An Investigation Into the Impact of Merging Town and District Councils in Malawi on Employees

An investigation into the impact of merging Town and District Councils in Malawi on employees and service delivery: A case study of Salima District Council

Blessings Bernard Malamulo Nkhoma

Student No:1208100/1

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Master of Science Degree in Project Management

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Off Campus Division: Malawi Institute of Management (MIM)

The University of Bolton University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

Date: 23rd April 2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures and Tables...... Error! Bookmark not defined.

DEDICATION...... 6

Abstract...... 7

Acknowledgements...... 8

Chapter 1: Introduction...... 9

1.1 Background...... 9

1.2. Research Questions...... 11

1.3. Specific Objectives...... 11

1.4. Rationale...... 11

Chapter 2: Literature Review...... 14

2.1. Introduction...... 14

2.2. Merger and change drivers...... 15

2.3. Approaches to change in an organisation...... 17

2.4. Consequences of merger or change in an organisation...... 25

2.5 Conclusion...... 25

Chapter 3: Research Methodology...... 27

3.1. Research paradigm, philosophy and approach...... 27

3.2. Research methodology/approaches and strategy...... 28

3.3. Sampling...... 30

3.4. Data collection techniques...... 31

3.4.1 Interviews...... 31

3.4.2. Questionnaires...... 31

3.4.3. Focus Group Discussions...... 32 2 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

3.5. Data analysis...... 32

3.6. Time Horizon...... 33

3.7. Validity and Reliability...... 33

3.8. Conclusion...... 33

Chapter 4: Findings...... 34

4.2. Survey Results...... 34

4.2.1. Questionnaire findings...... 34

A. Respondents information...... 34

B. Survey results...... 37

4.2.2. A summary of key findings from Focus Group Discussions...... 44

4.2.2.1. Source of information:...... 44

4.2.2.2. Attitudes, perception and feelings about the merger...... 44

4.2.3. A summary of the telephone interviews...... 46

Chapter 5: Analysis of findings...... 47

Chapter 6: Conclusion...... 57

6.2. Merger’s effects on employees...... 57

6.3. Effects on Service delivery...... 59

6.4. Research Limitations...... 59

6.5. Recommendations...... 60

6.6. Areas for further research...... 61

Bibliography...... 62

Appendices...... 67

Appendix 1: Council categories before merger...... 67

3 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

Appendix 2: Areas of service delivery as is provided in the Decentralisation policy...... 68

Appendix 3: Research Questionnaire...... 72

Questionnaire A: to be administered at council level...... 72

Questionnaire B: Ministry level...... 80

Questionnaire C: Council level targeting the DC and Council Directors...... 83

Appendix 4: RAW DATA SETS...... 92

Appendix 5: Summary results from the focus group discussions...... 115

Appendix 6: Summary of telephone interviews with key informants...... 119

List of Tables

Table 1: Categories of councils in Malawi as of July 2014------10

Table 2: comparison of Pritchett's and Myatt's concepts on change landscape------18

Table 3: Consequences of change and attitude towards change------19

Table 4: Comparison of change models and theories------21

Table 5: Philosophical position ...------27

Table 6: Respondents by gender------34

Table 7: Respondents' marital status------35

Table 8: Management meeting attendance------36

Table 9: Respondent's length of service------36

Table 10: Respondent's previous council------37

Table 11: Sources of information------37

Table 12: Adequacy of information------38

Table 13: Reasons why information was inadequate?------38

Table 14: Respondents' list of expectations------40

Table 15: Merger's effects on respondent's job------41

Table 16: List of effects on departments------42

Table 17: categories of service delivery------42

Table 18: Affected areas of service delivery------43

Table 19: Recommendations from respondents------43

Table 20: Prioritized list of expectations------51

Table 21: Prioritized list of fears------51

Table 22: Annual locally generated revenues------52

Table of Figure

Figure 1: The concept map...... 13

Figure 2: Attitude versus behaviour...... 20

Figure 3: ADKAR's change model...... 24

Figure 4: Pie chart on level of respondent's preparedness...... 48

Figure 5: A graph on sources of information...... 49

Figure 6: A pie chart on adequacy of information...... 50

Figure 7: A graph on locally generated revenue...... 53

Figure 8: A graph on locally generated revenue without amounts of plot sales...... 54

Figure 9: A graph on revenue collected from market establishments (town)...... 55

Figure 10: A picture of a sewage tanker and Lorry...... 56

Figure 11: Link between merger and service delivery...... 59

DEDICATION

To my mum, Eletina,

my beloved wife, Masida

my the three children: Melvyn, Merlyssa and Marvelous,

who stood by my side faithfully and sincerely encouraged me to soldier on.

To God Almighty, your grace was indeed in abundance. Thanks for taking me through as per your promise.

Abstract If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, Kotter J. (1995:110). This is the thinking of resistors to change and they prefer maintaining the status quo. It is however said that ‘Change’ is inevitable in life and that those that don’t change are bound to stagnate or fail (Harvard Business Essentials, 2003) in life.

Professor Bingu wa Mutharika, the then president of Malawi, through powers vested in him by the Local Government Act 1998, section 3 & 4 directed that all Town Councils be merged with their respective District Councils. He was compelled by results of a study conducted by Department of Human Resource Management and Development. The study recommended for merging the said councils so that service delivery is improved on the part of the council and operational costs on the part of central government is reduced.

The proponents of the merger thought that it will bring about synergy as is suggested by Henry, (2008:221)… the total output from the combined businesses is greater than the output of the businesses operating individually. However, the research has revealed that the newly established council is struggling in providing its mandatory services to people, contrary to the above stated expectations. Municipal services such as sanitation, road and street, just to mention a few, have suffered quite a lot. It is imperative, therefore that the ministry deliberately engages the district council to review effectiveness of the merger as soon as possible. On the other hand the district council should develop and implement staff motivational strategies since it has been noted that most of the junior staff are de-motivated.

Acknowledgements

I would like to sincerely thank Lytton Nkata and Smith Mnenula for their perseverance on the persistent knocks on their doors during the time the dissertation was being written. Sincere gratitude goes to my dear sister, Rachel Ngwira and the entire team of Hour of Grace Ministries for the spiritual support. Thanks go to the District Commissioner, Reverend Moses Owen Chimphepo, who consciously approved my annual leave despite the council having huge amount of work. I also owe all participants in the dissertation a pat on their back for a job well done.

A sincere vote of thanks should go to Alex Chanza. It was not an easy ride but I soldiered on because of his professional words of encouragements. A very special thank you goes to Dr. Mathews Madola for his precious advices. I really cry for our short-lived but fruitful interaction.

Finally, I would like to give an olive branch to Dr. Easton Siment-Phiri. I have reached this far because of him. May God bless him. I will leave to remember Bernd Schubert, a German, who squared the tuition fee bill for me. Yes! Indeed, blessed is the hand that giveth, God bless him.

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Background

The Local Government System in Malawi, through Decentralisation policy recognizes four types of councils namely; City, Municipal, Town and District. The system is constitutionally and legally recognized (Section 146 of the Constitution of Malawi). The system came into effect when the Local Government Act [Cap 22:01] was enacted in 1998. There were by then, forty (40) councils which comprised twenty eight (28) districts, eight (8) towns, one (1) municipality and three (3) cities. Councils exist as vehicles for service delivery.

A study conducted by Department of Human Resources Management and Development on how effective town and district councils are, showed that councils were failing to generate enough resources independently to meet respective community demands (service delivery). Hence it recommended for a merger of the councils under study. The anticipation was that there shall be improvement in revenue generation as such service delivery will in turn improve. This reasoning is in consonant with Henry (2008:221), who argued that combined resources create a synergy which occurs when the total output from the combined businesses is greater than the output of the businesses operating individually. The study further argued that merging would reduce operational costs (more especially in the area of remuneration). The position of Chief Executive will no longer be there. All directorates will also be headed by a single Director.

The President, through powers vested in him by the Local Government Act (1998), section 3 & 4 that he can … confer the title and dignity of “city” on any Municipality and that ‘the President may, by notice published in the Gazette, amend the First Schedule.,

9 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 was compelled to give a directive to merge towns with their respective district councils on 22nd February 2010. The table below shows the number of councils by type or category in Malawi: Table 1: Categories of councils in Malawi as of July 2014

Council category Old New Remarks 1. District 28 28 None changed status 2. City 3 4 Zomba turned into a city. Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu were the only cities before the directive. 3. Municipality 1 2 Kasungu and Luchenza which were towns became municipalities 4. Town 8 1 Mangochi was re-established as a town council by the former president Dr. Joyce Banda in 2012 Totals 40 35

There was a reduction in number of councils from 40 to 35 as a result of the merger, see table 1 above.

“A change isn’t a change until people are doing things differently,” Knowles G. (2006). Change entails moving away from the status quo. The merger itself meant that employees from both councils, being the main enablers of change as is stated by EFQM excellence model, should reposition themselves to suit anticipated new environment. The researcher has a strong a conviction that employees’ perception, feelings and attitude towards the change had a greater impact on how the merger impacted on the service delivery. Charles Darwin said ‘It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change’. It does not matter who you are but how you respond to the change. The question is how did the employees respond to the merger? Kourdi (2003:122) stated that merger (change) brings about fears and uncertainties. The fears and uncertainties centres around retrenchment, demotion and a change in responsibilities. These culminate into employee resistance if they are not checked before change is introduced, Taylor et al (1992).

1.2. Research Questions This research will attempt to answer questions on: 1. Whether indeed the merger had any effect on council employees and 2. Whether the merger had any impact on the overall council’s service delivery 10 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

1.3. Specific Objectives The following are specific objectives of the research:  To critically analyse some of the available and relevant literature on organisational change and merger  To establish the extent to which council employees were affected by the merger.  To determine and analyse the effects of the merger on council’s service delivery..  To provide recommendations to policy makers at national and district level and others on lessons learnt from the councils’ merger.

1.4. Rationale As has been stated above, town and district councils were merged with an aim of improving the service delivery. It is five years now and one would expect that signs of improvement on service delivery would have started manifesting themselves in the newly established councils.

Salima district had two councils namely: Salima Town and Salima District Councils. These were operating independently. The President then, directed that these councils should merge. Hence they became one entity in February, 2010.

A merger occurs when two organisations join together to share their combined resources, Henry (2008:230). It is further argued that the combined resources will create a synergy which occurs when the total output from the combined businesses is greater than the output of the businesses operating individually, Henry (2008:221). The Department of Human Resource thought that merging the two councils would bring an improved service delivery. It thought that the merged council would become stronger and more efficient in service delivery than before. However this depends more on how the principle enablers of change (in this case, council employees) have been managed during the change or merging process. Employees are a key to the successful implementation of any change and realization of the change/merger objectives. Taylor et al (1992) concluded that people’s attitude towards change process is a major determinant of success. He therefore highlighted three key activities that can lead to successful change in an organisation. The first is creating willingness to the impending 11 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 change. This is suggesting that it is of great importance to build awareness in the employees prior to introduction of any change. It assumes that well informed people or employees make sound decision about the impending change and that can lead to its successful implementation. Taylor’s second key activity is involvement of employees (people) in the change process. This entails that employees or people must always be carried through the entire process of change. It is observed that change without employee (people) involvement is deemed to be imposed on them and it usually meets strong resistance. Finally, it is about activities sustaining momentum. Benefits or gains brought by the change are supposed to be maintained so that change can be consolidated in the organization. It is not yet known whether the change understudy took consideration of the three key issues, Taylor et al (1992), proposed.

It is therefore against such a background that the researcher would like to investigate the impact of the merger on council employees and its service delivery.;

It is believed that, in the end, the policy makers at national as well at district level inclusive of the reader would be informed of how council employees perceived the whole process of merging the said councils. Secondly, they will be informed of effects brought about by the merger to the council. The challenges encountered and lessons learnt from implementation of the merger will enlighten the policy makers and all relevant authorities to appreciate how, if given another chance, they would bring about change in an organisation.

Figure 1: The concept map

WHY THE WHO INITIATED THE CHANGE/MERGER EMPLOYEESCHANGE/MERGER? (HUMAN): 12 | P a g e ? National level Perception, HOW? MERGER/CHANGEfeelings & REVENUES COUNCILCOUNCIL COMMUNICATIONEQUIPMENT Distric reactions (FINANCIAL) SERVICECOMMUNITIESRESOURCESOPERATIONS DELIVERY (MATERIAL)STRATEGIES! t level University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.1. Introduction

Why change? Is change important? Harvard Business Essentials (2003) stated that change is inevitable in life and that those that don’t change are bound to stagnate or fail. Chapter one introduced the research topic (An investigation into the impact of merging town and district councils in Malawi on their respective employees and service delivery). It has also looked at the background of why councils merged; rationale of the research; research questions, aims and objectives. At the back of our mind, we should understand that the overall objective of merger (change), according to the study carried 13 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 out by Human Resource Management Department (HRMD) in 2008/2009 fiscal year, was improving the councils’ service delivery. This chapter intends to do a thorough search of some of the available and relevant literature on both ‘merger’ and ‘change’. The review will concentrate much on theories, models and concepts around the two aforementioned terms.

The merging of town and district councils is, in this research, regarded as a ‘change’ that was introduced in the Local Government System. In this case the terms ‘merger’ and ‘change’ will be used simultaneously. Zotisk (2005), defined a merger as ‘…a combination of two firms to form a single entity’. Whereas, Henry (2008:230) defined the same as a process which occurs when two organisations join together to share their combined resources. It can therefore be deduced from the above definitions that a merger is not just a one-off-event but a process. On the other hand, ‘change’ means the new state of things is different from the old state of things, French & Bell (1999:2). This means ‘change’ is a move away from the status-quo. Kotter (1995:3) concluded that … ‘change’ … goes through a series of phases that in total usually require a considerable length of time. Change being a process, Knowles (2006) argued that “There is no greater task than the development of change …. That’s why it is imperative to examine whether the understanding that merger and change are both processes and require considerable time and carefully planned activities before being introduced in an organisation.

