The influence of ethical leadership in the delivery of agricultural advisory services in Tanzania local government authorities

Abstract

Purpose

This article discusses the consequences of unethical leadership, particularly, the leader-follower relationship in the delivery of agricultural advisory services in Tanzania. It analyses the means through which ethical leadership framework can be used to address the problem of unethical leadership in this context.

Design/methodology/approach

The article uses a comparative case study design to explain the position of ethical leadership in the delivery of agricultural advisory services in two local governments: Morogoro Municipality in Eastern Tanzania, and Hai District in Northern Tanzania.

Findings

The research shows that the delivery of agricultural extension services in Tanzania is guided by formal rules, which define the roles and responsibilities of local government officials and field workers. These roles and responsibilities are driven by national-level guidelines written by the Ministry of Agriculture. The guidelines define the key responsibilities of village, Ward and District level Agricultural Extension Officers. In developing the working schedule, agricultural extension workers at the village and ward levels are guided by an annual calendar that defines the seasons of the year and the relevant knowledge required by farmers. Nevertheless, the implementation of these schedules is compromised by a lack of resources and morale of field workers who in turn, cope through charging for the services, which is considered as their prime motives.

Originality/value

The findings can be of interest to national and local government policymakers and officials dealing with the delivery of agricultural advisory services in Tanzania.

Citation

Lameck, W.U. (2022), "The influence of ethical leadership in the delivery of agricultural advisory services in Tanzania local government authorities", Public Administration and Policy: An Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 78-88. https://doi.org/10.1108/PAP-05-2021-0031

Introduction

In Tanzania, agriculture is a key sector in the economy accounting for 23 percent of the GDP with more than 67 percent of the population active in crop production (URT, 2016). The delivery of agricultural advisory services is considered an important means of improving agricultural production and marketing (URT, 2013). Agricultural advisory services refer to the transfer of knowledge on agricultural technology to farmers, and which includes the assistance of farmers’ groups in the development and execution of special projects to enhance production and collective training of farmers in field schools (Masanyiwa et al., 2019). In Tanzania and worldwide, these services are provided by Agricultural Extension Officers. According to literature (FAO, 2017), more than half a billion extension workers worldwide deliver such services to farmers.

In Tanzania, the government has been taking various initiatives of improving the delivery of agricultural advisory services. For example, in 1999, the government decentralized the delivery of such services to the local government due to the weakness of the centralized regime which was criticized for hindering a smooth flow of information and a lack of responsiveness of Extension Officers to farmers’ needs. Since then, the local departments of agriculture and livestock, instructed and supervised by the local councils, have been responsible for the planning and delivery of such services (Rutaora and Mattee, 2001). Field Extension Officers operate from the offices of the administrative sub-units of the local government, the wards, or villages. From there, they visit individual farmers, farmers groups and villages to provide face-to-face services to farmers. The officials in the Local Government Department of Agriculture at the district level instruct and supervise field workers (JICA, 2008; Kyaruzi et al., 2010; Mvuna, 2010; Daniel, 2013; Masanyiwa et al., 2019).

Despite these efforts, the decentralization reforms have not sufficiently increased information transfer to farmers. Accordingly, recently, the government launched the digital agricultural advisory service as a tool of aiding information transfer to farmers (Fielke et al., 2020). In this regard, the government introduced a web-based and mobile-based agricultural information system; however, this transformation has not enabled the government to realize the intended goal. The effectiveness of such digital services is constrained by the high cost of upscaling the online system in the local government (Sanga, 2018; Steinke et al., 2020). This suggests that, although the decentralization reforms particularly for agricultural advisory services were intended to improve the delivery of such services, the expectations of such reforms have not been realized due to a lack of resources and prevalence of corruption (Mjwahuzi and Kunkuta, 2005; REPOA, 2008; Daniel, 2013; Masanyiwa et al., 2019). Although the literature shows that ethical leadership in government service delivery can improve the quality of governance and contribute to effective public services delivery (Downe et al., 2016), embrace ethical values, and instil the expected ethics in the public service, the public service delivery institutions have not sufficiently internalized ethical leadership in the delivery of public services. Senior officials responsible for ethical leadership focus mostly on their interests rather than the interests of the public (Bailey, 2018; Bonner et al., 2016). The question is what has gone wrong? Why is it that the decentralization reforms in Tanzania have not improved the delivery of agricultural advisory services and how can ethical leadership explain this service gap? Do policymakers at the local government communicate their expectations and standards of service to field workers? Do they lead by example? To address these questions, this article proceeds with the concept of ethical leadership, the analytical framework, methodology, the task of both field workers and the district level policy managers in the delivery of agricultural advisory services, the leader-follower relationship and the ethics of field workers, and finally, conclusion and recommendations.

