Accountability and Quality of Service Delivery in Marsabit County Government

Abstract

Any organization's continued viability rests in large part on the quality of the services it provides. According to the theoretical literature, the level of professionalism shown by workers is a major factor in the quality of service clients get. However, there has been a lack of empirical research on the relationship between accountability and service quality. The main purpose of this study was to assess the effects of accountability on quality of service delivery in Marsabit county government. The study was anchored under The Service Quality Theory. The target population for this study was 303 Marsabit County employees working at various ministries within the County headquarters and with an adoption of sample size of 45% the study established a sample size of 137 respondents. Stratified random sampling was used to select the respondents. A questionnaire was used as the primary instrument for data collection. The study employed both descriptive statistics such as percentages, means and standard deviations and inferential statistics such as Pearson’s correlation and Multiple Regression to present and analyze the data. The statistical package for social science (SPSS) aided the data analysis. The study established that accountability has a strong positive effect on quality of service delivery and accounted for 72.2% (R square = 0.722) of the variation in quality of service delivery. This study suggests that there is need for counties top leadership to ensure that accountability practices are formulated, enforced and adhered to. It is also important that counties to adopt code of conduct/ethics to improve on quality of service delivery. It is recommended that a more comprehensive survey covering different counties to be done to shed more light on this subject.