2.2. Merger and change drivers

It has been observed that mergers take place with various reasons. Andrade 2001, explained five reasons why mergers occur. The drivers, according to him, are based on the economic theory, which include; efficiency-related reasons …; attempts to create market power …; market discipline …; self-serving attempts by acquirer management to “over-expand” and other agency costs; and take advantage of opportunities for diversification…. As opposed to Andrade, Zotisk (2005) brought about three generic factors which are performance related factors; market related factors and agency (management) related factors. From the look of things, councils’ merger was primarily

14 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 due to efficiency or performance related factors. It aimed at cutting administrative costs and improving service delivery.

Economic Research Service/USDA introduced two leading M&A efficiency theories which adequately explain the performance or efficiency related factors. These include discipline and synergetic merger motives. Disciplinary mergers theory suggests that M&As discipline target firms’ managers who pursue objectives other than profit maximization. This entails that there are some managers whose focus is more on organisational objective and goals. And they do not mind about maximizing organisational profits. Local Government Act, (1998:5), stipulates that councils are there to further constitutional order based on democratic principles, accountability, transparency and participation of the people in decision-making and development processes. Some council heads (Chief Executive or District Commissioners) may have been focusing much on the fulfillment of the above stated objective forgetting that councils require financial resources to operate properly. Councils’ service delivery requires quite a lot of resources and hence would improve if focus is on both elements. Synergistic mergers’ theory, according to the same author (Economic Research Service/USDA), explains that … firm managers achieve efficiency or performance gains by combining an efficient target with their business and then improving the target’s performance. This theory believes that the summation of two plus two (2+2) may sometimes be equal to five (5). It basically assumes that the newly formed firm can perform far much better than combining efforts of the two merged firms. This is indeed one of the reasons why councils were merged. They thought merging the two would result into a better performing council than the two working independently.

Profit making firms or organisations find it hard in some instances to penetrate into the existing market. As such they first of all think of how to amass power for a successful entry into the market. Power is amassed through forming monopolies or oligopolies. Monopoly is defined as exclusive control of commodity or service in a particular market or sufficient control to fix prices and eliminate competition, MacMillan/Mc Graw-Hill School Dictionary, (1993). While oligopoly is a state of limited competition in which a market is shared by so few producers that they can affect the prices and other

15 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 conditions of the market place for their produce or products without having a marketing agreement among themselves. This means that monopolies exist when a single enterprise becomes a sole supplier of a commodity or service while oligopolies are a form of markets where the market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers called oligopolists. The monopoly form of merger is the one which would apply to the one understudy. These councils were somehow competing for resource base bearing in mind that town council originated from district council. In the current scenario, all resource bases are under one umbrella-district council. The question is, has this improved the service delivery?

There are times when some firms or organisations may have the desire to grow big by probably increasing the number of their customers. Managers may then decide to merge firms/organisations. A good example is a merger between the Deutche Telekom’s T-Mobile and the France Telecom’s Orange companies based in UK. The merger aimed at creating a giant mobile phone company with 28.4 million customers. It was therefore envisaged that the new company would become the UK’s largest service provider with 37% coverage, overtaking Telefonica’s O2 whose coverage was at 27%. Tom Alexander, the CEO for Telecom’s Orange Company said that, ‘The move means 'better value and better coverage', thus according to BBC news on http ://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8243226.stm. As far as this study is concerned, the researcher is very doubtful whether this may be one of the prime drivers.

2.3. Approaches to change in an organisation

Since merger is considered as change in the study, the researcher would want to look at how change is approached in an organisation. Literature has shown that there are so many approaches to ‘change’. Before discussing the approaches the researcher would like the reader to understand that change is perceived to be in several types. Mabey & Salaman (1995:13) explained that change has two forms. It may be perceived as either deviant (threatening) or normal (desirable). It is further argued that deviant change is deemed to be imposed and outside the prevailing cultural norms of the intended

16 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 organisation. This type of change therefore threatens people and off-course … requires careful implementation to overcome the fears associated with the perception, Thornhill et al (2000). Burnes, (2004:291) indicates that change can either be planned or emergent. Planned change relies too much on the role of the organisation’s managers while emergent is a continuous, dynamic and contested process that emerges in an unpredictable and unplanned fashion, Burnes (2004:291). He further indicated that the proponents of emergent change argue that change is by nature messy, untidy and unpredictable such that planned change is something of an oxymoron, Jumbe T. (2010:11).

It is noted that change, in most cases, faces a lot of resistance from a good number of organisational employees. Pritchet (2006) indicated that, 20 percent of employees tend to support the change right from the start … 50 percent are fence-sitters and the remaining 30 percent tend to oppose the change. In the same manner, Myatt (2012) indicates that change has its own landscape. The landscape is composed of victims, neutral bystanders, critics and advocates. Myatt further argues that ‘one cannot effectively lead change without understanding the landscape of change’. It is therefore important that before one comes up with an approach to change, s/he should in the first place understand the playing field. It is just unfortunate that Myatt did not calibrate his landscape as Pritchett did. Nobody knows how many are in which group.

Table 2: comparison of Pritchett's and Myatt's concepts on change landscape

Pritchett P Supporters Fence-sitters Resisters 20% 30% 50%

Myatt M Advocates Neutral Critics Victims bystanders

Myatt (2012) says, the ‘victims’ are those who view change as a personal attack on their persona, their role, their job, or their area of responsibility and they oppose or resist change. The neutral bystanders are those that are indecisive. They are neither for nor against change. These are just like fence-sitters in the Pritchett’s concept. While the ‘Critics’ are a group of people who in the first place evaluate or judge the situation

17 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 before taking sides, they also act just like the fence-sitters in Pritchett’s concept. Finally, ‘advocates’ is a group of people or employees who according to Myatt do not only embrace change; but evangelize the change initiative. These are just like the first 20 percent (supporters) of Pritchett. This is the group that supports or promotes the change objectives. The researcher believes that these groups would require different approaches for one to have an effective process of introducing change in an organisation. Harvard Business Essentials (2003) stated that envisioning potential stumbling blocks in advance could prevent difficult issues from arising during change process, and help ensure the success of the operation. These standing blocks may be opponents (opposers) and indecisive thus according to Kruger (1994)’s model. He suggested that it is indeed important to identify these groups before introducing any change. Attitudes and how they foresee the consequences of change (positive and negative consequences) play a very great role in implementing change. It is therefore imperative that all these groups of people must be identified and fully known before the change is introduced in an organisation, see the model below. This understanding augurs well with what McCalman & Paton (1992:18) proposed, ‘The implementation of strategic change is likely to be problematic. This is especially likely to be the case in situation where … change involves people and in which personal relationship and emotional responses are predominant’. However the model would have also gone beyond what our eyes are able to see. Kruger would have included percentages of the identified groups as Pritchet did. For example, one would want to know how much (in term of percentages) are promoters, opposers and or indecisive? Percentages are good for planning purposes. On other hand the model has a linear (straight forward) type of thinking. Man’s attitude can change any time. One who is certain about the consequences and has a positive attitude towards the change can deliberately act as an opposer and vice versa. When change is made, the primary concerns centre around: what will this change bring to me? Will I have a job? Do I have the needed skills and knowledge to succeed in the new environment? Prosci (2003). See the table below.

Table 3: Consequences of change and attitude towards change

Uncertain about Wait and see Uncertainty consequences of Indecisive change Have hope Fear Anxiety

Certain about Promoter Opponents consequences of change joy disappointment motivation resignation

enthusiasm disapproval

resistance

Regarded as positive Regarded as negative attitude towards change attitudes towards change

Source: Strategic Leadership course notes

Kruger (1994) argued that the type of attitude and behaviour one has to determine the type of individual he or she is. S/he can be a promoter or an opposer (opponent), a potential promoter or a hidden opponent. Vroom’s (1964) expectancy theory proposes that an individual will decide to behave or act in a certain way because they are motivated to select a specific behaviour (new) over other behaviours (old/status quo) due to what they expect the result of that selected behaviour (new) will be. These groups of people need to be identified before the change is introduced in an organisation.

Figure 2: Attitude versus behaviour

Potential Promoters Positive attitude promoter

Opponents Hidden Negative attitude opponents

Negative behaviour Positive behaviour

Source: Strategic Leadership Course notes

Realising that one cannot easily sail through the change landscape (as is discussed above), change agents use different approaches to introduce change in an organisation. Some of the approaches are discussed below.

Thornhill (2000) came up with two approaches to change: top-down (which is also referred to programmatic approach) and bottom-up approaches (incremental approach). Top-down approach is usually associated with strategic planning … and is designed and driven by an organisation’s senior management, Thornhill et al (2000:15). Of course it is believed that this approach is necessary when one wants to bring about radical change in an organisation, Nicholson (1993). Bottom-up approach as the name suggests originates from the bottom or juniors going up the ladder till it reaches the senior management. The researcher agrees with Mabey and Malloy (1994:5) that for either of the approach to succeed; it is crucial that employees have the capability to deliver the behaviour necessary to realize the change and Thornhill (2000) that Choice between these approaches will affect the perceptions about the degree to which change is accepted or resisted and whether it is seen imposed and controlled or to some extent participatory. The researcher wonders as to which approach the merger being discussed in this research took. This will be discussed in the coming chapters. Literature has shown that change to succeed needs to undergo steps or stages. And if one of the suggested steps is jumped then one should expect a failure. Lewin, K. (1951), Beckhard R. (1969), Bandura, A. (1986), Beer, M. et al (1990) and Kotter, J.P (1995) and Prosci (1998) came up their own models or theories which clearly illustrate the various steps and stages through which change can pass, see the table below

Table 4: Comparison of change models and theories

Auther Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6 Step 7 Step 8 Lewin’s Unfreezing Freeze Re-freezing (1951) Bekhard Set goals and Diagnose the Define the Develop (1969) define the future present transition strategies state or conditions in state and action organisational relation to these activities and plans for conditions goals commitments managing desired after required to this transition change meet the in the light of future state. an analysis of the factors likely to affect the introduction of change

Bandura Change the Consider training persuade (1986) environment them on anew them that within which behaviour that new people work will lead to behaviour accomplishment will lead to of the desired an outcome outcome of more value than status quo Beer et Mobilise Develop a Foster Spread Institutionali Monitor and al (1990) commitment to shared vision of consensus revitalization ze adjust change through how to organize for the new to all revitalizatio strategies in joint analysis of and manage to vision, departments n through response to the problem achieve goals competence without formal problems in to enact it, pushing it policies, revitalization and cohesion from the top- systems process to move it don't force and along. the issue structures. Kotter Establish a Form a guiding Create a Communicat Empower Plan for and Consolidat Institution (1996) sense of agency coalition vision to e the vision others to create short e al new direct the act on the term wins improveme approach change effort vision nt, producing further changes Prosci Awareness Desire Knowledge Ability Reinforcem (1998) ent

Change is like a journey, long or short they begin with the first step, Kotter (1995:59). He further argued that ‘… change process goes through a series of phases … skipping steps creates only the illusion of speed and never produces a satisfying result. The phase related activities or tasks have to be carefully implemented, critical mistakes in any of the phases can have a devastating impact, slowing momentum and negating the expected hard won gains, Kotter (1995:59).

Lewin’s (1951) change management model suggests that there are three key steps for change to be successfully implemented. The steps are unfreezing, freeze and re-freeze. It is believed that people normally resist change. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, Kotter (1995:110). People prefer the status quo to change.

During the unfreezing stage, Lewin suggested that people or employees need to understand why the change. It is therefore time to build awareness and win souls. This is the time that employees get an answer to “what is in it for me?” Knowles G. (2011). Employees are motivated during this stage. Without motivation, people won’t help and the effort goes nowhere.

Freezing or transitioning stage is just like the project implementation stage. All issues, plans etc are put to action in this phase. Lastly, refreezing is the phase where the change is stabilized. Kotter’s (1996) considers it as time for building on what works and modify what doesn’t. This research will also try to respond to whether the above stages were followed or not.

Nickols (2010) criticized Lewin’s change model as just a mere framework that focuses much on stability, “…the beginning and ending point of the unfreeze-change-refreeze model is stability”. He suggests that internal stability spells disaster. Pieterse J.H. (2012) emphasizes that “… change is imperative (change is good, stability is bad)”. Even though this is the case, Lewin’s change model forms the basis for almost all the approaches shown above.

The four staged approach proposed by Beckhard (1969) fall short of what happens after change is introduced. All the stages seem to be preparatory activities and can therefore fall within the unfreezing stage of Lewin’s model. Beckhard did not come out clearly on what happens after the strategies are developed.

Bandura (1986) came up with his three-staged theory. The stages are just like those of Lewin (1951). However the third stage, of persuading them (employees/people) that the new behaviour will lead to an outcome of more valuable than the status quo, can fall within the first stage of Lewin’s model. Employees/people can be persuaded by information gathered from awareness techniques employed by the change agents.

Beer et al’s (1990) model puts much emphasis on the following: joint analysis of the problem (cause for change), provision of training where necessary (to gain relevant competencies and skills) shared vision (change agents must share the vision so that everybody’s efforts should be towards the same), communicating the new behaviours to all concerned, institutionalization of the new behaviours and finally monitoring the the new behaviours. In all the above stated areas, Beer et al considers an employee or an

22 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 individual to be at the centre of the process. This type of model can easily lead to the realization of the expected outcome. This model is just like that of Kotter (1996). Kotter’s stage 1 and 2 can be simultaneously implemented as is the case with Beer’s (1990). The same applies to stages 5 and 6. One can communicate and empower at the same time.

All the above models follow a linear pattern. And yet in life, change is more cyclical than linear as is propagated by Prosci’s (1998) model.

Figure 3: ADKAR's change model

Source: Prosci, 1998: ADKAR’s change model

The model is called ADKAR. This model recognized 5 stages that form a cyclical pattern shown above. This is a goal-oriented change management model that allows change management teams to focus their activities on specific results, Prosci (1998). This model allows implementers of change to check progress and make changes at each and every stage. For example, once activities aimed at creating awareness are done, one checks whether activities carried out met the intended results. If not, then one can re-plan and redo the activities. This type of implementation enables one to identify gaps in management process …identify why changes are not working and help you to take necessary steps to make the change successful. Another model which is cyclical is that

23 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 of Gillet and Seddon’s (2009), Plan-Do-Study and Act (PDSA). The model suggests that the change agents must first of all have a clear and a shared goal, with an elaborate plan which can be enacted to achieve anticipated results. Just like ADKAR’s model, results in this model are analysed as processes are in progress. Another emphasis is on stakeholder involvement. The researcher is yet to find out which of the discussed models did the change agents use to implement the council merger.

