government -- Technological innovations -- South Africa
- Date
- 2022-08
- Type
- Doctoral theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/28817
- Identifier
- vital:75128
- Description
- Local government in South Africa is grappling with transforming democratic, accountable, and sustainable service provision to communities. Human Resource Management (HRM) plays an instrumental role in cultivating an innovative public service culture. It enables such a culture through workforce planning, recruitment, selection, induction, rewarding, budget allocation, training, and development. A culture of innovation provides an opportunity for local government to respond to pressing local needs within legislative and financial constraints. This study adopted a pragmatic research philosophy, and an exploratory sequential mixed methods research strategy and case study research design, to investigate human resources development strategies for cultivating a culture of innovation in local government, using a case study of Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality, in South Africa. Qualitative data was collected from twenty (n=20) purposefully sampled information-rich participants through indepth interviews and quantitative data from eighty (n=80) line officials using a structured questionnaire. Research findings indicate that HRM in BCMM is not optimally utilising HRM strategies to cultivate a culture of innovation. Study results show insufficiency of qualified human capital, which therefore, impose constraints on the capacity of the municipality to optimally cultivate a culture of innovation. Findings show that participants in leadership positions often lacked requisite knowledge and capacity on workforce planning, which is necessary for human capital needs analysis and for identifying skills gaps, which would subsequently inform recruitment and selection, induction, and human resources development of municipal human capital. Recruitment and selection processes as well as induction programmes are also often devoid of innovation human resources development practices and strategies. There were often not much rewards for employees who come up with innovative ideas or methods of executing their key performance areas. Lack of rewards was a barrier to innovation as the question of “what is in it for me?” remain unanswered. This could be the reason why there were few innovative activities taking place in local government and the case study municipality. Results further suggest that the organisational culture of the case study municipality was mostly conservative, as employees did not have fecund opportunities for trial and error of new methods of executing performance tasks, often strictly adhering to standard operating procedures. The organisational culture in the case study municipality was thus risk aversive, and a significant barrier to innovation. There was often poor communication on the availability of budget allocation for innovation. The study, therefore, recommended more effective and innovative workforce planning and using that information during recruitment and selection. It also recommended using rewards to motivate employees to be innovative, allowing trial and error, to test new ideas and methods as ways of cultivating a culture of innovation. There is thus a significant need and demand for transformation and innovation in local governance, heightened by increasing municipal dysfunction and citizen expectation. As such, providing human capital with requisite knowledge and skills, retaining talent, and inducing human resources to be immobile, build up high performance work systems (HPWS), essential for achieving sustainable local government functionality and municipal performance. Human Resource Development thus play a significant role, as it essentially provides training and development programmes to equip workers with innovative skills needed in local government. The study thus developed and recommended a human resource development model which could be contextually adapted by municipalities to cultivate and foster a culture of innovation for optimum municipal functionality.
- Description
- Thesis (DPA) -- Faculty of Management and Commerce, 2022
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (xviii, 354 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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- Downloads: 4
Collections
UFH Department of Public Administration
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Mutangabende_201105355_Public Administration.pdf | 10 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |