Organisational Communication as a Tool for Institutionalising Professional Ethics, Core Values and Employee Engagement to Enhance Work Performance in the Public Service Sector

Abstract

In recent times, cases involving top public officers and political appointees surrounding huge breach of public trust as a result of lackadaisical attitude toward work ethics and core values have been reported in the media. Historically, the Nigerian public service sector has been facing what may be described as insurmountable decay in work ethics and core values leading to high degrees of inefficiency, corruption, and the lack of public trust by the public. Available literature suggests ways of mitigating the problem in addition to providing empirical evidence of the levels and links of the problem with Nigeria’s socio-economic and political advancement. Some of the critical panaceas highlighted in the literature include proactively educating, enlightening, and engaging employees and personnel on the sanctity of the need to abide by work ethics and core values for enhanced work performance. All these, however, can be achieved through effective organisational communication. This article reviews existing literature on work ethics and core values, highlighting theoretical foundations and outlining critical areas that require urgent attention. Educating employees through seminars/webinars, workshops, etc. is shown to possess great potential to make positive impacts. Using critical desktop reviews, secondary data were sourced from Google Scholar, Scopus (ScienceDirect) and other web-based data banks were reviewed and analysed thematically. Implications of the themes are discussed, and conclusion drawn. Keywords: Organisational communication, Work ethics, Core values, Public service, Public organisations, Employees DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/13-1-01 Publication date: January 31 st 2023