Can organisations learn without political leadership? The case of public sector reform among South African Home Affairs officials

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Periodical article

Title:	Can organisations learn without political leadership? The case of public sector reform among South African Home Affairs officials
Editors:	Segatti, Aurelia Hoag, Colin Vigneswaran, Darshan
Year:	2012
Periodical:	Politique africaine (ISSN 0244-7827)
Issue:	128
Pages:	121-142
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	civil servants administrative reform bureaucracy
External link:	https://doi.org/10.3917/polaf.128.0121
Abstract:	This paper deals with the transformation of 'institutional culture' in bureaucratic agencies. This is explored in the context of postapartheid South African public sector reform, and more particularly that of migration management within the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). Little attention has been paid to understanding policy implementation from the perspective of civil servants themselves. The paper assesses the effects on staff's perceptions and practices of a politically driven attempt at inculcating a new sense of 'service delivery'. Structural factors are not found to have been prevalent determinants explaining the difficulties in implementing the reform. It is rather the failure of the political leadership to address the lack of a shared sense of mission and the range of unintended, counter-productive effects, elicited by the reform itself which explain the overall incapacity to amend perceptions and behaviours among civil servants. Notes, réf., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]