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Customised capacity building is thought to be essential for organisations. However, empirical studies are lacking with respect to its effect on employee outcomes. This study aims to examine the effect of customised capacity building on employee outcomes including employee empowerment and employee engagement through employee learning in Ghanaian local government institutions.

Valid responses from 281 employees of Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in Ghana were collected through a survey. A structural equation model was used to analyse the data and test the hypotheses formulated.

The results showed that customised capacity building has an effect on employee learning, employee empowerment, and employee engagement. Employee learning also had an effect on employee empowerment and employee engagement. In addition, employee learning partially mediated the effect of customised capacity building on both employee empowerment and employee engagement.

This study is of particular relevance to public organisations. As there is a dearth of studies focusing on customised capacity building, this study provides insight into incorporating the phenomenon into public sector organisations to enhance employee learning, empowerment and engagement.

This paper seeks to explore and understand the public sector reform (PSR) as it affects local governments in Ghana within the context of challenges facing human resource capacity building and development policies.

Adopting an exploratory case study design, the research triangulated both secondary and primary sources of data. Primary data generated from self‐completing questionnaire and interview schedule tools covering 105 local government employees selected from national, regional and district levels. Semi‐structured interviews also solicited views from 16 senior public officers and managers in nine public and quasi‐public organizations. These primary sources were complemented with relevant secondary documents from the organizations investigated.

Amongst others, it was found that Ghana's PSR has significantly influenced the strategic direction of human resource development policies of the decentralized local government service. Major human resource capacity challenges manifest three‐dimensionally as: policy, task/skill/organization and performance motivation induced.

Addressing the human resource capacity challenges has enormous strategic and financial resource implications for policy makers in transition and developing economies, due to their over‐reliance on external donors for funding.

Unlike previous studies, this empirical study did not explore human resource capacity issues of elected officials; rather, it focused on public servants (technocrats) implementing local political decisions. Of much value is that the results were from the perspective of the frontline local government staff whose day‐to‐day inputs are critical for effective decentralization.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and try to understand the human side of public sector reform (PSR) in local government in Ghana in the context of the challenges facing human resource capacity building and development policies.

Adopting an exploratory case study design, the paper triangulates both secondary and primary sources of data. Primary data were generated from self‐completing questionnaire and interview schedule tools covering 105 local government employees selected from national, regional and district levels. Semi‐structured interviews also solicited views from 16 senior public officers and managers in nine public and quasi‐public organizations. These primary sources were complemented with relevant secondary documents from the organisations investigated.

It was found that Ghana's PSR has significantly influenced the strategic direction of human resource development policies of the decentralized local government service. Major challenges in human resource capacity manifest themselves as related to policy, task, skill and organisation issues and performance motivation.

Addressing the human resource capacity challenges has enormous strategic and financial resource implications for policy makers in transitional and developing economies, due to their over‐reliance on external donors for funding.

Unlike previous studies, this paper did not explore HR capacity issues of elected officials; rather, it focused on the public servants (technocrats) implementing local political decisions. Of much value is that the results were derived from the experience of frontline local government staff, whose day‐to‐day inputs are critical for effective decentralization.

The purpose of this paper is to review a collection of research papers concerned with challenges commonly faced when initiating, implementing and evaluating the results of reform in an international context.

A review of the literature on reform, mainly in the public sector, was undertaken.

Reform, in particular within the public sector, has been undertaken in many countries and has proved to be challenging and difficult to manage. The challenges involved in managing reform, as experienced by Western as well as developing economies, have many aspects in common. These include the need to pay attention to appropriate structure, relevant skills and competencies, legislative support, appropriate behaviour and attitudes, and most importantly a visionary leadership.

The reform experiences and concepts documented and reviewed in these papers are original in nature and offer value to scholars, researchers and students of public administration, government, as well as reform policy makers and practitioners.

The concept of National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) is advocated at international, regional and national levels. The concept is thought to foster sustainability of livelihoods against impacts of climate change. This paper analyses the mainstreaming of NAPA into national development plans in Lesotho as accentuated by policies and programmes.

The analysis is broadly qualitative and reviews policies and projects on agriculture and food security, environment, forestry, water and irrigation aimed at sustaining rural livelihoods. Data from relevant government documents, commissioned studies’ reports, literature and key stakeholders are used.

Although the mainstreaming entry point for NAPA is identified in the country’s Vision 2020 and National Strategic Development Plan (NSDP) 2012/13-2016/17, financial, technical, human and other resources are inadequate to ensure its effective implementation. There is little evidence of NAPA mainstreaming into development plans by the line ministries of finance and economic development other than donor-funded projects. Absence of climate change policy influence means NAPA is not well-factored into the national development agenda, as mainstreaming is difficult without appropriate policies. Most projects with effect on climate change impact abatement originate from specific sectors and are disconnected from each other.

Based on the findings, ways to leverage NAPA via mainstreaming are discussed. It is concluded that NAPA mainstreaming offers a promising avenue for initiating and promoting sustainable livelihoods in Lesotho. The study demonstrates the applicability of the presented sustainable livelihood framework.

The purpose of this paper is to examine organizational leadership in a traditional, non-western country where citizens’ happiness drives the practices of the public administration managers.

This study uses the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) to examine leadership in a traditional, non-western country where organizational change dominates the public sector. Triangulation of quantitative and qualitative research methods is used.

Triangulation of quantitative and qualitative research methods reveals that the way managers respond to organizational change leads to utilizing an adaptive leadership style; a mixture of dynamic and rigid practices. Organizational change creates peculiar circumstances that make it thus imperative for managers to mix transformational and transactional practices in order to not only survive, but also excel. While some of the findings conform to those of previous studies, they indicate that the MLQ does not seem to adequately reflect the impact of organizational change on leadership. The study also provides evidence that adaptive leadership is driven by cultural and organizational necessities.

