Service delivery is seen as the act of providing citizens with basic amenities of electricity, water, housing, etc. by the government of any nation. However, this has been viewed to be capital intensive for some developing nations with high population and limited resources despite its necessity for economic growth and development. This article employs the Systematic Quantitative Assessment Technique (SQAT) propounded by Pickering and Byrne in 2014 to systematically review 50 articles published between 2013 and 2021 by 6 reputable data bases across 32 nations and 6 continents. The review itemized the themes adopted by various countries to overcome specific challenges to provide affordable and quality services to its citizens. Majority of the articles were empirical in nature while a few were conceptual. The highest number of published articles was found in Asian, African, and European continents while North America, Australia and South America had the least number of published articles. Survey, secondary data, and interviews were the highest methods of data collection while mixed and household level data were the least. It is advised that future research should be geared towards mixed data collection for effective comparison and validation of existing information (secondary data) that may have been used.
The public sector of any country is the largest provider of service and by extension, the largest employer of labour in the organised formal sector. One of the sector’s main responsibilities is the provision of social and economic infrastructure. While economic infrastructure refers mainly to the provision of potable water, good roads, electricity, air transport, communication networks and sewage, social infrastructure includes affordable schools, hospitals, and housing.
It becomes obvious then, that both are essential aspects of living for any twenty-first century nation. It is expected that the provision of these basic services to citizens is the main responsibility of the government of any nation as it is believed the citizens pay taxes. However, this is not the case in many developing and some developed countries especially for specific services as various interventions had come up to assist the Central government of such nations in their inadequacies.
Existing research reveals that there has been growing public impatience related to the provision of essential service delivery in developing countries such as South Africa and this may have led to their service delivery protests (Masiya et al., 2019) . On the contrary, some countries who experienced warfare like Afghanistan had ensured that basic services were still made available to citizens. The Taliban were forced to become responsible for the wellbeing of local communities as they consolidated their hold over territory (Smith, 2020) .
This study is aimed at conducting a systematic review of articles on service delivery published in different countries between 2013 and 2021 and evaluating how it has evolved within this period. The review will be done in three (3) sections namely: Methodology section which describes the development and analysis of the study, the findings, and discussions section for the review and finally, the conclusion and recommendations of the study.
This research reviews Service Delivery (SD) articles in the last eight (8) years (2013-2021) using Pickering and Byrne’s 2014 Systematic Quantitative Assessment Technique (SQAT). This technique allows researchers to systematically analyse existing literature on any field and produce a structured quantitative summary of the subject (Pickering & Byrne 2014) . Five steps are recommended in conducting an effective systematic review. The steps and application are shown in
The researcher studied 50 SD peer reviewed English articles from 6 reputable databases that met selection criteria (
The systematic review showed in
| S/N | Dimensions | Application in the current study |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Define topic | Service Delivery (SD) articles published between 2013 and 2021. |
| 2. | Develop research questions | 1) What is the time distribution of the service delivery articles? 2) Countries in which research was undertaken? 3) What kind of SD articles were published? (Conceptual vs. Empirical). 4) What are the methods of data collection? 5) What are the specific themes these articles explored and what were the major findings of those themes? |
| 3. | Key words identified | “Service Delivery” |
| 4. | The databases were identified and searched | 1) Six databases were utilized namely: Jstor, Emerald, Elsevier, Ingenta, Taylor and Francis, Wiley. 2) All in title search using the phrase “Service Delivery”. |
| 5. | Read and assess publications | 1) Abstracts and excerpts from articles were read to ensure subject aligns with service delivery. Findings and conclusions were also read to make suggestions. 2) Only peer-reviewed conceptual and empirical articles were included. |
| Publisher | Number of SD articles |
|---|---|
| Jstor | 2 |
| Emerald | 28 |
| Elsevier | 5 |
| Ingenta | 5 |
| Taylor and Francis | 5 |
| Wiley | 5 |
| Total | 50 |
| S/N | Continent | No. of Articles | Authors | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Africa | 11 | ( Abdulkareem & Mohd Ramli, 2021; Adaku et al., 2018; Akinboade et al., 2013; Biljohn & Lues, 2019; Falisse & Leszczynska, 2022; Kuye & Akinwale, 2020; Li et al., 2019; Masiya et al., 2019; Musenze & Mayende, 2019; Phiri, 2017; Tassabehji et al., 2019; Yusheng & Ibrahim, 2019 ) | ||
| 2 | Asia | 20 | ( Abdullah et al., 2016; Anwer Anwer et al., 2016; Aruan et al., 2018; Abdelkader Benmansour, 2019; Chakraborty et al., 2021; Jain Gupta & Suri, 2017; Hwang et al., 2021; Kekez et al., 2018; Lanin & Hermanto, 2019; Nayak & Samanta, 2014; Nguyen et al., 2017; Rahman et al., 2021; Saxena, 2017; Siddiquee, 2016; Siddiquee, 2019; Siddiquee & Xavier, 2020; Smith, 2020; ur Rahim & Shirazi, 2018; Uzir et al., 2021; Seyitoğlu & Ivanov, 2020 ) | ||
| 3 | Australia | 2 | ( Aruan et al., 2018; Oslington, 2015 ) | ||
| 4 | Europe | 11 | ( Biljohn & Lues, 2019; Bozic, 2020; Imran et al., 2019; Psomas et al., 2020; Seepma et al., 2020; Steiner et al., 2018; Van de Walle, 2016; Bucaite Vilke & Vilkas, 2018; Voorberg et al., 2017; Williams & Radnor, 2022 ) | ||
