Ethical violations: Shortlisting and interviewing processes in the South African public service

Africa's Public Service Delivery and Performance Review

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Ethical violations: Shortlisting and interviewing processes in the South African public service
 
Creator Mokgolo, Manasseh M. Dikotla, Maoka
 
Subject HRM, Public Sector Management and Development conflict of interests; ethics; ethical violations; human resource practitioners; public service; management; political heads; shortlisting.
Description Background: Ethics, integrity and accountability in public service departments have weakened. These departments face ethical violations in recruitment, shortlisting, interviewing and appointment processes despite the presence of human resource management prescripts in place.Aim: This study aimed to probe the level of ethical violations in recruitment, shortlisting and interviewing processes, and describe the challenges faced by human resource practitioners and panel members in South Africa’s public service departments.Setting: Both the national and provincial public service departments of South Africa.Methods: The study adopted the qualitative modernistic research approach. A semi-structured electronic questionnaire was used to gather views from 528 participants, including human resource practitioners and line managers serving as panel members.Results: Ethical violations result in human resource practitioners and panel members being compromised, maltreated, victimised and bullied in the workplace. During recruitment, shortlisting, interviewing and appointment stages, abuses of power, undisclosed conflicts of interest and even patronage by political heads and top-and-middle management are acutely rife. Ethical violations inhibit the human resource functionary from building an ethical, professional and capable public service.Conclusion: Ethical violations during recruitment phases are exacerbated by political heads and top management’s observable disregard of prescripts.Contribution: This study will encourage management to consider human resource practitioners’ role in managing ethical dilemmas and galvanise employees towards maintaining ethics and jointly desisting from unethical practices.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor Office of the Public Service Commission
Date 2023-06-29
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Qualitative research
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/apsdpr.v11i1.648
 
Source Africa’s Public Service Delivery & Performance Review; Vol 11, No 1 (2023); 9 pages 2310-2152 2310-2195
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://apsdpr.org/index.php/apsdpr/article/view/648/1379 https://apsdpr.org/index.php/apsdpr/article/view/648/1380 https://apsdpr.org/index.php/apsdpr/article/view/648/1381 https://apsdpr.org/index.php/apsdpr/article/view/648/1382
 
Coverage South Africa 2020-2022 National and Provincial departments
Rights Copyright (c) 2023 Manasseh M. Mokgolo, Maoka Dikotla https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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