Democratic Indonesia needs a modern egalitarian public administration that will satisfy public expectations in the best possible manner. This brought tax administration reform into consideration at the beginning of 2002. The Indonesian Directorate General of Taxes with more than 32,000 employees is regarded as the pioneer of public sector reform in Indonesia. However, since the reform was promulgated, Indonesia’s tax administration has continued to suffer from serious weaknesses. Many in the Indonesian government have recognised the weaknesses of the current situation in the public sector, in which stove-piped bureaucracies that do not reward good performance or remunerate positions fairly have long been an obstacle to the pursuit of good government and effective management. Vestiges of the Soeharto era ‘top-down command and control’ approach to bureaucracy remain, and lead to intransience and inertia in the politicised bureaucracy. In order to improve organisational capacity and capability, fundamental changes in employees’ mindsets and behaviours are required. These include employees’ sense of organisational vision, mission and goals, their desire to work effectively and efficiently, and their commitment to integrity and service to taxpayers. Little is known about the nature of commitment in the public sector in general, and in the Indonesian public sector in particular. Thus, this study investigates the nature and role of employee commitment to organisational change within the Indonesian tax administration. It examines how three components of commitment to organisational change provide behavioural support for change, and how the workplace climate influences them. The study applied mixed method research through quantitative analysis of survey data from a sample of employees of the Indonesian Directorate General of Taxes (DGT) and semi-structured interviews with purposively selected individuals to explore the quantitative results in more depth. The study demonstrates that a positive working environment plays a key role in predicting variation in scores on the three components of commitment to organisational change. The findings of this study suggest that DGT needs to increase the level of affective commitment to ensure high enthusiasm for a change. The study contributes to our understanding of the Indonesian public sector and its reform in general and to other countries in the developing world. The findings will assist policy makers and organisational change teams on how to generate employees’ commitment to change that will be manifested in behavioural supports for change. Another important contribution to the literature includes the use of a mixed-method sequential explanatory approach as the research methodology.
Date of Award | 2017 |
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Original language | English |
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Supervisor | Mark Turner (Supervisor) & Abu SALEH (Supervisor) |
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Employee commitment to organisational change : an explanatory study of the Indonesian tax administrative reform
Fadlinsyah, J. (Author). 2017
Student thesis: Professional Doctorate