| 5 | North America | 5 | ( Healey & Evans, 2014; Loeffler & Church, 2015; Mick & Shay, 2014; Shadi et al., 2023 ) | ||
| 6 | South America | 1 | ( Lopes et al., 2019; Valle-Cruz, 2019 ) | ||
| 50 | |||||
From the continent perspective,
The top four countries that have the highest number of published SD articles between 2013 and 2021 is shown in
| S/N | Country | No. of articles |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Afghanistan | 2 |
| 2 | Australia | 2 |
| 3 | Austria | 1 |
| 4 | Bangladesh | 2 |
| 5 | Belgium | 1 |
| 6 | Bosnia | 1 |
| 7 | Brazil | 1 |
| 8 | Bulgaria | 1 |
| 9 | Burundi | 1 |
| 10 | Estonia | 1 |
| 11 | Ethiopia | 1 |
| 12 | Germany | 1 |
| 13 | Ghana | 3 |
| 14 | Greece | 1 |
| 15 | India | 4 |
| 16 | Indonesia | 1 |
| 17 | Korea | 1 |
| 18 | Lithuania | 1 |
| 19 | Malaysia | 5 |
| 20 | Mexico | 1 |
| 21 | Netherlands | 1 |
| 22 | Nigeria | 2 |
| 23 | Pakistan | 1 |
| 24 | Qatar | 1 |
| 25 | Singapore | 1 |
| 26 | South Africa | 2 |
| 27 | Switzerland | 1 |
| 28 | Uganda | 1 |
| 29 | United Kingdom | 2 |
| 30 | United States | 4 |
| 31 | Vietnam | 1 |
| 32 | Zambia | 1 |
| Total | 50 |
little or no research on developing countries on the impact of E-governances in curbing corruption (Saxena, 2017) . The articles from the United States on the other hand focused on emerging trends such as advances in health care, child services and excellent customer service.
Out of 50 peer-reviewed articles, 39 of them were empirical research while only 11 were conceptual research representing 78% and 22% respectively.
The empirical research consisted of primary and secondary data collection employed as quantitative, qualitative, or mixed method for analysis. Whilst empirical articles rely on data collection and conclusions are drawn based on the premises of the findings from data collection; conceptual articles rely on theoretical discussions based on other people’s views and literature. In general, empirical research, if tested and proven can either validate or invalidate existing theories and concepts.
There were six (6) data collection methods across the 50 articles as shown in
For future research, it is advised that mixed methods of data be adopted for effective comparison of existing information with evidence from experiments to validate the existing information.
Nine themes were employed to analyze the 50 SD articles used for the systematic review. This is shown in
A total of 27 theories were used for 33 out of the 50 researched articles while no theory was used for the remaining 17 articles.
| S/N | Theory | No. of articles |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bureaucratic | 1 |
| 2 | Contingency | 1 |
| 3 | Case study | 1 |
| 4 | Decentralization | 1 |
| 5 | Descriptive and inferential statistics | 1 |
| 6 | Expectation disconfirmation | 1 |
| 7 | G2C evaluation model | 1 |
| 8 | Heuristic model | 1 |
| 9 | Helsuki model | 1 |
| 10 | Maturity model | 1 |
| 11 | Information system | 1 |
| 12 | Multi variate linear progression | 1 |
| 13 | Multiple choice model | 1 |
| 14 | Field experiment | 1 |
| 15 | Organizational theory | 1 |
| 16 | Public Mgt service | 1 |
| 17 | Policy capacity model | 1 |
| 18 | Probit model | 1 |
| 19 | Process redesign approach | 1 |
| 20 | Startup Bus. model | 1 |
| 21 | Thematic content analysis | 1 |
| 22 | Servperf model | 1 |
| 23 | Theoretical assumption | 1 |
| Headings | Key findings | Implication |
|---|---|---|
| Time Distribution of articles | SD articles were published every year within the period of review. However, the last 5 years had the highest number of published articles. | Service Delivery is gaining recognition as time goes by. |
| Geographic Distribution of articles | All the 32 countries that published at least one SD article within the last 8 years were represented across all six habitable continents. | There is need for more SD research in countries of both South and North American continents as only 1 and 5 articles respectively were published for the 2 continents within the review period. |
| Article type | 39 of the reviewed articles were empirical in nature while the remaining 11 were conceptual articles. | Publishing of more empirical articles is encouraged for future research for effective comparison of existing information to evidence from experiments and validation of existing information. |
| Data Collection Method | Six data collection methods were identified with survey being the highest while mixed data and household level were the least used. | Mixed data as well as household level data to be used for future research to obtain an objective view of the research with the inclusion of grassroot data. |
| Research Themes | Nine (9) themes were identified in the reviewed articles. 50% of these articles used collaboration and E-governance themes which affected service delivery quality positively while Bureaucracy and Corruption were themes identified that negatively affected service delivery. | All nine (9) themes had strong influence on service delivery depending on its application. |
The significance of service delivery cannot be overemphasized anywhere in the world. However, from this systematic review, it is obvious that the developing nations have higher numbers of researched articles in service delivery, possibly due to citizens’ inability to access basic public services provided by the government. This would normally be due to paucity of funds and/or limited technology. This systematic review has brought to the fore options and possible solutions responsible agencies or governments experiencing such challenges could adopt to improve service delivery quality and impact their economies positively. Some of which are:
1) Investment in digital infrastructure to automate processes for seamless service delivery.
2) Regular monitoring and evaluation of service providers to identify bottlenecks and areas of improvement.
3) Customer engagement and feedback through surveys and public consultations to understand their preferences.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.
Ekejiuba, U. C., & Ibrahim, U. A. (2024). Service Delivery between 2013 and 2021—A Systematic Review. Journal of Human Resource and Sustainability Studies, 12, 275-288. https://doi.org/10.4236/jhrss.2024.122015