A comparative analysis of 'high' and 'low' performance government institutions at MACRO, MESO and MICRO levels in oromia regional state against high performance factors

High performance government is vital for all countries; but more than any other things for developing countries like Ethiopia in general and Oromia Regional State in particular where much is expected from government to play custodian role, producer role, midwife role and husbandry role in line with self-declared democratic developmental state. High performance government in turn depends on high-performing public organizations, high performance teams and high performing individual public servants. In effect, this dissertation is aimed at assessing the status of high performance practices of public entities at four tiers; namely government-wide, public organizations, teams and individuals through comparative analysis of the reported high performance and low performance categories. To this end, descriptive-inferential and mixed research approach are used to describe the status of high performance practices at each level and test existence of statistically significant difference between the reported high performance and low performance ones based on primary and secondary data collected through document analysis, questionnaires and interview. In order to carry out these analyses, primary data were collected from 851 leaders categorized as high performance and low performance, 487 public servants from high performance and low performance sectors and 748 beneficiaries at service stations and public meetings and trainings; as well as 54 interviewees comprising of sector heads and deputy heads and member of the Caffee Oromia Standing Committee. The finding showed that government wide system designs are rated positively, while core management functions, accountability status, status of regional government capacity to deliver and status of public trust are all rated negatively. In connection with comparison of high performance and low performance public organizations there is statistically significant difference between the two in terms of leadership quality, organizational system quality, human resource quality, public service performance quality and citizens-public sectors partnership quality. By the same token, there is also statistically significant difference between high performance and low performance team concerning team objectives, team values and team roles. Finally, there is statistically significant difference between high performance and low performance public servants pertaining to competency, attitude, ethics and outlook. It is therefore recommended that political will, public will and organizational will should be raised and integrated; as well as hardware(institutions) and software(human) should be transformed towards creating and sustaining high performance government system in the region.