2.4. Consequences of merger or change in an organisation

A stone thrown into a pool of water will sends water waves from the point of entry to the sides of the pool. In the same way any slight change in an organisation has effects on the whole organisation. A business merger according to Yurtoglu, B (2012) affects the performance of the merging firms such as profits, growth rates, market shares, productivity etc. Merger affects employees’ motivation. Turner, P. stated that lack of motivation reduces productivity, so companies should work hard to motivate their employees during and after merger. On the contrary, McGuckin and Nguyen (1995) reported that plant productivity increased following mergers in the USA while in Canada production in plants fell down between 1972 and 1981 due to merger, Baldwin (1981). The researcher realizes that productivity has a direct impact on service delivery. This why the research will also examine whether council operations were affected by the merger.

Literature says change affect employees’ morale. Change ….can lead to stress which can have a negative impact on morale if not handled effectively, Turner, P. In the same vein, Webster A.L argued that improperly managed organisational change can create fear among ranks, which impacts on job satisfaction, performance and productivity. When employees hear about an impending change in their organisation, they fear for job loss and loss of opportunities that they formerly had. And Webster, A.L. indicated that this fear can negatively impact productivity and may even result in

24 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 employees leaving the company to seek jobs elsewhere. Merging causes culture clash between two different organisations which in the long run lead to employee competitiveness. Employees become concerned with their own job security. Hence for them to be assured that their position is secured they resort to competing. This competitiveness can result in conflict—sometimes even violence.

2.5 Conclusion The literature review has revealed that both merger and change are but a ‘process’. The process can be perceived as deviant (threatening) or desirable (normal), Thornhill (2000), planned or emergent, Burnes (2004). To experience successful merger or change there is need for a change agent to think about which approach to use. Will it be top-down (pragmatic) or bottom up (incremental) as suggested by Thornhill (2000). The change agent should always bear in mind that these approaches require a considerable period of time.

Of all the models discussed in the research, it is noted that Lewin’s model of Change Management forms the basis for each one of the models. All models have a linear pattern except for two AKDAR and PDSA which follow cyclical pattern. The authors of these models emphasized the point that each of the phases is important and skipping any of them may lead to serious negative repercussions in the organisation. It should also be noted that employees get affected by the change. The affected employees undergo an emotional phase of change which comprises denial, resistance, exploration and commitment as indicated by Kets de Vries and Miller (1984). Perceived consequences of change can breed positive or negative attitude towards change in employees and in the end the attitude can lead to change in behaviour, Kruger (1994). Is there any link between these effects and service delivery provision? The next chapter will discuss findings from the investigations carried out in order to examine the impact of the councils’ merger on service delivery.

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

3.1. Research paradigm, philosophy and approach

According to Krauss SE (2005) defined a paradigm as the “basic belief system or world view that guides an investigation”. There are, according Saunders et al (2009), three types of research paradigms. These are Ontology, Epistemology and axiology. Each one of them can either be positivism or phenomenology as is indicated below. Table 5: Philosophical position...

Paradigm Positivism Phenomenology Ontology: What is the nature Reality is objective and singular, Reality is subjective and multiple of reality? apart from the researcher as seen by the participants Epistemology: What is valid Researcher is independent from Researcher interacts with that knowledge? that being researched being researched Axiology: Role of values? Value-free and unbiased Value-laden and biased Research Strategy  Cross-sectional studies  Action research  Experimental studies  Case studies  Longitudinal studies  Ethnography  Surveys  Grounded theory  etc  Hermeneutics, etc..

Adapted from lecturer's note

Ontological paradigm involves the philosophy of reality, Krauss (2005). It deals with the nature of social entities such as organisation, Greener S. (2005). Epistemological 26 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 paradigm deals with the philosophy of knowledge, that is, what do people know and understand about an issue? While axiology, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica considers it as the study of nature of values and value judgement. It further states the eight “realms” of value which are: morality, religion, art, science, economics, politics, law, and custom. From the above definitions of the three paradigms, one can easily deduce that this research falls under epistemological paradigm. The research will examine the knowledge employees had on the issue (merger/change) and then relate it to whether it helped in improving the council’s service delivery. According to the table shown above, the paradigms are in two categories; positivism and or phenomenology. Literature agrees that positivism is a philosophical system started by Auguste Comte (1798-1857). This system is concerned with facts that are scientifically proven as opposed to mere speculations about an issue. It is therefore associated more with scientific experiments and or studies for one to get the facts of an issue see the table above. Phenomenology is a philosophical discipline that studies the structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, (2003) entries. It further clarifies that these experiences are but not limited to perception, imagination, thought, emotion, desire, volition and action. The research in question is primarily inclined towards examining employees’ feelings, perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours or action on the merger. It is therefore against such an understanding that the research has a phenomenological standing. This research, in other words, will be guided by an interpretive perspective. This approach is primarily understood through ‘perceived’ knowledge. Zorn, T. (2003), argued by quoting Trujillo, (1992), that… interpretive perspective places the focus on interpreting the meanings … and how these meanings are negotiated. As opposed to positivist approach which has a possibility of obtaining hard, secure objective knowledge, quoting Trujillo, (1992) Carson et al, D. (2001:6) states that interpretative approach concentrates more on understanding and interpretation of a reality. The researcher is not detached or independent as in a positivist approach. He or she would always want to experience what he or she is studying. On the contrary, the positivist approach is more on description and explanation. The researcher acts as an external

27 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 observer as he or she is detached or independent of the study, Carson et al, D. (2001:6).

3.2. Research methodology/approaches and strategy

Saunders et al, (2009), defined research methodology as a theory of understanding research through techniques and procedures used to obtain and analyse data. There are two key approaches or strategies used to gather data. They are quantitative and qualitative approaches. Both approaches, according to Ponterotto, J. (2005), are empirical methods in that they involve the collection, analysis, and interpretation of observations or data. Off-course literature has it that there is an approach which is a mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches. This is called mixed approach.

Ponterotto, J. (2005:128) argued that quantitative studies stress the measurement and analysis of causal or correlational relationships between variables. He further stated that they (quantitative approaches) focus on the strict quantification of observation (data) and on careful control of empirical variables while Qualitative methods refer to a broad class of empirical procedures designed to describe and interpret the experiences of research participants in a context specific setting. Quantitative approaches focus on questions like; how many? how much?, how often? … Whereas qualitative approaches is more into descriptive questions such as how? why?, etc. Even though Bogdan & Biklen (2004) argued that Phenomenology is always associated with qualitative researches, the researcher will use a mixed approach. Quantitative approach will be used to generate data in relation to revenue generation while qualitative approach will help in generating information about employees’ perceptions, feelings attitudes etc. There is a strong evidence that mixed approach employs both approaches iteratively or simultaneously to create a research outcome stronger than either of the methods individually and that it also explores more complex aspects and relations of human and social world than the two individually. It is therefore hoped that mixed approach will enable the researcher to collect rich data and information on issue understudy.

Sekerani, (2003) indicated that ‘Case studies usually provide qualitative rather than quantitative data for analysis and interpretation’. However, Baker, (2003) argued that case studies are advantageous as they uncover complex issues that may escape statistical manipulation (Baker, 2003). As such, the researcher will employ the case study to get an in-depth understanding of the issue at hand. Despite the fact that case studies are time consuming, expensive and that their findings cannot easily be generalised the researcher opts for the same because; it easily answers the how and why questions; it allows the use of multi-data collection methods; it easily discovers motivational factors and enquires a phenomenon in its own context (class lecture’s notes). Experiment as a strategy was not preferred even though it also answers the how and why questions. This strategy is limited to laboratories, Saunders et al (2009). The case understudy cannot be confined in a laboratory because it involves employees as participants.

3.3. Sampling Sampling is about carefully selecting a sub-set (sample or samples) of a specific population that can be shown to share the properties or variables of the population, Hart (2007). In the first place, the issue under discussion involved eight councils. Out of these, Salima District Council was deliberately chosen by the researcher. It was because the researcher is based in Salima and works with the mentioned council. It was also felt that this would cut costs.

There are two types of sampling, according to Dawson, C. (2002). These are Probability and Purposive sampling. It is observed that probability sampling everybody in the research population has a specifiable chance or probability of being part of the sample. Dawson C. (2002) explained that one can utilise probability sampling when the main aim of the study is to explain, predict or generalise the findings or results to the whole population. Purposive sampling works better if the end results or goal is more descriptive than generalisation. The study (an investigation into the impact of merger of Town and District Councils on their respective employees and the service delivery) will be more of descriptive than generalisation. As such the researcher is inclined to use

29 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 purposive sampling. Purposive sampling is ‘often used with very small samples and population within qualitative research particularly case studies or grounded theory, Greener S. (2008). The researcher prefers to use Quota and Heterogeneous sampling techniques (thus within the purposive sampling). Quota sampling will allow the researcher to involve all groups of employees, such as senior managers, middle managers and or junior staff, in the study. The heterogeneous sampling will focus on selecting employees who are alike in some relevant detail such as messengers, revenue collectors, secretarial staff etc.

3.4. Data collection techniques Dawson, C., (2002) suggests that the following are research techniques that are commonly used: interviews, questionnaires, panels, focus group discussions, observations, documents and database. Each one of them has its own pros and cons. The researcher has opted for three main techniques namely: interviews, questionnaires and focus group discussions.

3.4.1 Interviews It is suggested that there are three types of interviews. These are open, pre- coded or pre-structured and semi-structured interviews. In an open interview, the two (interviewer and interviewee) engage in an informal conservation. The interviewer normally has some points to guide the discussion. In a pre-coded interview, the researcher has an already developed list of questions and the discussion is controlled by him or her. Semi-structured is a mix of the two types of interviews. The discussion is somehow open but well controlled by the researcher. The researcher of this study has opted for the latter. This will primarily target the senior managers at council and national level.

These semi-structured interviews might be either a face to face (one on one) or telephone interviews depending on how busy said respondents will be. Those on

face to face will be audio recorded so that the researcher may refer to it when need arises.

3.4.2. Questionnaires Just like interviews, questionnaires are in three forms; open, pre-coded (pre- structured and semi-structured). Fisher, C., (2010) if one has no prior knowledge of the responses from the respondents and is looking for new ideas; the best type of questionnaire to use is an open one. And if one wants to quantify the research material or want to compare views and experiences of … many people (respondents), then pre-coded is the best. Since the researcher has no prior knowledge of some the responses from the respondents and that at one point in time, he would want to quantify the research data, and then the best option is using the semi-structured questionnaire. To avoid registering low return rate, the researcher anticipates doing a series of follow-ups of the questionnaires himself. Literature has also indicated that this technique is inexpensive, quick to administer, and easy to analyze findings. This technique will therefore be administered to middle managers at council level.

3.4.3. Focus Group Discussions The focus group discussion (FGD) is, as is defined by Escalada M. a rapid

assessment, semi‐structured data gathering method in which a purposively

selected set of participants gather to discuss issues and concerns based on a list of key themes drawn up by the researcher/facilitator. It also defined as a “carefully planned series of discussions designed to obtain perceptions on a defined area of interest in a permissive, non-threatening environment” by Krueger and Casey, (2000: 5). It is deemed to be a fast way of learning from the

target audience and then further says FGDs are a cost‐effective technique for

eliciting views and opinions of prospective clients, customers and end‐users

Escalada M. It is also said that FGDs enable researchers to obtain insights into target audience perceptions, needs, problems, beliefs, and reasons for certain practices. This augers well with the research aims. The FGD will focus on detecting participants' feelings, perceptions, attitudes etc on the issue under discussion. And it will primarily target junior employees such as; secretaries, messengers, registry clerks and accounts personnel, etc.

3.5. Data analysis Two soft-ware packages will be used to analyse data collected. They are Microsoft- excel and SPSS. According to Hyndman, R in his Expert 3 presentation, Excel may be used for data entry and especially when one has simple numerical summaries and very little statistical work. This research will indeed be characterised by simple numerical summaries (revenue generation) and little statistical work for example average (mean) annual revenue collection. Since excel is not good for any extended statistical computation, the researcher intends to utilise SPSS which handles large data sets. This package is also good at producing better graphics than smaller packages like excel. This will greatly help in producing quality graphics.

3.6. Time Horizon There are two types research time horizon, namely: cross-sectional and longitudinal time horizons. Hart, C. (2007:319) described a cross-sectional research as the one whose design is usually based on a case where the subject is measured only once. A research can be referred to as a longitudinal only if a comparison is made between a

32 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 case and control group over time e.g. a year or two. This therefore means this research is a cross-sectional one because it will just be done once.

3.7. Validity and Reliability To ensure research credibility and reliability, the researcher will use reliable data collection techniques as is stipulated above. The researcher will remain neutral and or independent in as far as research findings are concerned. The use of SPSS will also help in validating research findings. This is a credible statistical package worldwide. In addition to the above, the research will be valid and reliable by using a very good sample size that will represent all cadres in the organisation understudy. Use of key informants too will help in improving validity and reliability of research findings. As is already indicated above key people (PS, DC, Directors at Ministry and council level) in the organisation will be interviewed.

3.8. Conclusion This chapter has explained the entire research design (paradigm, philosophy, approach, strategy, choice, time horizon and research techniques). The next chapters (chapter four and five) will therefore present and analyse of research findings basing on data collected.

Chapter 4: Research Findings

4.1. Introduction This is the chapter in which all research findings will be brought to light. As earlier on suggested, the research used questionnaires, focus group discussions and interviews (telephone based) as data collection tools. Data collected was later analysed using Microsoft excel and SPSS (see appendix 5).

