Capacity-building for the transformation of public service

Abstract

The past few years have witnessed a wave of unrest in Egypt toppling down two regimes in less than three years. Yet was this sufficient to bringing the demanded change and meeting people’s expectations? In several Arab countries, citizens are offered patronage through public sector employment, subsidies, and limited taxation (Razzaz and Razzaz, 2012). The social contract imbalance offers little support to citizen voice and representation of all segments of society in holding governments accountable. Given the numerous challenges ranging from an overinflated bureaucracy resulting from the guaranteed employment since Nasser’s era, to the declining quality of the available pool of workers and to regulations that hinder its development, capacity building of would pose as one of the least costly areas of potential quick reform (Beissinger et al, 2013; El Baradei and Newcomer, 2008; ETF, 2011; Radwan, 2012; World Bank, 2013). Public management literature implies that a political will and government-endorsed reforms tend to have a higher rate of success (Meyer-Sahling 2011; Nakrošis, 2014). This reflects on the organizational willingness and commitment to training and training transfer (Lim and Morris, 2006; Nakrošis, 2014). Based on previous research in the field that links institutional enabling factors and a committed political will to effective capacity building (Adetunji, 2012; Lim and Morris, 2006; Majeed, 2010; Meyer-Sahling 2011; Nakrošis, 2014; Newcomer et al., 2010; OECD, 1997, Rondineli, 2004) this research will examine the institutional challenges to capacity building in Egypt post the Arab Spring. The methodology utilized depends on a literature review of primary and secondary sources for grounded theory qualitative research on capacity building and institutional enabling factors. The findings are linked to a qualitative analysis to probe the perceptions of public service mid-career managerial level professionals and to identify their perceived expectations of whether training institutions would be effective in transforming public service. Managerial levels were selected to enable probing the commitment of institutions. Two empirical tools were utilized: interviews and surveys. The first tool was a number of in-depth face-to-face structured interviews conducted with 24 informed sources representing senior managerial level public service managers. The second tool was a survey which was distributed both online and in hard copy. The survey targeted a purposive sample of 350 mid-managerial level public service managers of which 324 were received. Thus, exceeding the critical sample size of 200 identified by Joseph Hair and his colleagues (1998) in deciding about the sufficient sample size for empirical research. Data collection took a total of seven months, from June to December 2013, and was approved by the American University in Cairo Institutional Review Board.