Citizens and expatriates satisfaction with public services in Qatar – evidence from a survey

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 326-337
Author(s):  
Nada Abdelkader Benmansour

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze citizens’ and expatriates’ satisfaction with public service delivery in Qatar, one of the world’s highest per capita incomes countries. Design/methodology/approach The author uses a 2017 survey conducted in Qatar among both Qatari and expatriates’ respondents. The scientifically grounded sample consisted of 1,356 respondents, who were 18 years of age and older. The data were collected through a face-to-face survey. The focus was on citizen satisfaction with basic public services such as education, health, roads and infrastructure, water and electricity and government services. The author uses logit and regression analysis to estimate the determinants of satisfaction. Findings Expatriates hold more positive feelings about local public services than citizens. The highest levels of satisfaction are with government offices and the lowest levels of satisfaction are with independent schools. The dispersion by municipality is less significant as there is no municipality where citizens and expatriates are totally satisfied with all the public services provided. Research limitations/implications Qatar has one of the fastest population growth and highest migrant population which makes the question of the satisfaction with public services unique. And, since the blockade on Qatar in May 2017 and the environment of economic restriction, the issue becomes even more critical. Originality/value Until now, there have been no empirical studies published analyzing the level of satisfaction with public services in Qatar for citizens and for expatriates.

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-33
Author(s):  
Erhan Örselli ◽  
Erdal Bayrakçı ◽  
Selcuk Kahraman

  Abstract Local governments, which are the closest units to people in terms of providing services, pay special attention to such issues as life and service quality, citizen satisfaction, meeting demands and expectations of citizens while making future plans and evaluating how successful they are in the public eye. The level of citizen satisfaction, citizens’ experiences and perceptions about local services and their ideas about the legitimacy, credibility and performance of Mayor affect the success of local governments, particularly municipalities, in a positive or a negative way. This study aims to develop “a citizen report” about the local services in Konya by identifying how satisfied people are with the quality of the local public services provided by Konya Municipality. Keywords: Local public services, service quality, citizen satisfaction, citizen report.  


2021 ◽  
pp. 002085232110064
Author(s):  
Daniel Albalate ◽  
Germà Bel ◽  
Raymond Gradus ◽  
Eoin Reeves

Since the turn of the century, a global trend of re-municipalization has emerged, with cities reversing earlier privatizations and returning infrastructure and public service delivery to the public sector. The reversal of privatization measures is not an entirely new phenomenon. In the US, for example, returning public services to in-house production has been a long-standing feature of ‘pragmatic public management’. However, many cases of re-municipalization that have occurred since the early 2000s represent a distinctive shift from earlier privatization policies. High-profile cases in cities including Paris and Hamburg have thrust re-municipalization into the limelight as they have followed public campaigns motivated by dissatisfaction with the results of privatization and a desire to restore public control of vital services, such as water and energy. Just as the reform of public services towards privatization spawned a vast body of scholarship, the current re-municipalization phenomenon is increasingly attracting the attention of scholars from a number of disciplinary perspectives. The articles contained in this symposium contribute to this emerging literature. They address some of the burning issues relating to re-municipalization, but they also point to issues yet to be resolved and shed light on a research agenda that is still taking shape.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Armando López-Lemus

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify the influence exerted by a quality management system (QMS) under ISO 9001: 2015 on the quality of public services organizations in Mexico. Design/methodology/approach The methodological design was quantitative, explanatory, observational and transversal, for which a sample of 461 public servants from the state of Guanajuato, Mexico was obtained. To test the hypotheses, a structural equation model (SEM) was developed through the statistical software Amos v.21. For the analysis of the data, software SPSS v.21 was used. Regarding the goodness and adjustment indices of the SEM (χ2 = 720.09, df = 320, CFI = 0.933, TLI = 0.926 and RMSEA = 0.05) which, therefore, proved to be acceptable. Findings According to the results obtained through the SEM model, the QMS under ISO 9001: 2015 is positively and significantly influenced tangible aspects (β1 = 0.79, p < 0.01), reliability (β2 = 0.90, p < 0.01), related to response quality (β3 = 0.93, p < 0.01), guarantees (β4 = 0.91, p < 0.01) and empathy (β5 = 0.88, p < 0.01) of the quality related to public services in Mexico. The study’s key contribution is that it discovered that implementing a QMS in accordance with the ISO 9001: 2015 standard has an impact on the quality of public services, with the most influential quality of response. Similarly, the assurance and dependability of service quality turned out to be important in providing public service quality. Research limitations/implications In this paper, the QMS was only evaluated as a variable that intervenes in the process of obtaining quality in public service under the ISO 9001 standard in its 2015 version. In this regard, the results’ trustworthiness is limited to the extent that the findings may be generalized in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico’s public service. As a result, the scientific community is left primarily focused on service quality to promote new future research. Practical implications The ISO 9001: 2015 standard’s QMS is one of the tools for success in both the commercial and government sectors. However, there are practical limitations, which focus on the time during which managers exercise their vision in the public sector: first, the dynamics that managers play in public policy; second, the length of time they have served in public office; and third, the interest of directors of public institutions to improve the quality of service provided by the government. Other practical consequences concern organizational culture and identity, public servant commitment, senior management or secretaries of government, as well as work and training. Originality/value The findings of this paper are important and valuable because they foster knowledge generation in the public sector through the ISO 9000 quality area. A model that permits the adoption and implementation of a QMS based on the ISO 9001: 2015 standard in public organizations that seek to provide quality in their services offered to the user is also presented to the literature. Similarly, the paper is important because there is currently insufficient research focusing on the variables examined in the context of public service in Mexico.


