1.1 Introduction
The civil service in Nigeria, like most civil services in the world, was built strictly on the bureaucratic principle of the discipline and control in the conduct of the office and productivity in civil service. Discipline means to cause the mind to obey, discipline came into view because employees in the organization consist of people with diverse characters, thus there are good staff and bad staff. Work performance is the work achieved by a person or group of persons, whether physical or material or non-physical or non-material, generated by the functions or indicators of a job or profession within a certain time according to their authorities and responsibilities in an effort to achieve the objectives of the organization concerned legally, not violating the law and in accordance with the moral or ethical. (Hadari Nawawi, 2005, Wirawan, 2009, Moerhariono, 2010).
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
The productivity and survival of any organization depend largely on the quality of its employees and how much they are able to align themselves to the goal and policies of the organization. One of the major problems facing Nigeria civil service is how to manage the personnel by successful government in Nigeria. This is particularly important because of the level of indiscipline in Nigeria civil service is found to be responsible for low productivity in government’s desire to achieve higher living standards for the people (Adebayo, 2001).
Effective discipline depends not only on sound leadership and a good personnel policy but also on the full cooperation of employees to such policies of the organization. In a situation where the employees are not in conformity with organization rule and regulation and set standard, there will be poor performance and low level of productivity. There is no doubt that in any dispensation in Nigeria be it military or civilian the civil service is looked upon to provide certain fundamental services for the smooth running of the government of the country. It will be worthy to note that the executive arm of the government whose responsibility is to implement all the governmental programs rely heavily on the civil service to perform this important function. However, because of the abysmal performance and indiscipline in the civil service, the civil service has been attacked by renowned administrators, bureaucratic and academicians.
Arowolo (2010) point of view is in line with this argument when he observes that the lack of total regard for ethical standard and rule and regulations throughout the agencies of government and civil service in Nigeria is a serious drawback. This is because civil service is one of the machinery of government saddled with the responsibility of implementing the will of the state. Unfortunately, despite the fact that much is expected from this organ of government the lackadaisical attitude with which the civil service performs its duties has generated a lot of heat for both past and successive government in Nigeria.
The origin, structure and performance of the contemporary civil service in Nigeria are highly traceable to colonial administrative formation. Civil Service in Nigeria has its origins in organizations established by the British in colonial times. The Nigerian Civil service is a body of government employees entrusted with the administration of the country, and mandated to carry out the policies of the government of the day. In other words, it is the body of civilian employees of any level of government, not subject to political appointment and removal, normally hired and promoted largely on the basis of competitive examination.
Bade (2009) major reasons for staff indiscipline in the public sector include mismanagement of conflicts, lack of better understanding of conflicts, their root causes, early signs or indicators, dynamics and the manner in which they can be prevented, brought under control and eventually resolved by the organization (Kankwenda, 2002).
According to Agu (2003:73) it is not usual for the personal manager to think of indiscipline or the part of an employer when the employee fails to obey reasonable instructions from a well constituted authority. An employee will then be subject to disciplinary action when he will fully commit a serious offence or crime against his employee. A discipline employee is the one who exhibits a high moral standard, seeks to become an important member of the organization, obeys reasonable instructions from his superior, committed to his task and protects the assets of his employer. There are general stages that must be followed in implementing a disciplinary procedure in any organization.
Therefore, in Nigeria where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Effect of Civil Servant Indiscipline on Work Productivity.
1.3 Statement of Problems
Investigation revealed that Public/Civil Servants, in contemporary public organizations in Nigeria, exhibit discipline at a minimal level coupled with some elements of indiscipline. According to Adebayo (2001), such acts of indiscipline include lethargy, apathy, laziness, rudeness to members of the public, malingering, presenting false sick certificates in order to go and attend to private businesses and a host of other deplorable attitudes. Lack of discipline in organization affected the effectiveness and efficiency of organizational productivity and also profitability. Therefore, this study attempt to make the lack of discipline leads to the following:
- Low productivity as a result of negligence;
- Poor performance of employees;
- High rate of absenteeism;
- Increase cost of production; and
- Insubordination or organizational objectives/waste of resources.
It is obvious that an organization workforce is made up of people of diverse backgrounds so disobedience and mistakes are inevitable employees are discipline when they go against organizational rules and regulations. Like high rate of absenteeism, labour, turnover, accidents and sickness, low and facility turnout increasing wastage. To that effect organizational experience failure in business poor performance and low output level. When employees lack training of the mind and character, to produce self control the organization is driven to sudden trait or sustain losses as a result of indiscipline.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study
The aim of the study is to investigate the Effect of Civil Servant Indiscipline on Work Productivity. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:
- To examine the level of indiscipline among civil servants in Nigeria;
- To find the effects of indiscipline on the productivity of civil servants;
- To investigate the causes of indiscipline among civil servant; and
- To find out those factors that influence productivity in the civil service.
1.5 Research Questions
The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:
- What is the level of indiscipline among civil servants in Nigeria?
- What are the causes of indiscipline among civil servant?
- What are the effects of indiscipline on the productivity of civil servants?
- What are the factors that influence productivity in the civil service?
1.6 Research Hypothesis
In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.
Hypothesis One
- H0: Incentives are not proven to mediate the influence of civil servant work involvement and work discipline on performance.
- H1: Incentives are proven to mediate the influence of work involvement and civil servant work discipline on performance.
Hypothesis Two
- H0: Indiscipline does not affect employee’s behaviour on civil servant work productivity
- H1: Indiscipline affects employee’s behaviour on civil servant work productivity
1.7 Significance of Study
The benefit of employees discipline on productivity efficiency aims at alerting the employees whose performance is considered low to improve his performance, reminding the employees of the expected standards of behaviours and increasing the moral, motivation and performance.
Organization and others will benefit from the study in the following ways:
- It will help organizations to maintain peace, unity, among the employees so as to have improved productivity.
- Students of laziness administration and management, human capital management will find this useful as it will serve as a reference work for further researcher.
- It will also help the society at large to embrace discipline as a tool used to inculcate obedience and control in the life of citizens.
This study will be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.
1.8 Scope of Study
The scope of the research is focused on the Civil Servant Indiscipline and it's Effect on Work Productivity using Imo State Ministry of Finance as a case study.
1.9 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).
1.10 Definition of Terms
Discipline: It is a training that moulds or perfects the mental or moral character. It is also a set of rules that government and the conduct of people in any organization.
Employees: Is an individual who work part time or full time under a contract of employment. Whether oral or written, expressed or implied and has recognized right and duties.
Productivity: An economic measure of output per unit of input-inputs includes labour and capital.
Management: It is the organization and coordination of the activities of a business in order to achieve defined objectives and effective goals.
Goals: A goal is desired result a person or a system envisions plans and commits to achieve a personal or organizational desire end-point in same sort of assumed development.