The concept of ethical leadership

Ethical leadership is a concept that has recently become popular in the literature of ethics and moral decision-making. Some scholars (Grint, 2007; Ahmad et al., 2017) define ethical leadership as moral virtues that could be instilled in individuals through practice and learning. The moral virtues influence employees through motives of duty and moral standards to perform their tasks. Other scholars (Fox et al., 2007) define ethical leadership as actions on the part of leaders of nurturing an environment and culture characterized by morals and ethos of service while other researchers (Brown et al., 2005) see ethical leadership as the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement and decision-making. In this article, the author borrowed the definition by Brown et al. (2005) because he was especially interested in how leaders communicate and demonstrate ethical conduct to followers in the delivery of agricultural advisory services. Therefore, in this case, an ethical leader is treated as a role model who must demonstrate appropriate behaviour to followers and uses reward and punishment to stimulate ethical conduct (Treviño and Weaver, 2003).

The concept of ethical leadership can be subsumed into three dimensions. The first dimension relates to fairness. A leader is considered fair when he makes principled and fair choices, he/she is trustworthy and honest and who does not practice favouritism and takes responsibility for his actions (Brown et al., 2005; De Hoogh and Den Hartog, 2008). Therefore, in this dimension, fairness is seen as a significant form of ethical leadership behaviour since ethical leaders perform with integrity and treat others fairly. The second dimension concerns power-sharing that implies the ability of a leader to permit subordinates to participate in decision making and listen to their ideas (Den Hartog and De Hoogh, 2009). The subordinates’ empowerment includes providing them with a voice and allowing them more control and less dependent on their leaders (Yukl, 2006).

The last dimension concerns transparency which not only clarifies performance goals, expectations, and different roles but it also focuses on open communication between leaders and followers (De Hoogh and Den Hartog, 2008; Brown et al., 2005). In this dimension, the ethical leader has a role to explain responsibilities and performance goals, and expectations to subordinates. This in turn help followers to understand not only what is expected of them in terms of performance but also to reduce uncertain expectations and increase the knowledge to followers concerning their contribution to achieving organizational goals. To be more precise, ethical leadership as a concept that constitutes three important components: personal integrity of a leader, also termed the ‘moral person’ component of ethical leadership; the extent to which a leader can cultivate integrity among his or her followers and the quality of the leader-follower relationship which bridges the moral person and moral manager components (Treviño et al., 2000). To gain more insights on how different constructs of ethical leadership influence the performance in service delivery, this article uses the analytical frame discussed in the following section

Analytical framework

Several theories have been used to explain the concept of ethical leadership and its influence on service delivery. We can subsume these theories into two categories. The first category is related to reciprocity which views ethical leadership from a social exchange perspective. The assumption underlying this theory is that followers are willing to respond when they are treated fairly and with concern by their leaders (Mayer et al., 2009; Cropanzano and Mitchell, 2005). The second category is related to social learning. This theory assumes that followers behave similarly to their leader through imitation and observational learning (Brown et al., 2005). The validity of this has been proved empirically; for example, the literature by Krasikova et al. (2013) shows that employees tend to adjust their ethical orientations to the behaviour they observe from their leaders. This suggests that the absence of ethical behaviour in an organization leads to poor service delivery because the followers lack guidance on ethical conduct which can help them to refrain from unethical behaviour. Therefore, to understand how ethical leadership develops in an organization, two theoretical insights must be taken to account: The first, is how the leaders treat their followers and the second is the kind of behaviour the leaders demonstrate to their followers. Both factors explain the development of ethical leadership in an organization and its impacts on service delivery. In order to demonstrate ethical behaviour, the leader is expected to be a role model who provides direction on how to behave (Brown et al., 2005). Ethical leaders do not only talk about ethics and promoting ethical behaviour but also provide their followers with voices and examples. The leader must set ethical standards, reward ethical conduct, and sanction unethical conduct while considering the ethical consequences of their decision (Brown et al., 2005).