2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 998-1023 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian R. Hodgkinson ◽  
Claire Hannibal ◽  
Byron W. Keating ◽  
Rosamund Chester Buxton ◽  
Nicola Bateman

Purpose In providing a fine-grained analysis of public service management, the purpose of this paper is to make an important contribution to furthering research in service management, a body of literature that has tended to regard public services as homogenous or to neglect the context altogether. Design/methodology/approach Integrating public management and service management literatures, the past and present of public service management are discussed. Future directions for the field are outlined drawing on a service-dominant approach that has the potential to transform public services. Invited commentaries augment the review. Findings The review presents the Public Service Network Framework to capture the public value network in its abstraction and conceptualizes how value is created in public services. The study identifies current shortcomings in the field and offers a series of directions for future research where service management theory can contribute greatly. Research limitations/implications The review encourages service management research to examine the dynamic, diverse, and complex nature of public services and to recognize the importance of this context. The review calls for an interdisciplinary public service management community to develop, and to assist public managers in leveraging service logic. Originality/value The review positions service research in the public sector, makes explicit the role of complex networks in value creation, argues for wider engagement with public service management, and offers future research directions to advance public service management research.


Author(s):  
Beatriz Cuadrado-Ballesteros ◽  
Isabel María García-Sánchez ◽  
Jennifer Martínez-Ferrero

The most important reason to decentralise the public services delivery is to make the citizens' needs better known by the local governments, so it follows to act more efficiently to their satisfaction. Nonetheless it has been found an opportunistic use of these agencies to avoid legal limits on indebtedness imposed on sub-national administrations, generating fiscal illusion. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to analyse the effect of the functional decentralisation processes on public revenues and financing. The results show that the use of decentralisation process, especially companies are created by left-wing political parties in order to raise more income from commercialization of public services. It was also found that these practices are strongly linked to the municipality's fiscal pressure.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 252-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathrine Tambudzai Nengomasha ◽  
Alfred Chikomba

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the adoption and use of electronic document and records management system (EDRMS) in the public service in Namibia and Zimbabwe with the aim of establishing barriers and enablers, and best practices which each country could adopt from the other. Design/methodology/approach This multi-case study was informed by an interpretivist paradigm. Qualitative in nature, the study applied face-to-face interviews as the data collection method, supplemented by documents analysis. The study population was Namibia and Zimbabwe’s public sectors with units of analysis, being the governments’ ministries, offices and agencies which have implemented EDRMS. Findings The paper provides the state of EDRMS implementation in Namibia and Zimbabwe. It establishes how the two countries have implemented EDRMS and factors that have contributed to the success/failure of the implementation in both countries. Originality/value The paper is a response to the need for further research studies on the implementation of EDRMS in various countries.


Author(s):  
Mengyan Dai ◽  
Xiaochen Hu ◽  
Victoria Time

Purpose Building upon prior research, the purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of public satisfaction with the police by examining the effects of one’s military background and the interactions between one’s education and perceptions about prior contact with the police. Design/methodology/approach This study statistically analyzes the 2012 citizen survey data collected in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, USA, and the theoretical framework includes the major models of citizen satisfaction with the police (i.e. demographic, prior contact with the police and neighborhood conditions). Findings Findings show that being a military family member is significantly positively related to satisfaction with the police. In addition, there are significant interactions between higher education and prior contact with the police, suggesting that people with different educational backgrounds tend to consider their prior experiences (either positive or negative) differently in their general evaluations of the police. Originality/value The study expands the literature by empirically assessing two often omitted factors that could have significant impacts on how the public evaluate the police.


10.4335/82 ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-219
Author(s):  
Božo Grafenauer

Among the tasks performed by the Slovenian municipalities to meet the needs of individual residents there is also the provision of local public services. A municipality provides the performance of the public services determined by the municipality itself, and the performance of the public services established by law (local public services). The legal foundations for the regulation and operation of public utility services are given primarily in the Local Self-Government Act and in the Public Utilities Act, as well as in sector-specific laws for individual services. The overview of public utility services and the modes of their performance in two urban municipalities indicate that in Slovenian municipalities, public utility services are performed primarily in two ways: in public enterprises and by awarding a public service concession. KEYWORDS: • local public services • public service delivery • municipality • concession • public enterprise • Slovenia


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann-Sofie Hellberg ◽  
Karin Hedström

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to describe a local government effort to realise an open government agenda. This is done using a storytelling approach. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical data are based on a case study. The authors participated in, as well as followed, the process of realising an open government agenda on a local level, where citizens were invited to use open public data as the basis for developing apps and external Web solutions. Based on an interpretative tradition, they chose storytelling as a way to scrutinise the competition process. In this paper, they present a story about the competition process using the story elements put forward by Kendall and Kendall (2012). Findings – The research builds on existing research by proposing the myth that the “public” wants to make use of open data. The authors provide empirical insights into the challenge of gaining benefits from open public data. In particular, they illustrate the difficulties in getting citizens interested in using open public data. Their case shows that people seem to like the idea of open public data, but do not necessarily participate actively in the data reuse process. Research limitations/implications – The results are based on one empirical study. Further research is, therefore, needed. The authors would especially welcome more studies that focus on citizens’ interest and willingness to reuse open public data. Practical implications – This study illustrates the difficulties of promoting the reuse of open public data. Public organisations that want to pursue an open government agenda can use these findings as empirical insights. Originality/value – This paper answers the call for more empirical studies on public open data. Furthermore, it problematises the “myth” of public interest in the reuse of open public data.


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