According to Mitlin (2000), local government is a very important sphere of government all over the world because it is the sphere of government that is the closest to the people, as many basic services are delivered by municipalities, and local ward councillors are the politicians closest to communities. Furthermore, local governments are increasingly required to play larger roles in providing services, alleviating poverty and facilitating development (Andrews & Shah, 2003; Cameron, 2005; Craythorne, 2006; Mortimer, 2004; Rakodi, 1997).

In South Africa, after the first democratic municipal elections in 1994, there were high expectations of local governments regarding service delivery (Mortimer, 2004). This is confirmed by the fact that the objectives for local government are set out in section 152 of the South African Constitution (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996). In accordance with the Local Government: Municipal Structures Act (1998) and to fulfil its constitutional obligations, South Africa is divided into 283 municipalities, based on three legal categories, namely Metropolitan Municipalities (8), District Municipalities (44) and Local Municipalities (231). However, a central challenge for the many new institutions of local government in South Africa has been their viability and ability to build strong organisations capable of delivering on the principles of the Constitution (Atkinson, 2007).

The primary responsibility of local governments in South Africa today is to provide access to crucial public services (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996). Given their constitutional responsibilities, how are local governments in South Africa currently performing? According to the DCOGTA (2009), which conducted its own investigation into the functioning of all municipalities in South Africa, the local sphere of government is fraught with community frustration over poor institutionalisation of systems, poor service delivery and poor political governance. The State of Local Government in South Africa Report (DCOGTA, 2009) further states that a culture of patronage and nepotism is now so widespread in many municipalities that the formal municipal accountability system is ineffective and inaccessible to many citizens. This is supported by Koma (2010, p. 122), who states that ‘The performance of numerous municipalities across the country has thus far clearly demonstrated huge deficiencies in as far the fulfilment of both their constitutional and legislative obligations are concerned’. A report by the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (2014) states that local governments face challenges of poor governance, lack of accountability, a shortage of technical and professional skills, the inability to collect revenue from citizens and weak service delivery. These challenges were confirmed by a report by the South African Institute of Race Relations (2014) in which 80 local government indicators derived from census data were used to assess the performance of all municipalities in South Africa. Finally, in the DCOGTA Annual Report for 2014/2015 (DCOGTA, 2016, p. 27), it is stated that ‘In 2014, a third of municipalities are performing their functions adequately, a third is at risk as they are relatively functional, and the bottom third are failing people dramatically and require urgent intervention to correct the decay in the system’.

The inability of local governments to deliver services as described above has been publicly evidenced in the spate of community protests in South Africa since 2009, which may be seen as a symptom of the alienation of citizens from local government. According to Municipal IQ Hotspots Monitor (2016), there have been 983 major service delivery protests staged against local governments over the period 2009–2015, occurring roughly at a rate of a protest every second day, which is illustrated in Figure 1. These protests indicate an escalating loss of confidence in local government service delivery in South Africa over the last 7 years covered by the Municipal IQ Hotspots Monitor report.

According to Atkinson (2007), Schmidt (2010), Mbecke (2014) and Mutiro and Fore (2015), the main reasons for the mass protests over the last few years are (1) municipal ineffectiveness in service delivery because of a lack of leadership, corporate governance and widespread corruption; (2) the poor responsiveness of municipalities to citizens’ grievances; and (3) the conspicuous consumption entailed by a culture of self-enrichment on the part of municipal councillors and staff. Adding to this, Leibbrandt and Botha (2014) state that the inability to execute strategies is one of the main problems in local governments in South Africa today. It is thus obvious that the majority of local governments in South Africa are currently underperforming, deemed to be ineffective and in crisis.

To improve the effectiveness of municipalities in South Africa, and thus the lives of all its citizens, it will firstly be necessary to measure current performance. This will ensure that the correct aspects are addressed to improve effectiveness. In fact, this diagnostic approach to improving organisational effectiveness is applicable to any kind of organisation (Harrison, 2005).

