Abstract

Municipal service delivery is a major concern in South Africa. Proper management of employees is crucial for service organisations like municipalities precisely because employees interface directly with customers who make evaluative judgement of the quality of service delivered by employees. Therefore, it is extremely important for municipalities to comprehend specific organisational factors that influence employee attitudes and behaviours that may in turn influence how customers evaluate service quality. Drawing on organisational justice and other management theories, we present a model and a set of hypotheses regarding the relationships among political interference, employee justice perceptions of HRM practices, employee commitment and citizenship behaviour, and service quality of South African Municipalities. The aim is to assist in identifying desirable HRM practices that municipalities should seek and engage in and undesirable ones to avoid in order to create and maintain high levels of employee commitment and citizenship behaviour necessary for delivering quality service to communities. The paper is “theoretical” but has practical applications for practitioners, researchers, and policy makers. It extends the literature on service delivery to include justice theory perspective.

Key words: Organisational justice, employee fairness perception, organisational citizenship behaviour, South African municipalities.