Renewing the Holy Grail of human motivation in the delivery of public service : Evidence from Ghana's Local Government 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 public sector leadership to behave and act as private sector entrepreneurs, it is difficult to pursue a worker motivation agenda based on a “private sector management model”, since the public and private sectors have different policy goals and business objectives to accomplish. Originality/value – The value of this paper lies in its ability to argue that although the managerial assumptions of new public management reform seem to be realistic for public sector actors, they are more often than not challenged to be innovative and adaptive, unlike their private sector counterparts, on the question of worker motivation.