Abstract:
The Holeta Municipality faces numerous governance challenges that hinder institutions from
providing effective service delivery to customers. The objective of this study was to
demonstrate the role of stakeholders’ engagement in addressing governance challenges in
public institutions by taking Holeta Municipality as a case study. The research was
descriptive in type and used mixed research methods, both qualitative and qualitative data
collection methodologies. Sampling techniques included questionnaires, interviews, and
literature reviews, which were used as primary and secondary data sources, respectively. The
research findings reveal that the absence of active stakeholder participation in the Holeta
Municipality governance framework causes the institution to perform poorly in terms of
service delivery. This weakness gives rise to a rent-seeking mentality, poor resource
mobilization to complete public projects, poor leadership, expert skill deficits, administrative
bureaucracy, and the absence of merit-based appointments. All of these problems combined
led to widespread discontent with the performance of the municipality’s service delivery. The
findings also reveal that the municipality has criteria for recruiting stakeholders, but the
recruitment process was exposed to patron-client relationships. In addition, the findings
show that municipalities still do not align their interests with the greater public, resulting in
low stakeholder participation and delayed service delivery performance. In summary, Holeta
Municipality’s governance challenges cause its service delivery performance to fall short of
expectations, and it needs urgent revitalization with the Multi-Level Governance (MLG)
model. Revitalization of the governance structure with the concept of the MLG model,
application of competency mapping to allocate appropriate experts in each position, and
drawing lessons from other public institutions are recommended to make the municipality
efficient in its governance.