The sample size comprised 25 questionnaire respondents, three interviewees (the District Commissioner and two Ministry Directors) and 15 focus group discussion’s participants. The 15 participants of focus group discussions were split into two; one targeted the market based staff while the other comprised of physical planning staff. 33 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

Responsive rate for the questionnaires was 84 per cent. This means that 21 out of 25 respondents sent back the questionnaires.

The findings are therefore three-fold; questionnaire, Focus Group Discussions and Interviews.

4.2. Survey Results

4.2.1. Questionnaire findings The findings are in two-fold. The first part is about information of the respondents while the second part is about the survey results

A. Respondents information

i. Gender

Two of the 21 respondents that returned the questionnaires were females. See the table below showing how respondents were in terms of gender.

Table 6: Respondents by gender

Gender of respondent Frequency Percent Valid Cumulative Percent Percent Valid Male 19 90.5 90.5 90.5 Female 2 9.5 9.5 100.0 Total 21 100.0 100.0

ii. Respondents marital status

All the respondents are married with the exception of two; one of them is a divorcee and other a widower see table 7 below.

Table 7: Respondents' marital status

Marital status of the respondent Frequency Percent Valid Cumulative Percent Percent Valid Married 19 90.4 90.4 90.4 Divorced 1 4.8 4.8 4.8 34 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

Widower 1 4.8 4.8 4.8 Total 21 100.0 100.0 100.0

iii. Council departments

The council secretariat runs through departments. It has major ones are Administration, Finance, Planning & Development and Public Works. Each one of these is led by a Director. The researcher wanted to know departments to which respondents belong. Out of the 21 respondents, Finance department 38.1percent of the respondents, Administration had 33.3 percent, Planning & Development had 14.3 percent, other (Audit section) had 9.5 percent and Public Works had 4.8 percent.

iv. Attendance to Management meetings

This question aimed at finding out whether the respondent attends council management meetings or not. This is where council decisions are made. So in other words the question wanted to find out how many of the respondents are in the decision making team. The results have shown that 47.6 percent only are in the decision making positions, see the table below:

Table 8: Management meeting attendance

Respondent attendance to management meetings * Gender of respondent Cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Respondent attendance to Yes 42.9% 4.8% 47.6% management meetings Not applicable 47.6% 4.8% 52.4% Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

v. Length of service

This aimed at identifying how many were there before and when the merger was introduced. The table below indicates that a total of 17 respondents (81 percent) have been with the council for more than 5 years.

Table 9: Respondent's length of service

Length of service at the council * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Length of service at the 0 – 4 14.3% 4.8% 19.0% council 5 – 9 28.6% 4.8% 33.3% 10+ 47.6% 47.6% years Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

vi. Council, the respondent worked for before merging

Before merging, the councils had their respective employees. This question aimed at finding out which council the respondents belong before the merger. The research findings have shown that 71.4 percent of the respondents belonged to Town council.

Table 10: Respondent's previous council1

Original council worked with before merger * Gender of respondent cross tabulation Gender of respondent Total Male Female Original council worked District Council 28.60% 28.60% with before merger Town Council 61.80% 9.60% 71.40% Total 90.40% 9.60% 100.0%

vii.Staff category

1 36 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

Councils have two major types of staff, Direct and Seconded staff. Direct staff are employees recruited and paid by the council while seconded staff are employed and paid by central government. The findings show that 66.7 percent are direct employees while the remaining 33.3 comprises the seconded staff.

All the above information was collected to easily gauge data credibility and validity

B. Survey results

i. Source of information

The below statistics show that council employees got information about the merger from three main sources, these are Workshops (42.9%), media (33.3%) and management meetings (23.8%). See the table below.

Table 11: Sources of information

Source of information about the merger * Gender of respondent Cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Source of Media (newspaper, radio and TV) 28.6% 4.8% 33.3% information Management meetings 23.8% 23.8% about the Workshop (at district, regional or national 38.0% 4.8% 42.9% merger level) Total 90.4% 9.6% 100.0% ii. a. Adequacy of information

This was aiming at finding out whether the respondent got adequate information from the source of information mentioned above. It has been revealed that 19 out of the 21 respondents (90.5 percent) did not get adequate information. This is also true with those on FGDs.

Table 12: Adequacy of information

Was the information adequate? * Gender of respondent Cross tabulation % of Total

Gender of respondent Total Male Female Was the information Yes 9.6% 9.6% adequate? No 80.9% 9.6% 90.4% Total 90.4% 9.6% 100.0%

b. Reasons for the above response

The table below depicts responses explaining how and why the information was inadequate. There are three main reasons why the respondents felt information was inadequate. The information was too brief, the process was done in a hurry and that the merger was imposed on councils see below.

Table 13: Reasons why information was inadequate?

Issue Remarks

Too brief and  The information was not detailed unclear  Facilitators of the district works lacked adequate information: they had no information about how the new structure will be like. The council came up with its own structure without any guideline, brought in a position of Director of Urban Services.

The process was  Council staff did not undergo any training (100 percent done in hurry of respondents)

 No clear strategies were developed for the process

 The council staff felt they were taken unawares (almost all respondents, 95.2 percent were not involved in the process)

 No proper preparations were done (81 percent said so)

 100 percent of the respondents reported that there were no any equipment or material procured or resourced in readiness for the merger

It was an  No consultations were made with council employees

imposition (95.2 percent indicated as such)

 The process left the council in suspense. They did things in try and error manner.

In conclusion, the council employees were not happy with the way the merger was introduced

iii. Reasons for the merger

71.4 percent (15 out of 21) of the respondents did not know why the Government introduced the merger. The remaining 28.6 percent indicated having known the reasons and are as summarized below:

a. Economic reasons: improve local revenue generation which in turn would improve service delivery and then letting government cut costs on salaries.

b. Administrative reasons: this aimed at bringing the councils together so that it is headed by one officer (District Commissioner). This was basically staff rationalization.

c. Donor pressure: it is assumed that Government ventured into the process because of donor influence.

iv. Respondents’ expectations

The respondents presented the following as their expectations: improved service delivery, improved working conditions, increased revenue generation, increased funding, good governance, improved experience sharing, good salaries, increased workload and qualified staff. The table below has also captured fears. The fears include the following; organisational culture clash, job loss (staff retrenchment), Leadership conflicts, attitude of new bosses on juniors and demotions. See below how they are fairing as of now.

Table 14: Respondents' list of expectations

S/n Area description Tallying Frequency Status EXPECTATIONS 1 Improved service delivery IIIII II 7 Not yet met 2 Improved working conditions IIIII IIIII II 12 Not yet met 3 Increased revenue generation IIIII 5 Not yet met 4 Improved funding IIII 4 Not yet met 5 Good governance IIII 4 Somehow met 6 Improved experience sharing II 2 Somehow met 7 Good salaries IIIII IIIII 10 Not yet met 8 Increased workload IIIII 5 Met 9 Qualified staff II 2 Somehow met FEARS 1 Organisational culture clash IIIII 5 Not yet addressed 2 Job loss IIIII IIIII IIIII IIII 19 Addressed 3 Leadership conflicts IIII 4 Addressed 4 Attitude of new bosses on us IIIII 5 Not sure 5 Demotions III 3 Addressed 6 Increased workload IIII 4 Not yet addressed

The table is indicating that some positive strides were done in a number of the expectations such as good governance, experience sharing, and qualified staff. However there is quite a lot to be done to meet all expectations expressed therein. Expectations on service delivery, working conditions, revenue generation, funding and salaries are not yet met.

The respondents have noted that some of their fears have been addressed. For instance the government and even the council have not retrenched or demoted any employee, and that there has not been any leadership conflict at council level since merger was introduced. What remain are issues about organisational culture clash and attitude of new bosses towards juniors. The respondents still fear a culture clash may happen at a later stage because nothing so far has happened to curb this fear. The fear about attitude of the new bosses still stands as it has been reported that top management officers are always on transfer. For example, the council has had six District Commissioners in just five years. v. Effects on respondents’ job

95.2 percent of the respondents reported that respective jobs were affected. They were affected in following areas: workload and responsibilities; reporting channels and job morale and satisfaction level see table below. The research has revealed that 66.6 percent (14 out of 21 respondents) of the respondents experienced an increase in their workload and responsibilities. 57 percent (12 out of 21) attested to the fact that reporting lines changed completely. And 52.4 percent stated that their job morale and satisfaction was negatively affected. Table 15: Merger's effects on respondent's job

How the merger affected the respondent’s job

Responses Percent of N Percent Cases Effect_on_joba It increased my workload 14 66.6% 70.0% or responsibilities It reduced my workload or 3 4.3% 15.0% responsibilities It changed my reporting 12 57.10% 60.0% lines (Started reporting to a new boss) It reduced my job morale 11 52.4% 55.0% and satisfaction Total 40 100.0%

It has also been reported that operations of various departments at council level were affected as it was indicated that all (100%) respondents’ (21 of 21 respondents) departments were in one way or the other affected. Below is a table indicating how various departments were affected.

Table 16: List of effects on departments

Department How affected?  Failure to manage council fleet of vehicles Administration  Failure to replace staff in various positions  Failure to purchase working materials eg work suits, gumboots etc  Some staff members have developed laziness  Reduction in local revenue generation Finance  Failure to conduct normal market inspections 41 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

 Failure to completely merge the department, merging accounts staff is still an issue. Some still have allegiance to their respective old bosses  Most of department staff were greatly demoralized especially those in the markets  Departmental plans and reports are not being attended to due to Planning lack of funds  The merger took a top-bottom approach and did not go well with District Development Planning System. Public Works  There has been no any project funded by local revenue and even by the 25 percent of government’s General Resource Funds.  Departmental staff’s morale is negatively affected Others (specify):  Due to increase in my workload the period to complete my Audit section departmental planned assignments is also lengthened

vi. Effects on service delivery The council is mandated to provide the services shown in the table below. Table 17: categories of service delivery

Environmental Services: Public amenities

Removing and disposing of refuse and sewerage, Promotion of recreation, leisure and environmental reclamation and environmental culture, provision and maintenance of education sports grounds, community halls, parks, public conveniences etc

Roads an street services Business

Construction and Maintenance of all roads, street Promotion of local economic development, naming etc regulating businesses and local tourism

Agriculture, livestock and irrigation: Other services

Crop and livestock extension, land and crop Registration of births, death and issuance husbandry, construction and maintenance of small of respective certificates, and burial dams services

Provision and maintenance of water supplies such as boreholes, piped (gravity or not), protected wells etc

All respondents (100 percent) concurred that all the services above were affected in one way or the other. However, municipal services were greatly affected; see the table below which summarizes services affected: Table 18: Affected areas of service delivery

S/n Area description Tallying Frequency 1 Environmental services IIIII IIIII II 12 2 Roads and street services IIIII IIIII 10 3 Business and public amenities IIIII IIIII 10 services 4 ‘Market operations’ IIIII III 8 5 Revenue generation IIIII II 7

vii. Respondents recommendations The respondents came up with so many recommendations and have categorized into two: district and ministry focused as is shown below: Table 19: Recommendations from respondents

District focused Ministry focused  consider equitable distribution of  Salary harmonization development projects between the  Improve funding levels town and district,  Train staff of concerned councils  come up with ways of motivating staff  Provision of adequate resources for the more especially those related to merger (time, material, skill, finance) revenue generation  To bring back town councils  improve staff working conditions  Develop proper guidelines for the  Put internal controls in place merger  Ensure equitable development in both  Consider direct staff on the government urban and rural areas payroll and pension scheme  Consider mixing up town and district staff in the newly established councils  To restart the process of merging and ensure that employee are fully consulted and involved in the process

4.2.2. A summary of key findings from Focus Group Discussions

4.2.2.1. Source of information:

The discussions revealed that all the participants got information from the media (radio) and council level meetings. Most of the participants indicated that the information was inadequate. They highlighted the following factors that which led to merging of the councils. The first was to avoid duplication of efforts (between District Commissioner and Chief Executive); secondly, to equitably share few resources that the two council get from donors and to improve service delivery in town

4.2.2.2. Attitudes, perception and feelings about the merger

Preparedness

It was reported that they were not prepared at all. They knew nothing about the merger and it was more of a surprise. There was no time given for them to prepare.

Level of involvement

The participants were not involved in other way hence they were not happy with its introduction

Expectation and fears

It has to be noted here that the following expectations and fears came into being after they heard the directive on the radio and attended the district level meetings:

 Expectations

1. Merger meant no more salary arrears. They had at one point experienced three to four months without pay.

2. Good salaries

3. Knowledge expansion as they were confined in a small area (learn about the rural communities and urban life respectively) and

4. Improvement on revenue generation

 Fears

1. Staff management might be an issue (merger meant bringing together staff from both councils.)

2. Fear for new bosses’ attitude

3. Relevance of their existence (Loss of job)

4. How to work with the new roles and bosses without prior orientation

EFFECTS OF THE MERGER

The results of the focus group discussions indicated that the merger had effects on individual employees, work performance and service delivery. The effects include but not limited to:

 Development of laziness in most of employees (especially juniors)

 Failure to execute respective roles and responsibilities by council departments.

 Increased workload or responsibilities

 Reporting lines (started reporting to a new boss) changed

 Change in roles, duties and responsibilities

 Reduced work appetite and morale

 Reduced level of revenue collection

Concerns:

1. Government should honour their promise of harmonizing salaries (direct & seconded staff

2. Motivation! How will the council motivate employees so that they start working wholeheartedly? No laziness

3. Despite the merger, revenue generation of has gone down.

Service delivery Areas affected

o Revenue generation

o Staff management

o Staff (direct) salaries

o Fleet management

o Leadership

o Land administration matters such as plot issues

o Environmental services and roads and street services

Satisfaction levels

It was also found out that all the participants were not satisfied with the way merger was introduced as such they had put up the following recommendations:

 To motivate the revenue collectors and their market masters

 Local Government to come back for proper briefing.

 Need for proper training of the middle and top managers as they seem not to have embraced town/municipal related services.

4.2.3. A summary of the telephone interviews

As is indicated earlier on, the researcher failed to meet the key informants but gather information from them through telephone interviews. Below is therefore a summary of what was collected.

Knowledge about the process of merging the councils

All key informants reported that they knew the factors that led to merge the councils and are as follows

a. To improve council service delivery

b. To reduce operational costs

Who initiated the merger?

