Enhancing service delivery through organisational justice: The case of a local Municipality in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa

Abstract

This research aims to determine, from the perspectives of municipal workers, how a local municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, could enhance service delivery through organisational justice. As a concept, organisational justice refers to employees' perceptions of the fairness of organisational rules and policies, their actions and attitudes about their work, and their confidence in or mistrust of management. We contend that maintaining organisational justice may help could resolve various delivery service issues. Guided by the social exchange theory (SET), municipal workers' opinions were accessed through a qualitative research design. In-depth interviews were used as data collection tools. The collected data were examined iteratively and critically. It was found that Municipal employees thought a just workplace was one that was calm, where management distributed resources equally to all employees (distributive justice), applied policies and procedures consistently (procedural justice), provided truthful justifications for all decisions made (informational justice), and engaged in quality interpersonal interaction with all employees while putting organisational procedures into practice (interactional justice). However, processed data indicated that there was a disparity in resource distribution, a lack of transparency and participatory decision-making processes, a deficiency in information provision, and a culture of dismissiveness among municipal officials in the municipality. All these factors hindered effective service delivery.

Keywords

• Organisational justice, service delivery, local municipality, policies and procedures, resource distribution, organisational outcomes.