Employee Motivation, Land Administration Reforms and Service Delivery: Evidence from the Lands Commission of Ghana

Abstract

Institutions set up in most developing countries to deliver products or services for the public good often hardly perform to expectations. One of the key underlying factors is employee motivation, because under the circumstances, private interests tend to take precedence over those of benefit to the public. To improve performance, incentives become inevitable to motivate the personnel. This paper examines the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on land service delivery by the Lands Commission of Ghana regarding the moderating roles of internal and external land administration reforms currently being undertaken in the country. An explanatory research approach was adopted, which led to a quantitative research design and execution. Following a stratified sampling procedure, a sample of 332 officials was drawn from the cluster of land commission subdivisions located in the capitals of the 16 regions of the country. Factor and regression analyses were conducted with SPSS. Results indicate that intrinsic (β = .232, p < .001) and extrinsic (β = .205, p < .001) motivation both have a significant positive effect on service delivery, with intrinsic motivation having a slightly greater impact. Internal reforms positively moderated the intrinsic motivation-service delivery relation (β = .114, p < .05), but external reforms did not significantly moderate (β = -.014, t = .211, p > .10). Implementing robust staff performance mechanisms, computerising land processes, and enhancing working conditions are priority measures that need to be taken to improve service delivery.