It was indicated that Department of Human Resource Management and Development initiated the process of merging through the study results on council effectiveness. But were quick to say concerned councils were not involved in the merging process.

Role played by ministry after the directive

The research has realized that the ministry did the following after the directive:

a. It conducted district level meetings and workshops to build awareness of council staff

b. It later supported the council in merging of all books of accounts at council level.

However they were all in unison regarding satisfactory levels. They all indicated they are not satisfied with how the merger was introduced and how merged councils are operating. They have noted that councils received inadequate support from the ministry and that the ministry has done nothing since councils were merged. Of course they

47 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 have also noted that councils are very much struggling with merger economically and operational wise.

Chapter 5: Analysis of findings Chapter four has highlighted all the research findings starting with the questionnaire, focus group discussions and interviews. This chapter therefore intends to analyse the findings in relation to the research questions and objectives. The research as earlier on stated attempts to answer what effects the merger had on council employees and service delivery.

Merger is considered a ‘change’ in the research. According to the change models discussed in the research, ‘change’ is a process not a one-off event and has steps to be followed. The steps range from three to eight as is stipulated by Lewin, (1954) (unfreeze, freeze and refreeze) and Kotter, (1996). Most of the models propose for creation of awareness in those affected by change as an initial activity. The research findings have indicated that council employees had no such a time hence were not prepared at all for the merger (about 80 percent of the respondents) see the pie chart below:

Figure 4: Pie chart on level of respondent's preparedness

Level of respondent's preparedness before the major was introduced

Somehow prepared

80% Not prepared at all

It has been realized that most of respondents came to know about the merger at a workshop (42.9% of the respondents). The workshop took place after the president had 48 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 made the directive on the radio. The findings tell us that 33.3 percent of the respondents got information about the merger from the media (radio, newspaper, television). The remaining 23.8 per cent got the information from management meetings, see the graph shown below.

Figure 5: A graph on sources of information

Respondent's source of information for the merger

42.9 45.0% 33.3 40.0% 35.0% 23.8 30.0% 25.0% 20.0% 15.0% 10.0% 5.0% 0.0% Media (newspaper, Management Workshop (at radio and TV) meetings district, regional or national level) Source of information

This implies that there were no preliminary and preparatory activities for the merger. However, the discussed theories and models agree that it is of prime importance to consult and involve organisational employees in the entire process of organisational change. In addition, Robbins (1988:98), argues that ‘an idea, no matter how great, is useless until it is transmitted and understood by others’. This helps to lay off the envisaged fears and expectations by the employees. Further to that, Kurt Lewin’s three step model requires unfreezing or disturbing the status quo. To unfreeze the status quo, organisations are encouraged to conduct preparatory activities which include building awareness of affected employees. These lead to creation of the required attitude for any the impending change. Taylor et al (1992) says that ‘people’s attitude towards change process is a major determinant of success’. Taylor further suggests that there is need for creation of employees’ willingness, participation and sustenance of momentum. It is

49 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 very unfortunate that the merger in question did not consider these preparatory activities.

The research has found out that the information gotten, even during workshop and management meetings, was inadequate. Even if this was a directive, the workshop facilitators had inadequate knowledge and information about the merger. But we need to understand that people or employees with less or little knowledge or information tend to have their own conclusions and in most cases become disastrous to change realization. Kotter J. (1995:60) emphasised that adequate information helps in making the status quo seem more dangerous than launching into the unknown. This change therefore had fallen short of meeting this prerequisite. The situation would have been different if the employees were given adequate information on time and would have also prepared for it. This means that the landscape for change was not leveled..

Figure 6: A pie chart on adequacy of information

Adequacy of information for the merger

Yes No 90.5%

That is why employees had varied expectations and fears which were in sharp contrast with that of the Ministry. The ministry expected to see increased revenue generation and improved service delivery and yet council employees had put much weight on improved working conditions and good salaries as is shown in the table below. Employees were for things that would satisfy their thirst first and not a common good.

Table 20: Prioritized list of expectations

S/n Area description Tallying Frequency 1 Improved working conditions IIIII IIIII II 12 2 Good salaries IIIII IIIII 10 3 Improved service delivery IIIII II 7 4 Increased revenue generation IIIII 5 5 Increased workload IIIII 5 6 Improved funding IIII 4 7 Good governance IIII 4 8 Improved experience sharing II 2 9 Qualified staff II 2

The fears too, they seem to be self protective. Job loss for example was in the mind of almost every employee, 90.5 per cent (19 of 21) of the respondents, see the table below.

Table 21: Prioritized list of fears

S/n Area description Tallying Frequency 1 Job loss IIIII IIIII IIIII IIII 19 2 Organisational culture clash IIIII 5 3 Attitude of new bosses IIIII 5 4 Leadership conflicts IIII 4 5 Demotions III 3

Of course Kourdi (2003:116-122) stated that ‘change brings about fears of retrenchment (job loss), demotion and more/less responsibilities’ in organisational employees. Taylor et al (1992) concurs with Kourdi by outlining eight issues that employees consider from the first time they hear rumours about an impending merger, these are: job loss, career opportunities in the new organisation, uncertainties over new job assignments, new supervision and authority relationships, changes in organisational

51 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 structure and procedures, losses in products or services or quality thereof, the new executive leadership and its employees needs, and friendliness and animosity of new colleagues in the new organisation. It is therefore not surprising to note that council employees had such expectations and fears. However, all these would have been dealt with during the unfreezing stage where employee engagement is don create awareness and desire for the change. Failure to address them on time brings in negative repercussions. Taylor et al (1992) said that it can lead to increased resistance which is manifested in depression, low motivation and productivity, reduced organisational commitment, antagonistic or disruptive behaviour and abseentism or resignation. The council has experienced exactly what Taylor said. It was strongly said in the focus group discussions that workers in the markets and some junior staff are greatly de-motivated and have taken a laissez faire approach to their work. This change in behaviour has contributed to the realisation of low levels of local revenue collection, see the table and graph shown below.

Table 22: Annual locally generated revenues

Fiscal Year 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Amount collected 6,811,690.22 4,296,520.99 6,743,430.34 9,534,393.41 6,542,047.33

Figure 7: A graph on locally generated revenue

The merger was introduced in February 2010, four months before the end of 2009/10 financial year. The last four months of 2009/10 financial year was used primarily for integrating financial books of accounts. Hence there was not much that the two councils shared in terms of financial resources. This means the reported amount in this year was solely from old district council. The situation completely changed in the succeeding financial year of 2010/11. The newly established council experienced a sharp drop in local revenue generation. It collected 37 per cent less of previous year’s amount. This can be attributed as earlier on said to silent resistance by the market masters, revenue collectors and ticket sellers. The increased trend experienced in 2011/12 and 2012/13 financial years was due to sale of plots. The council realised K1,500,000.00 from plot sales (sold six plots at K250,000.00 each) and K2,750,000.00 from the same in 2012/13 financial year. If it were not for such funds the trend would have been as is shown below:

Figure 8: A graph on locally generated revenue without amounts of plot sales

The graph above shows that local revenue collection in the four succeeding years did not surpass that of in 2009/10 financial year (thus before merging). This is contrary to the wishes of the framers of merger.

One wonders why there is such a scenario in a newly established council and yet town council alone was able to generate similar figures from its three main market establishments before the merger. Market establishments are just a part of locally generated revenue base. Others include commercial undertakings, property rates and other fees, income and charges. The graph below shows how much was collected from three town market establishments before merging the two councils.

Figure 9: A graph on revenue collected from market establishments (town)

Reconstruction of these markets was done in 2006/07 financial year. That is why there is such a sharp drop in the amount collected. A sharp rise was experienced between 2006/07 and 2007/08 financial years and of course with a steady increased trend in the following years. However the figures collected in 2007/08, 2008/09 and 2009/10 from the three market establishments shows a very promising trend as opposed to the trend in the newly established council. Henry (2008:221) indicated that ‘the total output of the combined businesses is greater than the output of the businesses operating individually’. Initially, employees thought that combining the two councils would bring in an economic synergy. With the above scenarios, one can therefore deduce that the merger has had some effects on locally generated revenue. The level of revenue generated in a particular year has a strong impact on service delivery. The more the revenue the more the council is at ease in allocating resources to its priority areas.

Following the Decentralisation policy (1998), councils are mandate to provide about seventeen services to communities and these are; education, roads and street, environmental, public amenities, medical and health, emergency, buildings, planning authority, land resource utilization, business, natural resources, fisheries, forestry, water, community development, community policing and agriculture, livestock and irrigation services. Provision of these mentioned services require financial resources..

When asked about how the council is fairing on provision of service delivery, one of the key informants said;

‘ Achimwene, (my brother) the council is financially overstretched with the merger’. Merging has just increased council’s wage bill. The bill is pegged at about four million five hundred thousand kwacha (K4,500,000.00) per month and yet the council does not collect as much. Council’s resource envelope is not as was expected’. A good part of it goes to settle down the wage bill. For example, the months of January, February and March, the council had to use part of its General Resource Fund (GRF) from Central Government and pay its direct staff. Employee Salaries is our priority. So, how can the council perform well when resources are too limited? Just fancy, Blessings (the researcher), a ten tone truck and sewage tanker are off road, they are there at the car park, why? The council has no funds to procure tyres for the truck and providing a general service to the tanker (see figure10).

Figure 10: A picture of a sewage tanker and Lorry

This explains why council departments were reported struggling in performing their duties. For instance, the administration department fails to purchase working (cleaning) materials for messengers while finance department is not conducting regular market inspections. In addition, all respondents (100 percent) stated that the merger has affected council’s service delivery (see table 17). Municipal services, which include environmental (refuse disposal, sewerage removal and disposal), public amenities (community hall and public conveniences) and roads and street (township roads) services, have been greatly affected.

The council fails to collect solid and liquid waste as per department’s schedule. It used to collect solid waste twice a week. The solid wastes have become an eyesore for 56 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 communities and tourists. It takes about three weeks or thereabout for the council to dispose them off these days. Failure to manage public conveniences, the council went into public-private partnership. So, public amenities such as public toilets are run by private individuals.

In addition to limited resources, municipal services have suffered because council management’s biasness. 95 percent of council’s management members have never worked town council hence they are biased towards district focused services. Municipal services are indeed in the peripheral of their mind.

Chapter 6: Conclusion

6.1. Introduction This chapter focuses on how the findings have answered the research objectives which were to establish the extent to which the council employees were affected by the merger and to determine and analyse the effects of the merger on council’s service delivery. In addition, the chapter will also provide research limitations, recommendations and areas of further study in relation to the merger.

The idea of merging town and district councils was very good as it hinged upon improving the service delivery and achieving operational cost effectiveness of the council. However, the research findings have indicated that council employees and service delivery were indeed affected.

6.2. Merger’s effects on employees In the first place, the merger was perceived as an imposition on councils. Council employees were neither consulted nor involved in its initial stages. There was a question from one of the focus group discussion participants, how can it (ministry) expect success in this program yet we (employees) have not been consulted and even involved in the process? Ichichi chinatitseka pakhosi ndipo chimatiwawa (the merger is a bitter pill to swallow and it pains us a lot). This shows how the employees felt about the merger. Coupled with inadequate information, the employees had wild expectations

57 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 and fears which most of them have not been addressed at all. This again, aggravated the situation. Yet, Taylor et al (1992) insists that people’s attitude towards change process is a major determinant of success. Since employees were neither consulted nor involved, the rightful attitude was not generated as such there was resistance and resentment from employees (95.2% of the respondents were not happy).

It has also been realized that council employees acquired new roles and responsibilities. For example those working in the Planning Department adopted roles of cleansing and physical planning within the township. And yet they were more concerned with rural development. They therefore required special and tailor-made orientation or training for them to be able to perform the above stated roles. This is why the municipal services have been negatively affected. In some instances there are some employees whose roles and responsibilities have been reduced. A good example is one of the accounts assistants who worked as Assistant Accountant before merger is now a mere cashier.

Some employees changed their reporting channels. A good number of employees have completely changed their reporting line. For example, the whole Estates Management section (Town based) is reporting direct to District Lands Officer who was working solely for the District council.

It has been reported that some employees lost job appetite and morale. This is a sign of employees’ dissatisfaction with the merger. Of course others say they were de- motivated. The change in management has compounded the situation. It (new management) is lacking the spirit of supervising the markets and in addition it has taken away a top up allowance of K200 per day (weekend and public holidays) which was there before merger. They feel betrayed. That is why participants of focus group discussions stated that “bola kale” which means things were better before merger than now.

6.3. Effects on Service delivery The research has found out that there is a very strong link between the merger and the state of service delivery see the figure below.

Figure 11: Link between merger and service delivery

The gray areas, such as lack of employee consultation and involvement, the merger had during its introduction created negative attitude in council employees. 95.2 percent were not happy with the way merger was introduced. That is why it was perceived as imposed onto councils. The attitude led to resistance. Most of the employees folded their hands and developed deliberate laziness (as was reported by participants in focus group discussions). This is more evident in employees of Departments of Finance, Planning & Development and Administration. Hence departmental performances went down and what was more interesting is Department of Finance which is responsible for revenue generation. The research has revealed that revenue generation has a direct bearing on service delivery. The more the revenue the more the council is at ease in allocating resources to its priority areas (service delivery). However the merged council is overstretched because it realizes limited revenue as is shown in figure 7. The services that have been greatly affected are those under municipal services. These include environmental (solid and liquid waste disposal, public amenities and roads & street services.

6.4. Research Limitations The main limitations of the study were as follows:

a. Availability of key informants at council and ministry level

It was very difficult to get hold of these people as they were always busy. This therefore led to the change of mode of interviews from face to face to telephone interviews.

b. Time constraints

This was due to late allocation of supervisors and of course engagement of the supervisors proved to be difficult as well. This led to writing some chapters without proper advice from the supervisors. However, this completely changed towards the end of the research writing period. Another issue on the same (time constraints) was office work. The months of December, January, February and March are for developing council budget. The researcher acts as a Budget Director. So it was very difficult to have a focus on the research assignment.