Therefore, an ethical leader is judged based on the leader-follower relationship and personal characteristics of such a leader which can be summarized as the ethics of a leader as a person, the ethics of a leader-follower relationship, the ethics of a process of leadership, the ethics of what a leader does or does not do and the ethics of a leader in the larger context of the community (Brown et al., 2005). To be more precise, ethical leadership must constitute two things: a leader-follower relationship in which leaders are expected to serve as role models to their followers and demonstrate the behavioural boundaries set within an organization from which the employees learn about values into action. And personal characteristics of a leader play an important role in effective self-leadership and in the process of leading others. This takes us to the key research question on why the decentralization reforms of agricultural advisory services have not sufficiently improved the delivery of such services and how can ethical leadership in the delivery of such services explain this service gap?

Methodology

This article uses a comparative case study design to investigate ethical leadership in the delivery of agricultural advisory services in two local governments namely, Morogoro Municipality in eastern Tanzania and Hai District in the north. The two cases were selected in order to ensure variety. Both cases are entrusted with the same formal tasks and have the same formal decision-making authority. On the other hand, they abide by the same formal rules, procedures and code of ethics. But they differ substantially regarding the geographical setting, population density, the type of agriculture and the importance of farming in the local economy. The assumption is that these differences constitute different ethical conditions for the delivery of agricultural extension services thus influencing the way the Agricultural Department allocates resources, the way the Extension Officers spend resources and the way they deliver services to farmers. From the two cases, the research began with a content analysis of relevant documents such as policy documents from the central and local governments, guidelines for planning and decision-making, weekly schedules and monthly reports from Agricultural Extension officers. The review of documents provided a rough picture of the formal rules, the patterns of planning and institutional arrangement for the delivery of agricultural extension services. In order to gain insight into the leader-follower relationship, the review was followed by a detailed study of the contact between district-level officials and the field workers through a series of in-depth interviews with 50 local government policy officers, field workers, and farmers selected purposely from the two local governments. Among these, ten officials were the policy officers working at the district level who have to instruct and supervise the work of field workers and fifteen were the field workers who have direct contact with farmers, five were the representatives of farmer’s organizations and twenty were the farmers who receive agricultural information and training from the field workers. The research activities also include participant observation, which involved travelling with policy officers and field workers to the field to observe their interaction and the way they deliver services to farmers.

To ensure reliability, interactive questioning of the same respondents and probing were made. In doing so, the researcher not only organized interviews with field workers but also accompanied them to the field. This allowed the researcher to question field workers several times on the same issues, but at different times, in a more relaxed and informal way. The field trips also served as a means of probing whether service delivery practices were in line with the accounts officials provided. Finally, the findings from interviews were analysed using the framework method and categorized according to the main themes of the research which are the task of policy officers and field workers in service delivery and the relationship between policy officers who are the leaders and the field workers who are the followers.

The task of the district and municipal leaders in the delivery of agricultural advisory services

The delivery of agricultural advisory services in Tanzania has been decentralized to the local government. In the district or municipalities, several planning officers in agriculture and livestock instruct, supervise, assist and coordinate the activities of the field workers. The guidelines attribute several tasks to the District Executive Director. The first task is monitoring and reporting the activities of implementation of the plan to the respective ministry through the regional secretariat. Second, the District Executive Director (DED) is responsible for supervising and coordinating the delivery of support services such as extension services, dissemination of agricultural information and animal health services. Third, the DED is responsible for the disbursement of resources for activities that are included in the District agricultural development plan. Specifically, the DED must facilitate timely disbursement of grant funds to communities and groups. In addition, the DED has to ensure compliance with agricultural development activities with the district and national development priorities. Nevertheless, in practice, it is the district agriculture and livestock officer and the policy officers who assist the District Executive or Municipal Director to ensure effective supervision, coordination and monitoring of such services (URT, 2006).

The task of field workers

Field workers function at the lowest level: the ward or village. These workers are in charge of linking farmers with extension services. Specifically, they are responsible for supporting farmers and their groups through training and maintaining their network, in writing proposals for service contracts, in up-scaling of successful activities and ensuring the dissemination of successful stories and in facilitating farmers’ access to and dissemination of agricultural information and in assisting farmers to carry out the trials in collaboration with research institutes (URT, 2006).

