A recruitment procedure may require the selection of the most qualified candidate. Yet the person making the appointment may face pressure to favour a relative, political associate or influential patron. A public project may have an approved budget, but demands for new projects can divert funding before the existing one is completed. An official may know that a decision is improper but remain silent because challenging a superior carries personal costs.
These situations illustrate a central problem in development: written rules operate within a society of unwritten expectations.
Ghana’s economic progress depends partly on whether these expectations support fair and effective institutions or undermine them. Investment, technology and sound economic management remain essential. Their benefits, however, are shaped by how people exercise authority, implement policy and account for public resources.
My doctoral research examined the interaction between culture, government policies and Ghana’s economic development. A subsequent presentation to the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ghana’s Corporate Governance Faculty developed this argument through a critical appraisal of formal and informal institutions.
The central question is practical: what happens when the rules we officially endorse conflict with the behaviour we socially reward?
The rules on paper and the rules in practice
Formal institutions include laws, regulations and established procedures. Informal institutions include unwritten conventions about loyalty, obligation, trust and acceptable conduct.
Informal rules can support development. Community cooperation can sustain local projects. Family networks can help people through hardship. Trust can make business relationships less costly.
Difficulties arise when obligations within a group override duties to the wider public.
Helping a relative with personal resources is different from using public office to secure that relative a job. Supporting a political party is different from protecting its members from scrutiny. Respecting a leader does not require accepting every decision without examination.
The boundary between personal obligation and public responsibility is therefore economically important. Where it becomes blurred, appointments, contracts and public services can reflect connections rather than competence or need.
Respect for authority and the cost of silence
Respect for elders and leaders can contribute to social cohesion. Problems emerge when respect is interpreted as an obligation to remain silent.
An employee who identifies a weak procurement decision may hesitate to question a superior. A board member may avoid challenging an influential executive. A citizen may fear that complaining about poor service will make future dealings more difficult.
Under these conditions, an organisation can possess controls that seldom work.
Errors persist because information does not travel upwards. Poor decisions become expensive because they are not corrected early. Those who exercise authority may become insulated from the consequences of their choices.
The reform required is specific: organisations must make legitimate challenge possible. Leaders should invite evidence, explain decisions and protect staff who raise concerns in good faith. Professional disagreement should be assessed on its substance.
Solidarity and merit can coexist
Family and community solidarity provide important support, especially where formal social protection is limited. These relationships need not conflict with effective public administration.
The conflict arises when access to public opportunity depends on belonging to the right network.
Recruitment and promotion based on connections can weaken competence and discourage people who invest in skills. An organisation may then struggle to deliver, even when its employees individually work hard, because positions and responsibilities have been poorly allocated.
Merit requires clear criteria, fair assessment and decisions that can be explained. It also requires access to education and training so that people from disadvantaged backgrounds have a reasonable opportunity to compete.
Ghana can preserve social solidarity while insisting that public appointments and contracts serve the public interest.
Policy is made real at the point of service
A policy announced in Accra reaches citizens through the actions of officials who administer it.
Teachers, health workers, inspectors, licensing officers and local administrators interpret requirements, allocate attention and exercise judgment. Their working conditions, supervision and organisational culture influence what citizens experience.
A service can therefore become inconsistent even when its formal policy is clear. Applicants may receive different treatment depending on who handles their case, whom they know or whether they can make an unofficial payment.
Frontline staff need adequate resources and realistic workloads. They also need clear service standards, effective supervision and accessible complaints procedures.
Improving implementation requires attention to these daily encounters. Public confidence is built when ordinary people receive dependable treatment.
Corruption carries an economic cost
Corruption affects much more than public morality. It changes who obtains opportunities, how resources are allocated and whether people trust institutions.
When contracts depend on influence, capable businesses may lose work to less competent competitors. When public services require unofficial payments, access becomes more expensive and unequal. When funds are diverted, citizens receive fewer benefits from expenditure made in their name.
The presentation draws attention to the relationship between concentrated power, discretionary decisions and weak accountability. This is a useful guide to identifying risks, although it is not a formula that explains every instance of corruption.
Reform should reduce opportunities for concealed favouritism and make decisions easier to examine. Clear procedures, published information and credible follow-up matter. So do leadership and organisational expectations.
An institution weakens its own controls when staff observe that wrongdoing is tolerated for influential people.
The unfinished project problem
An unfinished school or clinic ties up money without delivering the intended service. Its cost includes the opportunity forgone while people wait for the facility.
Historical research supported by the International Growth Centre examined more than 14,000 local infrastructure projects in Ghana. Approximately one-third were never completed. The associated research highlighted the problem of starting new projects before adequately financing existing commitments. These findings concern the projects studied, rather than a current estimate for all public infrastructure.
The implication is clear. Project selection must take account of the resources needed for completion, operation and maintenance.
Public debate should give greater attention to facilities that function and services that improve. Announcing construction is only the beginning of delivery.
Savings social obligations and trust
The presentation also examines how expectations surrounding ceremonies, gifts and displays of status can place pressure on household resources.
These activities have social meaning and support livelihoods. Their significance should be recognised. Nevertheless, expenditure that exceeds a household’s means can leave less available for education, emergencies or business investment.
The relevant concern is financial pressure, particularly where people feel compelled to borrow or spend savings to maintain social standing.
Families and community leaders can encourage celebrations that remain affordable. Financial education can help households plan, but its effectiveness depends on income and access to trustworthy financial services.
People are more likely to save and invest when they believe their money is safe. Reliable regulation and responsible conduct by financial institutions are therefore part of the same development agenda.
Productive work must remain central
Institutional reform should improve the conditions for production.
Farmers need secure arrangements, useful advice, dependable inputs and access to buyers. Artisans and small businesses need skills, finance, reliable services and markets. Processing industries need connections to domestic producers.
Agriculture and industry should develop through these connections. Increasing farm output without addressing storage and markets can produce losses. Establishing a factory without a dependable supply base can leave expensive capacity unused.
The objective is to make effort more productive and opportunity more accessible. People’s behaviour is influenced by whether the systems around them make investment and cooperation worthwhile.
National values need practical expression
The presentation revisits the Ghana Beyond Aid framework’s emphasis on honesty, responsibility, efficient resource use and accountability.
Values become meaningful when citizens can recognise them in institutional conduct.
Honesty requires accurate reporting and fair dealings. Responsibility requires officials to explain decisions and address failures. Care for public resources requires maintenance, sound procurement and completion of useful projects.
A concise set of widely discussed civic commitments could help public communication. But slogans will achieve little if institutional behaviour contradicts them.
Citizens also have a role between elections: asking for information, examining local projects and resisting preferential treatment even when their own group stands to benefit.
A development agenda that connects rules and behaviour
Ghana’s development challenge cannot be reduced to an allegedly fixed national character. Cultural practices vary and change. Behaviour also responds to income, insecurity, opportunity and the conduct of institutions.
The useful approach is to identify particular practices that weaken public purpose and reform the incentives that sustain them.
Recruitment should reward competence. Frontline services should apply clear standards. Public investment should be financed through to useful operation. Oversight institutions should have the capacity to act and be accountable for their performance.
The central lesson is that formal rules need supporting behaviour. Economic policy becomes more effective when public responsibility is stronger than pressure for personal favour, when authority accepts scrutiny, and when productive achievement earns greater recognition than access to power.
By Valentin Kwasi Mensah, PhD, FCCA, CIA, MBA
Source extracts from ‘The Impact of Culture and Government Policies on Ghana’s Economic Development’, A Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Oxford Brookes University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Valentin Kwasi Mensah.
