The Public Service Policy of Sub-District Municipalities in the Northeastern of Thailand

Abstract

          The objectives of this research were (1) to study public service of Sub-district Municipalities (2) to study attitudes toward the influencing factors which affected public service of Sub-district Municipalities (3) to study the causal factors which affected public service of Sub-district Municipalities and (4) to establish and confirm the model for developing the public service of Sub-district Municipalities in Northeastern Region of Thailand. The research sample were 280 Sub-district Municipalities in the Northeastern areas of Thailand, determining The size of sample from the advanced sampling formula of one unit of variables multiplied with 20 samples and in a stratified way. The informants comprised ten representatives of various constituents of each Sub-district municipalities such as representatives of local administrators, of councilors, of office staffs and the representatives of people, totaling 2,800. The data were collected by questionnaire with five rating scales and analyzed by the computer program through a descriptive statistics, Pearson’s Product Moment Coefficient Correlation and the Path analysis with LISREL program. In addition, the In-depth Interview was also used as qualitative methodological process by taking ten professional executives as the purposive sample; the data were analyzed by the content analysis. The establish and confirm the development model of public service of Sub-district Municipalities Operation in Northeastern Thailand, to verify by 24 Expertise, the data was analyzed by Content Analysis.

            The findings were as follows;

1. Public service of Sub-district municipalities in the northeast region, as a whole, was at medium mean level. Considering all aspects, it was found that all dimensions of the public service was at medium mean level, ranging from large to small respectively: dimension of natural resources and environments, economic, education and public sanitation, administration and politics, infrastructure, development of tradition culture and religion including the dimension of social development.
2. The attitudes toward the influencing factors which affected public service of Sub-district Municipalities in the Northeast Region, merely two factors was found at the high level. The twelve ones was found at medium mean level in the descending order as follows: transformational leadership, competency of organization, technological integration of organization, social and cultural progress, the technological expansion, the implemented policy of organization, the support from central administration, economic growth, political pressure from populace, political development, organizational culture, the support from provincial administration, and the structure of organization respectively
3. The factors affecting the public service of the Sub-district Municipalities in the Northeastern Region had the influence coefficients ranging from large to small respectively as follows: the pressure from civil politics (0.60), the policy of organization (0.36), the supporting from provincial administration (0.27), the organizational culture (0.27), the administrational and managerial resource (0.27), the transformational leadership (-0.01), the political development (-0.05), the supporting from central administration (-0.08), the economic growth (-0.16), and the competency of organization (-0.57). Possible capacity for factors to explain variance of the policy of public service of Sub-district municipalities in the Northeastern Thailand was at95.90 (R² = 0.959, p-value .05) and significantly at .05. The goodness-of-fit test of the model of causal factors affecting Sub-district municipalities’ public service developed by the researcher showed that the model was consistent with the empirical data (= 20.09 , df = 12 , p-value = 0.06533 , RMSEA = 0.016 , RMR = 0.0029 , GFI = 0.99 , AGFI = 0.990 , CN = 3653.100).
4. The model of developing public service of Sub-district Municipalities in the Northeastern was found to consist of  these components: (1) the pressure from civil politics, and (2) the supporting from provincial administration. These two factors led to promotion of and push forward to development of the political development, the economic growth, the supporting from central administration, the organizational culture, the policy of organization, the managerial resources and development, the organizational competency, and the transformational leadership.