In order to guide field workers, there is an annual calendar that describes the type of extension services, which are supposed to be delivered to farmers in a particular period. For example, the annual calendar indicates that in November and December, Extension Officers have to advise farmers on early preparation of farms, proper use of farm equipment, and modern principles of planting. From January to April, Extension Officers have to advise farmers on the accessibility of seeds and planting. In February and March, they have to advise farmers on weeding while in April, May and June the advice must be on plant protection. In May, June and July, they must advise farmers on harvesting and finally, poultry fever immunization services must be provided throughout the year.

Nevertheless, the annual calendar is a standard format developed by the central government. In both local governments involved in the research, field workers are supposed to follow the standard calendar; but they are also allowed to adjust it to reflect local realities (Interviews District Agricultural Officers). In mountainous areas, especially in the rural part of the municipality or in the areas which are suitable for irrigation, farmers grow vegetables; extension officers adjust the calendar to fit this cycle (Interview with field workers and the review of weekly schedule).

In planning for their activities, extension officials are supposed to construct their working schedule from the annual calendar. In doing so, they have to work with Ward Executive Officers. The schedule they develop shows the breakdown of activities and respective areas and time and when and where the field workers have to visit. The content of the schedule shows that it is not a binding document and it can change at any time depending on the instruction from supervisors and the urgent needs of citizens as supported by the quotes below (Interview with agricultural field workers and the review of weekly working schedule).

Yes, we have a schedule of visiting farmers, which we arrange and inform the farmers but sometimes I don’t follow the schedule due to emergencies. For example, if there is an emergency or ill livestock, I often change my schedule to attend to a sick animal first. For example, yesterday pigs' keepers informed me about their ill health pigs; thus, I had to break my schedule to attend the pigs first (Interviews - Agricultural field workers, Morogoro and Hai District Council).

Leader-follower relationship between policy officers and field workers

The ethical leadership theory suggests that leaders are expected to serve as role models to their followers. This includes demonstrating the behavioural boundaries set within an organization and the values from which the employees can learn and translate them into actions. The current study however projected a different picture. For example, in the two selected cases, the District Executive Director and his assistant (the District Agricultural and Livestock Officer and the District Agricultural Policy Officers) are the main leaders who are supposed to supervise the activities of the field workers at the district level. On the contrary, these officers to a larger extent rely on the monthly reports submitted by field workers. The field workers must write a monthly report on their activities. Apart from indicating the number and type of farmers they visited, they are also supposed to identify specific problems and issues farmers encounter. In order to write monthly reports, the field workers themselves meet at the ward office where they discuss and compile the reports. In practice, the field workers feel that they hardly get any feedback on their reports. If problems are raised, the district does not do anything about them as supported by the quotation below (Interview - Agricultural Field officer - Morogoro and Hai District Council).

I normally send information about the problem of plants diseases such as sunflowers to the municipal office but I have not received any feedback. We do this through monthly, quarterly and annual reports but no action is taken. We expect that the problem could be solved at the municipal level.

I have never received any feedback and I don’t think they read these reports (Interview - Agricultural Field officer, Morogoro and Hai District Council).

The study findings show that extension officials have a large degree of discretion concerning their daily activities. Weekly schedules and the yearly calendar are formulated in very general terms; and supervision by Headquarters is also general as supported by the quotation below.

Of course, we provide some latitude for flexibility to extension officials in the use of schedule. So, they can use this discretion for their benefit. Therefore, extension officers are always free to break the schedule in case of emergency (Interviews - District Agricultural Extension Officer).

Therefore, ward and other officials from the District Headquarter from time to time check whether extension officials visited groups or engaged in training sessions or field schools. But they also suffer from limited means of transport. They primarily rely on monthly reports that contain general information only to assess the performance of the field workers. As long as village extension officials indicate the number and type of farmers they have visited, and that visits have taken place, their superiors are satisfied (Monthly reports 2012/2016; interview DAEO in Morogoro and Hai District).

Ethics of the field workers

According to ethical leadership theory, employed workers deliver services to clients with integrity and fairness. But this does not just happen. Followers should be willing to respond when they are treated fairly and with concern by their leaders (Mayer et al., 2009), and that the followers behave in the same way to their leader through imitation and observational learning (Brown et al., 2005) and that employees tend to adjust their ethical orientations to the behaviour they observe from their leaders. This suggests that the absence of ethical behaviour in an organization leads to poor service delivery because the followers lack guidance on ethical conduct which can help them to refrain from unethical behaviour (Krasikova et al., 2013).