6.5. Recommendations The introduction of the merger skipped very important steps. That is, the step of building awareness, consulting and employee involvement. The aforesaid steps helps in leveling the field of play, as it is stated that envisioning potential stumbling blocks in advance could prevent difficult issues from arising during change process. Employees’ fears and expectations are dealt with right away in these steps. Hence recommends that the ministry should go back to its drawing board and restart the process. Even if it is five years now, have not yet embraced the change. In addition, it is also important to note that people’s … natural reaction to change, even in the best circumstances, is to resist. Awareness of the need to change is a critical ingredient of any change and must come first, Prosci (2006). This complements the fact that awareness building reduces the number of resistors. ADKAR, a model for change management emphasizes the point that any change that affect people or employees must seriously consider five steps. The foremost is building awareness of the need to change, seconded by creating desire to participate and support the change; thirdly, imparting knowledge of how the change looks like, forth ensuring there is ability to implement the change on day to day basis

60 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100 and finally putting in place reinforcement to keep the change in place. How can one expect success yet none of the above was taken into consideration

The way the merger was introduced affected the council employees. It is therefore important that councils together with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development develop plausible motivational strategies to bring back the employees job morale and appetite. The Ministry should immediately clear the mist about the merger. Direct employees were promised to be on government pay roll and pension scheme. Will this happen? Failure to fulfill the above contributed to the negative attitude employees developed towards the merger. The Council is therefore encouraged to regularly supervise its staff and should also consider bringing back the junior staff top up allowance.

Another area of concern is council management. It has been noted that it is full of members who worked with District Council before merger. And hence, management decisions are biased towards rural service delivery. It is therefore proposed that the ministry should consider beefing up management team with members who once worked with Town councils.

Last but not least, it is recommended that the Ministry should deliberately develop proper guidelines for the merger. And finally, if the worst to worst, it is better to revert the councils back to their original status.

6.6. Areas for further research The research has identified some areas which might require further study. For example, the researcher proposes a thorough search on how the merger impacted on local revenue generation. The other areas could be finding out whether the anticipated cost effectiveness was achieved after merging the councils and finally one can study the effects of merger on specific service delivery such as Health, Education, and Agriculture just to mention a few.

To crown it all, the research has revealed that council’s employees and service delivery have been negatively affected by the merger.

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Appendices Appendix 1: Council categories before merger

S/n Category Name of Council Region

1 City Councils Blantyre Southern

Lilongwe Central

Mzuzu North

2 Municipality Zomba Southern

3 Town Councils Balaka Southern

Dedza Central

Karonga North

Kasungu Central

Liwonde Southern

Luchenza Southern

Mangochi Southern

Salima Central

4 Districts Balaka Southern

Blantyre Southern

Chikwawa Southern

Chiradzulu Southern

Chitipa North

Dedza Central

Dowa Central

Karonga North

Kasungu Central

Likoma North

Lilongwe Central

Machinga Southern

Mangochi Southern

Mchinji Central

Mulanje Southern

Mwanza Southern

Mzimba North

Neno Southern

Nkhata Bay North

Nkhotakota Central

Ntcheu Central

Ntchisi Central

Nsanje Southern

Phalombe Southern

Rumphi North

Salima Central

Thyolo Southern

Zomba Southern

Appendix 2: Areas of service delivery as is provided in the Decentralisation policy

1. Education Services

(a) Nursery and kindergarten; (b) Primary Schools; and (c) Distance Education Centres.

2. Medical and Health Services including

(a) Health centres, dispensaries, maternity clinics and health posts; (b) Control of communicable diseases; (c) Health education; and (d) Environmental sanitation. 3. Environmental Services (a) Burial Services; (b) Refuse disposal; (c) Sewerage removal and disposal; (d) Environmental reclamation; and (e) Environmental education.

4. Roads and Street Services The construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of roads not under Central Government including (a) District roads; (b) Township roads; (c) City roads; (d) Estate roads (if done to acceptable standards); (e) Street naming; (f) Issuing of road permits; and (g) Issue of drivers' licences.

5. Emergency Service

(a) Ambulance Services; (b) Fire Services; (c) Disasters (until they are declared national disasters).

6. Public Amenities

(a) Sports stadiums; (b) Community halls (c) Recreational parks and playgrounds; and (d) Public conveniences. 7. Buildings (a) Office space for own use of commercial purposes; (b) Housing estates including those for leasing purposes; and (c) Control of building standards. 8. Planning Authority (a) District Assembly to de designated as planning authority. 9. Land Resource Utilisation

(a) Valuation of properties; (b) Valuation of public and customary land; (c) Surveys of land within the area of jurisdiction of the District Assembly except District and International boundaries; and

(d) Enforcement of lease agreement as agents of central government. 10. Business District Assembly will promote and regulate business and local tourism (Le. creation of a conducive environment for business while at the same time upholding of standards. This will include:

(a) Licensing of small and medium business, groceries, retail and wholesale shops, garages, motels, private schools and clinics; and (b) Inspection of the above.

11. Natural Resources (a) Botanical Gardens; (b) Nature sanctuaries; and (c) Zoos and parks other than Game Reserves and National Parks.

12. Fisheries

(a) Licensing and inspection of fishing gear i.e. nets and boats;

(b) Fisheries extension; and (c) Community participation in fish management. 13. Forestry

(a) Establishment of wood lots and forests; Forestry surveys; (b) Inventory of forests; (c) Forestry extension; and (d) Forest management. 14. Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation

(a) Livestock extension; (b) Control of livestock diseases; (c) Land husbandry; (d) Crop husbandry; (e) Food and nutrition; and (f) Construction; rehabilitation small dams. 15. Water

The provision and maintenance of water supplies including: (a) Boreholes; (b) Piped water project (c) Protected wells; (d) Distribution of water; and (e) Gravity fed piped water schemes. 16. Community Development (a) Women in Development; (b) Community Development; (c) Street children and orphans; (d) Youth Affairs; (e) Cultural Affairs; (f) District Information Services; and (g) Probation and welfare .

17. Community Police (a) Establishment and management of police services; (b) Regulation and control of municipal traffic.

Appendix 3: Research Questionnaire

QUESTIONNAIRE A: TO BE ADMINISTERED AT COUNCIL LEVEL

Introduction

I am Blessings B.M. Nkhoma, a student with University of Bolton and I am undertaking an investigation into the impacts of merging Towns and District Councils in Malawi on their respective employees. This is part of my research work in partial fulfillment for the award of Master of Science in Project Management.

You, being one of council employees, have been identified to be part of the respondents of this questionnaire. I sincerely believe that you will provide the much needed information basing on the knowledge you have on the issue under discussion.

Your identity will remain anonymous. Hence your responses will purely be for academic purposes and will therefore be very confidential and it is only the researcher that will have access to it.

Thank you.

PART ONE: PERSONAL INFORMATION

A. Name: ………………………………………………………………………….(Optional)

B. Marital status

1. Married

2. Single

3. Divorced

4. Widow

5. Widower

6. Other (specify)…………………………………………………………………….

C. Gender:

1. Male

2. Female

D. Position/Designation: …………………………………………………………………….

E. Which department do you belong?

1. Administration (Human resource)

2. Finance

3. Planning

4. Public Works

5. Other (specify)……………………………………………………………………

F. Do you attend management meetings?

1. Yes

3. Not applicable

G. How long have you been in this council?

1. 0-4 years

2. 5-9 years

3. 10+ years

H. Which council were you working for before the two merged?

1. District Council

2. Town Council

I. Which category of council employees do you belong?

1. Direct employee

2. Seconded staff

3. Other (specify)

PART B: KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE PROCESS OF MERGING THE COUNCILS

1. How did you know about the merger?

1. Media (newspaper, radio and TV)

2. Management meetings

3. Workshop (either at district, regional and national level)

4. Other (specify) ……………………………………………………………………

2. Was the information adequate?

1. Yes

3. Explain your answer above: ……………………………………......

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………

4. Did you know the reasons why the government decided to merge the two councils?

1. Yes

5. If yes, mention at least two major reasons for the merger:

a. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………

b. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………

6. Were you involved in the process of merging the two councils?

1. Yes

7. If yes, how were you involved? …………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………

PART C: ATTITUDES, PERCEPTION AND FEELINGS ABOUT THE MERGER

1. How prepared were you before the merger was introduced?

i. Very much,

ii. Much

iii. Not much

iv. Not all

2. Explain your answer in 1. Above

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………

3. Were you given time to prepare for the merger?

1. Yes

4. If yes, was the time adequate?

1. Yes

5. Were you happy with the way the merger was introduced?

1. Yes

6. Explain why?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………

7. When you heard about the merger, what were your immediate expectations and fears? Limit yourself to three most important ones in each category:

1. Expectations:

i. ………………………………………………………………………………

ii. ………………………………………………………………………………

iii. ………………………………………………………………………………

2. Fears:

i. ………………………………………………………………………………

ii. ………………………………………………………………………………

iii. ………………………………………………………………………………

8. Have the expectations and fears been addressed after the two councils merged

1. Yes, all have been addressed

2. Not all have been addressed

3. No, all have not been addressed

9. If your answer in 8 above is 2 (Not all have been addressed), mention those expectations and fears that have not been met?

a. Expectations:

i. ………………………………………………………………………………

ii. ………………………………………………………………………………

iii. ………………………………………………………………………………

b. Fears:

i. ………………………………………………………………………………

ii. ………………………………………………………………………………

iii. ………………………………………………………………………………

PART D: EFFECTS OR IMPACT OF THE MERGER

Any change in any organisation has effects or impacts on employees and the organisation itself and community the organisation serves.

1. Did the merger affect you personally?

1. Yes

2. Did the merger have any effect on your work performance?

1. Yes

3. Explain your answer in 2 above

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………

4. Did the merger affect your job in any way?

1. Yes

5. If yes above, how was it affected? You can choose more than one.

1. It increased my workload or responsibilities

2. It reduced my workload or responsibilities

3. It my reporting lines (started reporting to a new boss)

4. It changed my roles, duties and responsibilities

5. It improved my work appetite and morale

6. It reduced my work appetite and morale

7. Others, specify ……………………………………………………………………

6. What were/are your major concerns about the bringing together of these councils? List three most important concerns.

a. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………

b. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………

c. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………

PART E: Impact/effects on council operations and service delivery

A. Has the merger affected council operations?

1. Yes

B. If YES above then, which of these operational areas have been negatively affected?

1. Revenue generation

2. Staff management

3. Staff (direct) salaries

4. Fleet management

5. Leadership

C. Have the above chosen operational areas impacted on council’s service delivery?

1. Yes

D. If yes, which of the services below have suffered quite a lot because of the merger and how? Use 1 to 10 where 1 is least affected, 10 is greatly affected and 5 is moderately affected.

Environmental Services: Public amenities

Removing and disposing of refuse and sewerage, Promotion of recreation, leisure and environmental reclamation and environmental culture, provision and maintenance of education sports grounds, community halls, parks, public conveniences etc

Roads an street services Business

Construction and Maintenance of all roads, street Promotion of local economic development, naming etc regulating businesses and local tourism

Agriculture, livestock and irrigation: Other services

Crop and livestock extension, land and crop Registration of births, death and issuance husbandry, construction and maintenance of small of respective certificates, and burial dams services

Provision and maintenance of water supplies such as boreholes, piped (gravity or not), protected wells

E. Use overleaf for the question ‘how?’ please.

PART F: CONCLUSION

A. In conclusion, how satisfied are you with the merger?

1. Satisfied

2. Somehow satisfied

3. Not satisfied

B. Hence, what recommendations would you put forward to those in authority in relation to the merger?

1. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………

2. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………

3. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………

4. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………

5. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………

Thank you very much for spending your precious time in responding to the questionnaire. May God bless you abundantly!!!

Questionnaire B: Ministry level

Introduction

I am Blessings B.M. Nkhoma, a student with University of Bolton and I am undertaking an investigation into the impacts of merging Towns and District Councils in Malawi on service delivery. This is part of my research work in partial fulfillment for the award of Master of Science in Project Management.

You, being one of those occupying a very high post in the Ministry, have been identified to be part of the respondents of this questionnaire. I sincerely believe that you will provide the much needed information basing on the knowledge you have on the issue under discussion.

Thank you.

PART A: PERSONAL INFORMATION

1. Name: …………………………………………………………………. (optional)

2. Gender: 1. Male 2. Female (tick the applicable)

3. Designation: ………………………………………………………………………………

4. How long have you been with the Ministry

1. 0-4 years

2. 5-9 years

3. 10+ years

The government directed that all Towns be merged with their respective councils on 22nd February 2010. Salima District was one of the affected councils.

A. Were you aware of the factors that led to this?

1. Yes

B. If yes, list the factors below.

1. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 83 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

2. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………

3. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………

C. From your point of view, who initiated the merging process?

1. Councils

2. Ministry

3. Others specify ……………………………………………………………………

D. Were the concerned councils involved in the merging process before the directive?

1. Yes

E. If yes, how were they involved? ………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………

F. After the directive, what has the ministry done to achieve a very successful merging process?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………

G. Finally, are you satisfied with how the merged councils are operating now?

1. Yes

H. Explain your answer in G above.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………

Thank you very much for your precious time and vital responses.

Questionnaire C: Council level targeting the DC and Council Directors

I am Blessings B.M. Nkhoma, a student with University of Bolton and I am undertaking an investigation into the impacts of merging Towns and District Councils in Malawi on service delivery. This is part of my research work in partial fulfillment for the award of Master of Science in Project Management.

You, being the District Commissioner/one of the Directors of the council, have been identified to be part of the respondents of this questionnaire. I sincerely believe that you will provide the much needed information basing on the knowledge you have on the issue under discussion.

Thank you.

