Kwabena Barima Antwi

Reforming public sector

Purpose – This paper seeks to explore and understand the public sector reform (PSR) as it affects local governments in Ghana within the context of challenges facing human resource capacity building and development policies.Design/methodology/approach – Adopting an exploratory case study design, the research triangulated both secondary and primary sources of data. Primary data generated from self‐completing questionnaire and interview schedule tools covering 105 local government employees selected from national, regional and district levels. Semi‐structured interviews also solicited views from 16 senior public officers and managers in nine public and quasi‐public organizations. These primary sources were complemented with relevant secondary documents from the organizations investigated.Findings – Amongst others, it was found that Ghanas PSR has significantly influenced the strategic direction of human resource development policies of the decentralized local government service. Major human resource capacit...

Explicit Modeling of Spatial Growth Patterns in Shama, Ghana: an Agent-Based Approach

The integration of geographic information systems (GIS) and agent-based models (ABMs) can be an efficient tool to improve spatial planning practices. This paper utilizes GIS and ABM approaches to simulate spatial growth patterns of settlement structures in Shama. A preliminary household survey on residential location decision-making choice served as the behavioural rule for the household agent while physical environment properties extracted from a 2005 image provided the inputs for the model. The resulting growth pattern model implemented in NetLogo was compared with empirical growth patterns to ascertain model accuracy. The paper establishes that the development of unplanned structures and its evolving structural pattern is a function of land price, proximity to economic centres, household economic status, and location decision-making patterns. The application of the proposed model underlines its potential for integration into urban planning policies and practices and for extending the understanding of residential decision-making processes in emerging cities in developing countries.

Renewing the Holy Grail of human motivation in the delivery of public service

Purpose – This paper draws on a recent case study in Ghana that explored the human resource development (HRD) challenges facing local government in a reforming public sector. It aims to investigate how public sector reform (PSR) has affected worker motivation and effectiveness among civil servants (bureaucrats) serving local government at all levels of operation.Design/methodology/approach – Based on an exploratory case study design, the work triangulates both secondary and primary sources of data. Primary data were generated from self‐completing questionnaire and interview schedule tools covering 105 local government employees from national, regional and district levels. Key person interviews also solicited views from 16 senior public officers and managers in nine public and quasi‐public organisations. These primary sources are complemented with relevant secondary documents from the organisations investigated.Findings – The main finding of the study is that while the new public management reform expects ...