The study shows that field workers work with a working schedule, which implies that each extension official every month makes home visits to farmers to advise and support them. In practice, these visits are not carried out as programmed. Extension officials dedicate a substantial part of their time to farmers who call upon them to treat cattle and cure crop diseases. These services are not rendered for free. Extension officials charge for their services and claim that the money is needed to pay for transport as the municipality does not provide them with a fuel allowance. Farmers also pay for the medicine (and insecticides) used by the extension officials when treating cattle and controlling crop diseases. Generally, farmers who call upon extension officials for assistance and willing to pay for the services are given priority over other farmers. Field workers label these calls as ‘emergencies’ which justifies that they do not keep to the original working schedule. The researcher found a series of examples of this practice during fieldwork.

In one of the wards, the researcher observed that the extension official had several farmers who came for advice waiting at her office. When she received a call from two farming sisters asking her to provide mango immunization, she informed the farmers she had just received an emergency call and immediately left the farmers to attend the call from two farming sisters asking for which she was paid. She later visited the farmer whose pigs were reported to be gotten ill. She diagnosed the disease, provided treatment and asked the farmer for a payment of 15,000 Tsh, which he willingly paid (Interview and observation with field workers in the two districts).

Home visits to farmers who do not call upon extension officers for paid assistance, only take place if the farmers live nearby the office or the home of the Extension Officer. Even then, the Extension Officers expect something in return for their services. If they think farmers can or will not give them anything, they try to avoid visiting them. As one of the field workers explained to the researcher, “You must understand that I cannot go to visit a farmer to advise him on the growth of his maize if he is not willing to give me a ripe corn as thanks for my service.”

The overall picture is that Extension Officers work as small entrepreneurs, who buy fuel and medicine themselves – as the municipal government does not provide these services. Some, own shops where they sell agricultural inputs. As a result, Extension Officers dedicate much time to providing services to livestock keepers, who face many problems related to the delivery and breeding of cattle, but some of them have incomes that enable them to pay for the extension services.

In the two local governments, the farmers who call upon extension officials for treatment of their cattle have to pay a transport allowance of up to 2000 Tsh, depending on the distance; they also have to pay for the treatment itself, the amount depends on the type of disease. The tariffs are established by the Extension Officer depending on the cost of transport, which is accepted in the community (Observation and interview – Morogoro and Hai District Council officials).

Farmers who dedicate themselves to agriculture and those living a long distance from the extension offices, as a rule, are not provided with extension services on an individual basis (Interviews- field workers and farmers in the two districts). Furthermore, the Extension Officers in Hai District Council on the other hand have developed an informal guideline of legalizing the payment for the extension services particularly for the livestock keepers as seen in the quotation below.

Yes, we have prepared informal guidelines that the farmers must pay at least 500 hundred Tsh. shillings per a visit and for pregnancy diagnosis we tell them to charge at least 2000 per day (Interview – District Agricultural Extension Officer, Hai District).

Concerning the contact between field workers and farmers, the study findings indicate some variations. For example in the Morogoro case, although field workers are supposed to support all farmers in their area, some of the farmers are never reached. Accordingly, the researcher visited several farmers in Morogoro wards. The farmers reported to have heard about Extension Officers – one farmer even knew the name of the Ward Extension Officer – but they had never seen these officers. As for the case of Hai, field workers live far away from the farmers in a small town and rarely visit farmers; the situation becomes worse during rainy seasons because of the bad state of the roads (Interviews- field workers and farmers). How can we explain this behaviour? The literature shows that the way the leader treats the followers and the behaviours leaders display to the followers has important implications to the behaviour of the followers (Brown et al., 2005). The findings indicate that field workers develop their working schedule and carry it out themselves in the way they think appropriate. Leaders at the district level guide the field workers through examples on the field on how to carry out the schedule without any demonstrations. A lack of leadership models makes the field workers carry out schedules as they think appropriate; but, how can we explain this behaviour? According to literature, to demonstrate ethical behaviour, a leader is expected to be a role model of providing direction on how to behave (Brown et al., 2005).