PART A: PERSONAL INFORMATION

1. Name: ………………………………………………………………….(optional)

2. Gender: 1. Male 2. Female (tick the appropriate)

3. Marital status, tick the appropriate:

1. Married

2. Single

3. Divorced

4. Widow

5. Widower

6. Other (specify)…………………………………………………………………….

4. Position/Designation: …………………………………………………………………….

5. Which department do you belong? (to be answered by Director only)

1. Administration (Human resource)

2. Finance 86 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

3. Planning

4. Public Works

5. Other (specify)……………………………………………………………………

6. Do you attend management meetings?

1. Yes

3. Not applicable

7. How long have you been in this council?

1. 0-4 years

2. 5-9 years

3. 10+ years

8. Which council were you working for before the two merged?

1. District Council

2. Town Council

3. Other (specify)……………………………………………………………

9. Which category of council employees do you belong?

1. Direct employee

2. Seconded staff

3. Other (specify)……………………………………………………………

A. How did you know about the merger?

1. Media (newspaper, radio and TV)

2. Management meetings

3. Workshop (at district, regional or national level)

4. Other (specify) ……………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………

C. Was the information adequate?

1. Yes

D. Explain your answer above: ……………………………………......

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………

E. Did you know the reasons why the government decided to merge the two councils?

1. Yes

F. If yes, mention at least two major reasons for the merger:

1. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………

2. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………

G. Were you involved in the process of merging the two councils?

1. Yes

H. If yes, how were you involved? …………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………

PART C: ATTITUDES, PERCEPTION AND FEELINGS ABOUT THE MERGER

A. How prepared were you before the merger was introduced?

1.Adequately prepared,

2.Somehow prepared

3. Not prepared at all

B. Explain your answer in A in relation to the following factors:

1. Was time for preparation adequate?

2. Was material/equipment for preparation adequate?

3. Did you get adequate training?

4. Were you adequately involved in the process of merging the two?

C. Were you happy with the way the merger was introduced?

1. Yes

D. Explain why?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………

E. When you heard about the merger, what were your immediate expectations and fears? Limit yourself to three most important ones in each category:

1. Expectations:

I. ………………………………………………………………………………

II. ………………………………………………………………………………

III. ………………………………………………………………………………

2. Fears:

I. ………………………………………………………………………………

II. ………………………………………………………………………………

III. ………………………………………………………………………………

F. Have the expectations and fears been addressed after the two councils merged

1. Yes, all have been addressed

2. Not all have been addressed 90 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

3. No, all have not been addressed

G. If your answer in F above is b (Not all have been addressed), mention the expectations and fears that have not been met?

1. Expectations:

i. ………………………………………………………………………………

ii. ………………………………………………………………………………

iii. ………………………………………………………………………………

2. Fears:

i. ………………………………………………………………………………

ii. ………………………………………………………………………………

iii. ………………………………………………………………………………

H. How did the council address your expectations and fears and those of other employees?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………

PART D: EFFECTS OR IMPACT OF THE MERGER

Any change in any organisation has effects or impacts on employees and the organisation itself inclusive of communities served by the organisation.

A. Were you personally affected by the merger?

1. Yes

B. Did the merger affect your work performance?

1. Yes

C. Explain your answer in B above

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………

D. Did the merger affect your job in any way?

1. Yes

E. If yes above, how was? (You can choose more than one)

1. It increased my workload or responsibilities

2. It reduced my workload or responsibilities

3. It changed my reporting lines (started reporting to a new boss)

4. It changed my roles, duties and responsibilities

5. It improved my work appetite and morale

6. It reduced my work appetite and morale

7. Others, specify ……………………………………………………………………

F. Has the merger affected the operations of your department? (Directors only)

1. Yes

G. Explain how?......

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………

H. How has the operations of the council (as a whole) been affected?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………

I. Has the above affected council’s service delivery?

1. Yes

J. If yes above, which areas of service delivery have been heavily affected by the merger and how?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

K. What were/are your major concerns about the merger? List three most important concerns.

1. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………

2. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………

3. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………

PART E: CONCLUSION

A. Did the council face any challenges (related to the merger) from its employees after the directive?

a. Yes

B. If yes, mention as many as possible

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………

C. How satisfied are you with the support rendered to the council by the Ministry in relation to the challenges mentioned above?

1. Satisfied

2. Somehow satisfied

3. Not satisfied

D. Explain your answer in C above

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………

E. Finally, what recommendations would you put forward to those in authority in relation to the merger? Mention as many as possible

1. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………

2. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………

3. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………

4. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………

5. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………. if space is not enough please write below and even overleaf

Thank you very much for spending your precious time in responding to the questionnaire. May God bless you abundantly!!!

Appendix 4: RAW DATA SETS

DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS

Gender of respondent Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Male 19 90.5 90.5 90.5 Valid Female 2 9.5 9.5 100.0 Total 21 100.0 100.0

Gender of the respondent

Female 9.5%

Male 90.5%

Marital status of the respondent Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Married 19 90.4 90.4 90.4 Divorced 1 4.8 4.8 95.2 Valid Widower 1 4.8 4.8 100.0 Total 21 100.0 100.0

Marital status of the respondents

90.4 100

80 e g

a 60 t n e c

r 40 e P 4.8 4.8 20

0 Married Divorced Widower Marital status

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

SURVEY RESULTS

Department to which the respondent belongs to * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Administration (Human 28.6% 4.8% 33.3% resource) Department to which the Finance 33.3% 4.8% 38.1% respondent belongs to Planning 14.3% 14.3% Public works 4.8% 4.8% Other 9.5% 9.5% Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

Department to which the respondent belongs

Other 9.5

Public works 4.8 t n e m t 14.3 r Planning a p e D Finance 38.1

Administration (Human resource) 33.3

0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0%

Respondent attendance to management meetings * Gender of respondent Crosstabulation

% of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Respondent attendance to Yes 42.9% 4.8% 47.6% management meetings Not applicable 47.6% 4.8% 52.4% Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

Respondent attendance to management meetings

Yes 47.6% Not applicable 52.4%

Length of service at the council * Gender of respondent Crosstabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female 0 – 4 14.3% 4.8% 19.0% Length of service at the council 5 – 9 28.6% 4.8% 33.3% 10+ years 47.6% 47.6% Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

Respondent's length of service with the council 50.0% 47.6 45.0% 40.0% 33.3 35.0% 30.0% 25.0% 19.0 20.0% 15.0% 10.0% 5.0% 0.0% 0 - 4 5 - 9 10+ years Length of service

Original council worked with before merger * Gender of respondent Crosstabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Original council worked with District Council 30.0% 30.0% before merger Town Council 60.0% 10.0% 70.0% Total 90.0% 10.0% 100.0%

Original council the respondent worked with before council merger

District Council Town Council

Category of employees to which the respondent belongs * Gender of respondent Crosstabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total 100 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

Male Female Category of employees to Direct employee 57.1% 9.5% 66.7% which the respondent belongs Seconded staff 33.3% 33.3% Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

Category of employees to which the respondent belongs

Seconded staff 33.3%

Direct employee 67.7%

Source of information about the merger * Gender of respondent Crosstabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Media (newspaper, radio and 28.6% 4.8% 33.3% TV) Source of information about the Management meetings 23.8% 23.8% merger Workshop (at district, regional 38.1% 4.8% 42.9% or national level) Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

Respondent's source of information for the merger

42.9 45.0% 33.3 40.0% 35.0% 23.8 30.0% 25.0% 20.0% 15.0% 10.0% 5.0% 0.0% Media (newspaper, Management Workshop (at radio and TV) meetings district, regional or national level) Source of information

Was the information adequate? * Gender of respondent Crosstabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Yes 9.5% 9.5% Was the information adequate? No 81.0% 9.5% 90.5% Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

Adequacy of information for the merger

Yes No 90.5%

Descriptive

Descriptive Statistics N Sum Knowledge of reasons for merger 21 36 of two councils Valid N (listwise) 21

This data require categorisation further coding for frequencies (It can be done manually)

Notice was too brief and not detailed, It was too brief, Reasons for the merger were explained, The process was done in a hurry, There were no consultations hence more gaps, It was an abrupt directive hence no thorough information given, the ministry too had nothing to offer in terms of how to go about the entire process, The directive lacked information on 'how' to go about it, It was discussed at length between top and middle management before merging, It was too brief (not much was explained), I joined Salima district when merger had already taken place, The information came with gaps in terms of staffing structures, The information had a lot of questions than answers, Not much was explained on the radio, The presenters did have adequate information as how the two will merge, The presentation was not very clear, The ministry officer had no clear direction apart from forcing us to merge, It was funny because those from the ministry seemed not to have clear information on the same, This was imposed on us, we did not take part in its initial stages, We were taken unawares and yet they no clear information on the subject matter, Councils were left in suspense because the facilitators did not expound much on how everything will be done,

Reasons if the respondent knew about the merger * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female 61.9% 9.5% 71.4%

Reasons if the respondent knew Cutting costs, improve service 4.8% 4.8% about the merger delivery Donor driven-DC’s to control all the resources and that towns should not be independent, some town councils were 4.8% 4.8% struggling financially and some had no key staff however Salima was performing well Economic reasons thus cutting costs, administrative reasons thus the government wanted the 4.8% 4.8% two councils to be headed by a single person Economical: the government wanted to pull the two councils' resources together so that the money realized would be used effectively for development activities, staff rationale: the government did not want to 4.8% 4.8% duplicate the services of Chief Executive Officer and that of District Commissioner hence the government thought it wise that there must be one officer heading the two councils Government was losing money 4.8% 4.8% by duplicating most of top management positions such as DC and CEO, DPDs, DOF, etc and that some town councils were mismanaging their funds

It was discovered that a number of district councils were in arrears of salaries for their direct employees, the merging 4.8% 4.8% decision by government was made in a hurry and without proper consultations Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

Was the respondent involved in merging of the two councils * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Was the respondent involved in Yes 4.8% 4.8% merging of the two councils No 85.7% 9.5% 95.2% Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

Involvement of the respondent in the merger

Yes No

Level of preparedness before the major was introduced * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Somehow prepared 20.0% 20.0% 105 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

Level of preparedness before Not prepared at all 70.0% 10.0% 80.0% the major was introduced Total 90.0% 10.0% 100.0%

Level of respondent's preparedness before the major was introduced

Somehow prepared

80% Not prepared at all

Was time for preparation adequate? * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Was time for preparation No 89.5% 10.5% 100.0% adequate? Total 89.5% 10.5% 100.0%

Was material/equipment for preparation adequate? * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Was material/equipment for No 89.5% 10.5% 100.0% preparation adequate? Total 89.5% 10.5% 100.0%

Did you get adequate training? * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Did you get adequate training? No 89.5% 10.5% 100.0% Total 89.5% 10.5% 100.0%

Were you adequately involved in the process of merging the two? * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Were you adequately involved in the process of merging the No 89.5% 10.5% 100.0% two? Total 89.5% 10.5% 100.0%

Were you happy with the way the merger was introduced? * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Were you happy with the way Yes 5.0% 5.0% the merger was introduced? No 85.0% 10.0% 95.0% Total 90.0% 10.0% 100.0%

Respondents’ expectations

 Require sifting to eliminate duplication

improvement in service delivery, improvement in staff welfare, improvement in working conditions, Extra work, improved service delivery, good salaries, Salary payments would be effectively done, service delivery would be done with ease, development work would be easily carried out Direct staff to be on government payroll, Direct staff to be on pension scheme, to be aligned to govet positions Councils to improve on financial matters, Direct staff (employees) to be on government payroll, good governance Increased funding, increased staff return, improved efficiency Increased funding, increased workload, The margin of local revenue collection to be widened, improvement in service delivery, sharing of different experiences Extra work, we will work better Increased privileges Staff restructuring, increased resource allocation Improved staff working conditions, fully covered organogram with qualified staff Direct employees to be on government pay roll, to be on pension scheme We will be on government payroll, pension scheme, good working conditions Increased salaries, improved working conditions, good leadership increased revenue generation, improved service delivery, good working conditions

Salary increase, financial stand of the council improved, be on pension scheme Increased work load, salary increase increased funding, increased workload, learn new things in the district rural areas Salary improvement, revenue collection improved,

Respondents’ fears

* Require sifting to eliminate duplications

Loss of jobs for direct employees, duplication of duties, poor service delivery, Loss of jobs, Attitude of new bosses, staff retrenchments, there would be segregation other staff to be sidelined, some staff would lose their positions retrenchment, demotions, to be put on lower salary grades Direct staff (employee) losing jobs Loss of jobs, low morale, Increased tension Massive retrenchment, Culture conflict between town and district, will oneness be achieved Retrenchment, operational style (town and district) Revenue pilferage, teeming and lading of revenue, wage bill increase Job loss, meeting new bosses More responsibilities Losing position sand power, losing privileges job losses, meeting new bosses, culture clash staff redundancies, town culture versus district culture job losses, new bosses' attitude staff retrenchment, staff resigning on their own Some staff being demoted, Some losing jobs, Attitude of district bosses over those from town council Direct employees losing their job, Staff morale that is, will it be high or become low, who will lead between the two: DC and CEO? Massive retrenchment, More plot seekers Job loss, differences in culture and leadership style

Have respondent fears and expectation been addressed? * Gender of respondent Crosstabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Yes, all have been addressed 4.8% 4.8% Have respondent fears and Not all have been addressed 38.1% 38.1% expectation been addressed? No, all have not been addressed 47.6% 9.5% 57.1% Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

Whether respondent's fears or expectations have been addressed

Yes, all have been 38.1% addressed 57.1% Not all have been addressed No, all have not been addressed

Respondents’ expectation that have been met *Sift and eliminate duplications

Improvement of service delivery, improvement of staff welfare, improvement of staff working conditions, Improved service delivery, good salaries Service delivery, development work Direct staff to be on government payroll, Direct staff to be on pension scheme, increased staff return Revenue collection not boosted up, Laying off of long serving members not yet done, salary increase not fully paid Increased privileges (privileges are just as before the merger)

Respondents’ fears not addressed *Sift and eliminate duplication Loss of jobs, duplication of duties, Loss of jobs, attitude of new bosses staff segregation retrenchment, demotions, Low morale is still there, increased tension is also still there Revenue pilferage in rampant (uncontrolled), wages not paid in time, continuity of under banking of revenue More responsibilities All stated above staff redundancies, town culture versus district culture 110 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

job losses, new bosses' attitude staff retrenchment, staff resigning on their own Some staff being demoted, Some losing jobs, Attitude of district bosses over those from town council Direct employees losing their job, Massive retrenchment, More plot seekers Job loss, differences in culture and leadership style

