EMPLOYEES UNETHICAL PRACTICES AND PRODUCTIVITY IN RIVERS STATE CIVIL SERVICE

Abstract

Unethical practices violate ethical standards in any given organization. Employees in public service show some disregard to ethical codes that are given to achieve productivity in civil service. The paper evaluated employees’ unethical practices and productivity in Rivers State civil service. The objective of the study includes to determine how the influence of ethnicity in public service increase unethical practices among public office holders and investigate how public servants’ selfishness on public resources increase unethical activities among civil servants in Rivers State civil service. Two research questions were provided to guide the study. The descriptive survey design was used to obtain data from 400 respondents which made the sample size from the population of study, 488,400 (institute of government, 2023). The data were retrieved after administering structured questionnaire to relevant respondents through the adoption of purposive, quota and accidental sampling techniques. A total of 398 copies of questionnaire were returned and analyzed in percentage and presented on tables. The findings show that ethnicity influences some employees in civil service to act in an unethical manner and that public servants selfish interest on public resources increase unethical activities among them. Based on the findings, the study recommends that management should maintain ethical standards provided in civil service for all departments and ministries or parastatals despite the dominance of any particular ethnic group, and government should often review policies that are obsolete in civil service to enable the achievement of civil service core objective of productivity.