Therefore, a lack of guidance from leaders affects the performance of field workers as they decide on how and where to deliver the services. Furthermore, to understand this better, it is instructive to gain insights into the antecedents of ethical leadership in Tanzania. Ethical leadership has a being a major theme since the attainment of independence in Tanzania. Before independence, the colonialists established a law for the prevention of corruption ordinance Cap 400 of 1958 to control corrupt behaviours among public servants. After independence, this law did not help much. Public leaders equated leadership with wealth. In this regard, the Permanent Commission for Enquiry was established and embedded in the provision of the interim constitution of 1965 to deal with issues of corruption (Tenga, 2010). The second initiative for building ethical leadership was the inauguration of the Arusha Declaration that came with a code of ethics for TANU party leaders by Mwl Nyerere of 1967. A leader was defined as a member of TANU National Executive Committee, Ministers in Government, Members of Parliament, and senior officials of Organization Affiliated to TANU, Senior Officials of Parastatals, Leaders appointed under the TANU Constitution, Councillors of Local Government, and Civil Servants of high and middle levels. Public leaders were supposed to declare their properties. In addition, Nyerere insisted on the institutionalization of ethical norms such as human liberation, dignity, peace and justice as key to ethics. Some of the ethical norms he modelled include human dignity, liberation, peace and justice which were eventually institutionalized in the political system and culture and codified in his socialism philosophy (Nantulya, 2015).

Moreover, ethical leadership was strengthened through the enactment of the code of ethics for Public Leadership of 1995, which insisted on the following. First, the public leader was not supposed to put him in a position where his interest conflicts with his responsibility as a leader. Second, experienced and competent persons were encouraged to seek positions in the public office and facilitate interchange between the private and the public sector. Third, clear rules of ethics in respect of conflict of interest for, and post-employment practices were established to reduce conflicts of interests of public leaders. Nevertheless, despite all these developments, the role of ethical leadership has not received the required attention.

Conclusion and recommendations

The delivery of agricultural extension services is guided by formal rules which define the roles and responsibilities of district officials and field workers. The roles and responsibilities are given by national-level guidelines written by the Ministry of Agriculture. These also define the key responsibilities of village Agricultural Extension Officers. In developing their working schedule, field workers are guided by annual calendars that define different seasons and the relevant knowledge required by farmers. Nevertheless, field workers have a larger discretion in deciding about the content of their working schedule and the implementation arrangement. The district officials who are the supervisors very rarely provide training on how to develop or implement the working schedules. To a larger extent, supervisors at the district level rely on monthly reports which are produced by field workers monthly. The assumption is that field workers must abide by a code of ethics that defines the ethical expectations of all public servants. On the contrary, the field workers do not consider this as an important document and as a result, they consider service delivery to farmers as a favour.

It can therefore be concluded that the problem of unethical behaviour of public leadership in the delivery of agricultural advisory services is caused by overreliance on formal rules than exemplary leadership. Formal rules are necessary but not sufficient tools of addressing the problem of unethical behaviour of agricultural extension officials. These must be complemented with values that guide the behaviour of leaders and officials involved in decision-making. There is a need for senior officials to be trained on organizational values and norms and, they must, in turn, communicate ethical values through demonstration of the desired behaviour to their junior staff. The trainer can use the code of ethics for government officials and politicians, which stipulates management’s expectations concerning the employee code of conduct. Moreover, the local governments in Tanzania must establish proper rewarding systems of ethical behaviours. Scholars (Baumhart, 1961; Mitchell et al., 2005; Geeta et al., 2016) indicate that rewarding ethical behaviours can promote it. This implies that after training employees on ethical behaviours, the trainees must be rewarded for displaying positive behaviours to encourage them continue adhering to ethical practices and inspiring others to be ethical. Lastly, is the establishment of negative rewards through disciplining unethical behaviours. In case some employees show any deviation from ethical behaviours after the training, senior officers must impose sanctions against those displaying unethical behaviours. In so doing, employees understand the implications of unethical behaviours and the importance of behaving ethically.

Finally, the local government should establish ethical leadership procedures and strategies founded on ethical foundations as suggested by the principles of King III Report which provides ethical guidelines for local government administration (Dube, 2016). The report recommends that for effective ethical leadership and corporate citizenship, the Council should offer effective leadership founded on an ethical foundation. The ethical values of obligation, accountability, fairness and transparency should be established.