The limitations of the study can be avoided in future research. In particular, the number of interviews has limited the ability to better reflect all dimensions of the adaptive leadership style. Due to time and resource availability, the inability to focus more on the individual level of the cultural factor and its impact on leadership style may have limited the scope of the analysis. Finally, the present study did not examine the cultural variations within the United Arab Emirates universal culture especially in relationship with region, age group, and gender of the managers.

The paper examines leadership in the Middle East context where rare studies in leadership have been conducted. The study also examines the usability of MLQ in Arab context where organizational change persists.

Microenterprises in emerging economies are known to operate in turbulent and resource-scarce environments. We test our hypothesis that a more comprehensive “Integrated Capital-Based Model” (ICBM) is needed when explaining the performance of microenterprises in such an environment. The model combines traditionally researched financial, human and social capital with more recently emphasized psychological and cognitive capital, providing greater explanatory power than models using only the traditional types of capital.

We use a pooled linear regression to analyze an existing survey of more than 900 independent business owners who were interviewed seven times between 2008 and 2012 in the Accra and Tema marketplaces in Ghana. We measure the performance of microenterprises using three dependent variables (revenue, profits, and productivity). We contrast the explanatory power of ICBM models against the more traditional models.

The ICBM has significantly higher levels of explanatory power over the traditional models in examining the performance of these microenterprises. These results highlight the importance of psychological and cognitive capital in emerging economies.

We advocate for a more comprehensive view of capital as shown in our ICBM. However, the data were gathered only in an urban setting, which limits the generalizability to rural parts of emerging economies.

These findings suggest the utility of government and appropriate agencies finding ways to enhance the level of psychological and cognitive capital of microenterprise owners.

This paper's originality stems from hypothesizing and empirically confirming the higher predictive efficacy of ICBM against more traditionally researched capital sources.

Although the last two decades have witnessed the implementation of several poverty reduction strategies in developing countries, many have failed to achieve their goal partly because of defective implementation strategies. This paper examines the implementation of one of Ghana’s flagship poverty reduction programs, the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), with a focus on how leadership at the sub-national level influences the implementation of the program.

Using qualitative research approach, the study selected research participants from two Municipal Assemblies in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. Using a combination of Focus Group Discussions, Key Informant Interviews and Participant Observation, data were collected from a total of 44 respondents including beneficiaries, officials from the local government (district) and community level actors.

The paper shows that leaders at the sub-national level were more reactionary than proactive, thereby playing passive roles in the implementation of the LEAP program. It shows that the interaction between LEAP beneficiaries and district officials is rather low, which among others limits the effective utilization of the cash grant by the beneficiaries. It maintains that, for the LEAP program to achieve its overall goal of reducing poverty, leaders at the sub-national level ought to deploy more transformational leadership tendencies to incite beneficiaries to leap out of poverty through skill and human capital development.

The empirical literature is largely silent on the role of leadership in the implementation of cash transfer programs, such as Ghana’s LEAP program at the sub-national level. This study therefore explains the extent to which district level leaders contribute to the effective utilization of cash transfer grants and the human capital development of LEAP beneficiaries in Ghana.

The purpose of this study is to investigate into the perception of new public sector management (NPM) and service delivery among senior officers of the Mauritian public sector in the context of reforms. Although improved service delivery is one of the salient outcomes of successful reforms of NPM, many governments in the world have not been able to fulfil this promise. While few extant research probe into the factors affecting service delivery, mostly from the customer’s perspective, this study probes into how senior public officers themselves perceive service delivery as part of their duty in government.

The qualitative stance was adopted for this study. Interviews were conducted with 23 senior public officers having on average 20 years of service in the Mauritian public sector. Data obtained was transcribed and coded under themes, sub-themes and emergent themes. These were then analysed in the light of the literature review conducted.

The findings of this study revealed that NPM was being practiced and service delivery was an imbedded factor among senior public sector officers of the Mauritian public sector. Among other factors, officers interviewed were of the opinion that serving the public was a legitimate part of their job, view that they had agreed to serve the government of Mauritius. Such a finding proves to be very encouraging for the Mauritian Government, still struggling to achieve reforms or NPM doctrines.

This study contributes to the scant literature on NPM and service delivery in small island developing states. It explores the perception of experienced senior officers about the practice of NPM and the state of service delivery.

This study elucidates how senior public servants themselves perceive service delivery and can, thus, serve as an example of public sector best practices in small island developing states.

While most studies with respect to public sector reforms concentrate on developed countries, this study takes place in the small island state of Mauritius. More so, the perception of public servants themselves have been explored in the context of service delivery improvement and reforms, contrary to other studies which concentrate of the customers’ perceptions.

The purpose of this paper is to understand challenges facing organizations in the twenty-first century and address these challenges through suggesting future leadership development based on relevant leadership theories, which would motivate and guide future research directions in a streamlined manner.

The present study adopted the exploratory literature review, using the integrative method, to review the theoretical and empirical literature on leadership development published since the 2000s, primarily focusing on research published in the Journal of Management Development.

The findings of the current review confirmed that leadership theories are the base for leadership development theories, particularly if the purpose is to address and overcome the current challenges facing organizations. The authors suggest that leadership theories and leadership development theories do not exist in isolation from one another, nor do they exist in isolation from challenges facing organizations.

This review does not cover all studies before the 2000s nor other journals in the field of leadership.

Given that most organizations are suffering from one or more of the following issues: sexual scandals, unethical behaviors, individualism, crises and a low level of performance or productivity, the development of particular leadership skills has become a priority. This study is one of few studies guiding both future leadership development research directions and leadership development initiatives.