How the council addressed fears and expectations of the respondent and other council employees * Sift and eliminate duplications

By paying staff salaries regularly though without arrears, no staff retrenchments have taken place Council came up with one management team, maintained staff salary grades, realigned some members of staff in their relevant departments, Most of the issues are outstanding Council has no clues as to how to deal with these fears and expectations since the ministry has not come up with any guidelines on the same The council had managed to address my expectations and fears by setting up strong internal control within the council so that the system should operate in an efficient and effective manner Through segregation of duties Fears are not yet addressed as the council is still waiting for the ministry's direction though as of now the towns are just regarded as sectors Staff morale has completely gone down

Was the respondent personally affected by the merger * Gender of respondent Cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Was the respondent personally Yes 90.5% 9.5% 100.0% affected by the merger Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

Did the merger affect your job in any way * Gender of respondent Cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female 111 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

Did the merger affect your job Yes 85.7% 9.5% 95.2% in any way No 4.8% 4.8% Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

Whether the respondent's job was affected in any way

Yes No 95.2%

How the merger affected the respondent’s job

Responses Percent of Cases N Percent It increased my workload or 14 35.0% 70.0% responsibilities It reduced my workload or 3 7.5% 15.0% responsibilities Effect_on_joba It changed my reporting lines (Started reporting to a new 12 30.0% 60.0% boss) Other 11 27.5% 55.0% Total 40 100.0% 200.0%

How the merger affected the respondent's job

40.0% 35.0 35.0% 30.0 30.0% 27.5 25.0% 20.0% 15.0% 10.0% 7.5 5.0% 0.0% It increased my It reduced my It changed my Other workload or workload or reporting lines responsibilities responsibilities (Started reporting to a new boss) Effect

Has the merger affected operations of your department? * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Has the merger affected Yes 90.0% 10.0% 100.0% operations of your department? Total 90.0% 10.0% 100.0%

How the merger has affected operations of the respondent’s department *Sift and delete duplications

Failing to manage council fleet Revenue generation gone down staffing levels: no replacement of staff Normal market inspections have been minimized due to fuel problems, Departmental reports are not being attended to Merging of books of accounts was not a problem but merging people, some had allegiance to their respective bosses hence it was very difficult to work with them This took a top-bottom approach which normally does not go well with those at the bottom Most of my staff were greatly demoralized especially those in the markets Due to increase of may workload the period to complete my planned assignments is also lengthened

Town staff got demoralized due to not being supervised Most of the revenue collectors have their moral gone down The town came with a fully fledged accounts department including DOF thereby it was difficult to delegate some assignments to a fellow DOF, furthermore it created dual allegiance because some staff were used to their reporting channel sand again failure to accept change created so many problems and low performance. Workforce increased tremendously Limited supervision Departmental supervision has gone down, vendors are acting as our bosses because our bosses do not visit in the markets Staff morale is not there staff members have developed laziness Work performance has gone down The department is failing to purchase working materials

Has the above affected council's service delivery? * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Has the above affected council's Yes 95.0% 5.0% 100.0% service delivery? Total 95.0% 5.0% 100.0%

Which areas of service delivery has been heavily affected by the merger *Sift and delete duplications

Environmental services, roads and street services, business and public amenities Environmental services, Public amenities, Business, roads and street services, Failure to provide sanitary services in the produce markets has led to vendors refusing to buy tickets thereby leading to low revenue collection, failure to develop additional facilities such as rest houses, staff houses has led to reduced sources of income to the council Maintenance of market infrastructures not done, council staff houses not maintained, communities not adequately served Market operations have been heavily affected, some markets have been closed, market staff such as market sweepers, watchmen and ticket sellers are not enough, market byelaws not implemented Municipal services Council failing to generate enough resources to carter for the mandatory service provisions more especially those in town No enough money generated from the markets as such council fails to honour wage bill on time, the municipal services such as sanitary service is very poor 114 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

The area that heavily affected by the merger in relation to service delivery is more especially finance department through failure to produce reports on time, failure to allocate jobs to members of staff with proper skills, knowledge and experience but diverting it to members of staff of boss's choice due to favour. Failing to deliver services accordingly Municipal services

Revenue ventures which were being operated by town councils like bars were being abused, Estates department which is under the DPD failed to relinquished some of the DPD's duties because of power hungry by the town rangers hence a lot of illegal developments were being carried out without the knowledge of the departmental head, since most staff were not sure about their future they now engaged in exit strategy by abusing their power in corrupt practices Poor service delivery especially in the areas of sanitation, roads and business ventures Priory areas are never looked after Municipal services badly affected Sanitary facilities such toilets are not being well looked after The council is running by try and error, no clear direction Services for town have completely been affected the council has failed to provide relevant services to all rate payers,

Respondent’s concerns about the merger *Sift and delete duplications

staffing levels, service delivery, development work plans implementations Higher authorities did not consider town council's performance when introducing the merger, Ministry of Local Government not ready to put direct staff on its payroll and pension scheme, town are slowly being killed Council operations going down, No financial improvement because of lack of cooperation between senior staff and junior staff The merger came from the blues and it would have worked if we were fully involved in the entire process Ministry slow pace in handling the merger issue Wage bill, promises made by Ministry Wage bill increase, Workload increase, low morale in some members of staff due to favoritism Direct staff not yet on government payroll, Direct staff not yet on pension scheme as promised, local revenue down turn Direct staff not yet on government payroll and pension scheme Staff were demoralized, increased workload, conflicts among competing staff late salaries, pension scheme and government payroll Management to think of prioritizing issues to be implemented before resources are in Sanitation in town is very bad Routine maintenance to the tractor and lorry, the council looses a lot of money if these are idle staying Why is the ministry so slow in finalizing the process of merging/

Did the council face any challenges (related to the major) from its employees after the major? * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female Did the council face any Yes 57.9% 10.5% 68.4% challenges (related to the major) from its employees after the No 31.6% 31.6% major? Total 89.5% 10.5% 100.0%

Respondent's perception on whether the council faced any challenges (related to the merger)

Yes 68.4% No

Examples of challenges faced by the council in the merger as perceived by the respondent *Sift and delete duplication

at first the employees did not know what to do it took some time to settle down A lot of misappropriation of cash within the council by ticket sellers because of inadequate supervision, Direct employees’ salaries and wages not being paid in time Demoralized staff were not performing to their expectations, low revenue collection Resistance by some staff members Staff (town) did not like the idea There was some resistance in some members of staff to accept the change, Local revenue collection margin was on the decrease because some employees developed some laziness due to merging, there were some under banking of revenue collected by some employees Most staff members (juniors) were demoralized hence they were resisting the merger

Demoralized staff more especially the juniors Conflict among members resulted into low input, people were demoralized hence increased abuse of available resources Resistance from the junior staff Demotivated staff There were conflicts between staff of the same position and grade Resistance from some staff members

How satisfied are you with the support rendered to the council by the ministry in relation to challenges mentioned above? * Gender of respondent cross tabulation % of Total Gender of respondent Total Male Female How satisfied are you with the Somehow satisfied 9.5% 9.5% support rendered to the council by the ministry in relation to Not satisfied 81.0% 9.5% 90.5% challenges mentioned above? Total 90.5% 9.5% 100.0%

Level of satisfaction by the respondent with the support rendered to the council by the central government

Somehow satisfied Not satisfied

Explanation on level of respondent’s satisfaction *Sift and remove duplications or group and code than report on category frequencies as well The ministry has done nothing the council is using try and error type of management The Ministry came and explained that staff should look at the merger as a reality and that in life changes are inevitable The Ministry is acting slowly on the issue of merging 117 | P a g e University of Bolton MSc Project Management BBM Nkhoma: 1208100

The role which the ministry has played leaves a lot to be desired, councils are left in suspense and they have no any idea as to go about it There is no any direction We were not involved in the process I am not satisfied because the government has not fulfilled promises made before merging e.g. failure to incorporate direct employees on government payroll, All their promises are not yet met, revenue generation is going down It is not bringing the promised results None of the officials from the ministry was able to give a direction regarding those problems since everyone seems to have no idea of what to do We still have a long way to go It was far much better before the merger The ministry is so quiet and seems to have no direction There is nothing the council has been supported by the ministry As for us juniors, there is nothing that we have gotten from the Ministry Ministry is quite As far as merger is concerned, the ministry has done nothing Still waiting to hear more from the ministry Councils are left in suspense and it is like it has no parent ministry

Recommendations *Sift and remove duplications Harmonize salaries, consider equitable distribution of development projects between the town and district, come up with ways of motivating staff more especially those related to revenue generation The ministry should improve funding levels to the council, in future they should widely make consultations before that implement any merger, material/equipment for preparation of merger be made available, those involved be fully trained, time for preparation be adequate to allow time for adjustments town councils that were performing and standing on their own must be de-merged, if then the Ministry should consider staff welfare by including the direct staff on its pay roll and pension scheme Town councils should not be combined with district councils (should work independently), Direct staff to be considered and be on government payroll, revise gratuity of direct staff, to introduce manual accounting because computers have failed us, Non functional markets should be opened It is better that town go back to their original status, Training has to be sought as soon as possible

The ministry should produce operational guidelines for the process, they should also train council staff accordingly Ministry to come back or it should just restart the process of merging The management should ensure that internal control system is working effectively, the management should ensure that there is proper segregation of duties amongst staff members, the management should avoid biasness in allocating job assignment to staff members The government should harmonize salaries, Consider equity on the part of town development, motivate staff members in the areas of allowances, salaries

Ministry to come up with proper guidelines regarding merge, Most of the staff members require training in newly acquired roles and responsibilities There is need for thorough consultative meetings to seek views of stakeholders, the structure should be developed so that every officer should be aware of what is required, ministry should give clear guidelines of merged services or departments Bring back town councils Ministry should bring back some officers who were working with Town council to mix up with those of District Council to achieve equity Management should be conducting regular market visits this will lead to improvement in the market revenue collection, the government should let the two councils stand on their own, These were performing better than the way they are as of now Town should come back

Appendix 5: SUMMARY RESULTS FROM THE FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSIONS

Source of information:

1. Radio and

2. Meeting at council level.

Adequacy of information

1. Half ways: rumor mongering,

2. Not adequate: Local Government official came to Salima when the damage was already done ie the President had already declared the merger. Thereafter, nobody came to formally inform us how to work as a merged council.

Causes/reasons for merger

1. To avoid duplication of effort (District Commissioner versus Chief Executive)

2. To equitably share few resources that the two council get from donors.

3. To improve service delivery in town

Employee involvement

1. They were not involved at all.

ATTITUDES, PERCEPTION AND FEELINGS ABOUT THE MERGER

Preparedness

1. Not prepared at all

2. They knew nothing till it was announced on the radio. It was more of a surprise.

Time to prepare

1. They were not given time to prepare

2. N/A

Were you happy with merger?

1. They were not happy.

Why? They were not involved in the initial stage and it was a surprise to them

Expectation and fears

Expectation:

5. Merger would mean (Town employees) salary throughout. No salary arrears. They had at one point stayed for 3 to 4 months without pay

6. Good salaries

7. Knowledge expansion as they were confined in a small area (learn about the rural communities and urban life respectively)

Fears:

5. Staff management might be an issue (merger meant bringing together staff from both councils.)

6. Fear for new bosses’ attitude

7. Relevance of their existence (Loss of job)

Expectations and fears not addressed

1. Merger would mean (Town employees) salary throughout. No salary arrears. They had at one point stayed for 3 to 4 months without pay

2. Good salaries

1. Staff management issues)

EFFECTS OR IMPACT OF THE MERGER

Effects on an individual

 Yes there were effects on individuals

Effects on work performance

 Work performance was also affected

 Most employees (juniors) have developed laziness hence performance has gone down.

 Materials are usually not readily available hence cleaning services are very poor.

Effects on job

8. increased workload or responsibilities

9. reporting lines (started reporting to a new boss) changed

10.Change in roles, duties and responsibilities

11.Reduced work appetite and morale

Concerns:

4. Government should honour their promise of harmonizing salaries (direct & seconded staff

5. Motivation! How will the council motivate employees so that they start working wholeheartedly? No laziness

6. Despite the merger, revenue generation of has gone down.

EFFECTS OR IMPACT

Council operations affected

 Heavily affected

Areas affected

o Revenue generation

o Staff management

o Staff (direct) salaries

o Fleet management

o Leadership

o Land administration matters such as plot issues

Is the overall service delivery affected?

 Yes

How and which areas?

 Prioritization of issues: Leadership favours rural areas as opposed to town (Service delivery in town has completely gone down). Environmental services and road, street service provisions have been heavily affected. Tanker has stayed for almost a year without buying its tyres. Tractor been on and off. Lorry no service for years, no tyres. How do we operate?

 Lack of motivation: ministry lied to them on salary issue. Employee laziness (especially revenue collectors and market masters due to lack of monitoring): low level of revenue generation (market fee collection, property rates collection), poor service delivery (revenue just enough for salaries).

 Land matters:

Satisfaction levels

Not satisfied

What needs to be done?

 Motivate the revenue collectors and their market masters

 Local Government to come back for proper briefing.

 Need for proper training of the middle and top managers: they seem not to have embraced town/municipal related services.

APPENDIX 6: SUMMARY OF TELEPHONE INTERVIEWS WITH KEY INFORMANTS

Part B: Knowledge about the process of merging the councils

c. All key informants indicated that they were aware of the factors leading to the merger

d. The factors were:

a. To improve council service delivery

b. To reduce operational costs

e. All the three agreed that the merger was initiated by Department of Human Resource Management and Development which conducted a study on council effectiveness.

f. It was also reported that concerned councils were not involved in the merging process.

g. After the directive, the ministry

a. Conducted district level meetings and workshops to build awareness of council staff

b. Supported the merging process of books of accounts at council level.

h. The key informants indicated that they are not satisfied with how the merged councils are operating

i. Reasons:

a. There has been inadequate support to councils. After conducting the two activities indicated in question 5, the ministry has done nothing.

b. There are indications that councils are struggling (economically and operational wise) to forge ahead with the merger.

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