SELECTED MANAGEMENT PRACTICES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE QUALITY OF PUBLIC SERVICES IN MASINDI TOWN COUNCIL

Abstract

Masindi Town Council’s vision is having a modern urban centre. Its mission is to provide quality and sustainable mandated services in order to improve the socio-economic wellbeing of the target resident, together with the daytime, community. The present research was an inquiry into the extent to which management practices were responsible for the quality of delivery of these services. To this end management practices were presented as an independent variable, while the quality of public services was the dependent variable. The researcher explored the background to the study which involved the historical perspective, the theory that drove the research, the concepts that oiled it and the context in which it was seen. Various studies and assessments by different governmental agencies were done before to determine the service delivery levels in local governments countrywide, MTC inclusive, and what could explain those performances. The results were unimpressive. Because there was no record that management practices could be one of the explanations, it became imperative for this research to be undertaken immediately. The study, covering the period between 2005/06 and 2008/09 financial years, was carried out within the geographical boundaries of MTC. It was hypothesized that there was a relationship between conflict resolution and the quality of public services, that decision making contributed to the quality of the services, and that clarifying team member roles contributed to the quality of these services, in MTC. Targeted respondents were 82 and the questionnaire return rate was 73.2 percent, which was good enough for the research project to proceed. It confirmed all the hypotheses.