Falletta (2005, p. 3), states that ‘organisational diagnosis involves diagnosing or assessing an organisation’s current level of functioning in order to design appropriate change interventions’. Lee and Brower (2006) support this view and state that the practical use of assessing organisational effectiveness stems from the intent to analyse the present state of an organisation and to improve performance of the organisation in accordance with diagnostic findings. According to Immordino (2010), to remain effective, organisations of all kinds must continually improve themselves in response to the challenges that they face; those in the public sector are no exception. This is because all levels of governments are under constant pressure to improve their efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness (Boyne et al., 2009). It is thus clear that a diagnosis of a municipality is an important first step towards its effectiveness.

According to Johnson, Onwuegbuzie and Turner (2007, p. 112), ‘Mixed methods research is becoming increasingly articulated, attached to research practice, and recognized as the third major research approach or research paradigm, along with qualitative research and quantitative research’. Despite this, Leech and Onwuegbuzie (2009, p. 265) state that ‘The mixed method paradigm is still in its adolescence, and, thus, is still relatively unknown and confusing to many researchers’. In fact, Johnson et al. (2007) identified and discussed 19 different definitions of mixed-methods research from the literature.

According to Johnson et al. (2007), since the 1960s various other terms have been used to refer to mixed-methods research, including multiple operationalism, triangulation, blended research, integrative research, multiple methods and mixed research. Although triangulation became a popular way of referring to mixed-methods research in the literature, it would seem that currently, triangulation is only one component of such a design, explaining the mixing of data once it has been gathered (Torrance, 2012). This view is supported by recent authors who all tend to use the term mixed-methods research (Bryman, 2007; Creswell, 2009, 2014; Johnson et al., 2007; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2010). Creswell (2014) provides a recent explanation of mixed-methods research, which contains several core characteristics, including that it involves the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data; that it includes the analysis of both forms of data; that the two forms of data are integrated in the design analysis through merging the data, connecting the data, or embedding the data; and that these procedures are incorporated into a mixed-methods design that includes the timing of data collection as well as the emphasis for each database.

Various authors have set out the advantages of a mixed-methods approach, including participant enrichment, instrument integrity, treatment integrity, significance enhancement (Johnson et al., 2007), drawing on both qualitative and quantitative research and minimising the limitations of both approaches, and providing a more complete understanding of research questions (Creswell, 2014). These advantages have prompted researchers to use mixed-methods research in various diverse setting over the last 20 years, including to diagnose a pharmacy department in a non-profit research hospital (Paul, 1996), to assess organisational culture (Yauch & Steudel, 2003), to study relocation decision making and couple relationships (Challiol & Mignonac, 2005), to study adolescent alcohol use (Newman, Shell, Ming, Jianping & Maas, 2006), to study social support in widowhood (Scott et al., 2007), to evaluate a school principal development programme (Youngs & Piggot-Irvin, 2012) and to study antecedents of servant leadership (Beck, 2014). However, there is a lack of studies utilising a mixed-methods research approach to diagnose the organisational performance of organisations in general and local governments in particular.

According to Lusthaus, Adrien, Anderson, Carden and Montalván (2002), an organisational model is a framework for analysing the strengths and weaknesses of an organisation in relation to its performance. This view is supported by Immordino (2010), who states that using a model is a structured method of collecting and evaluating information about those areas of an organisation’s operations that are most closely associated with organisational excellence.

Falletta (2005) argues that an organisational model is a representation of an organisation that helps us to understand more clearly and quickly what we are observing in organisations and that it provides a systematic way to collect data on the organisation and to understand and categorise the data. Cummings and Worley (2015) support this view, explaining that organisational models are conceptual frameworks that practitioners use to understand organisations. Both Falletta (2005) and Wiley (2010) state that models often identify vital organisational variables, which are hypothesised to exist based on prior research and depict the nature of the relationships between these key variables. Harrison (2005) argues that models are important in organisational assessment, as they help to choose which data to attend to and which data to ignore, to determine what kinds of analysis should be applied to the data and to interpret the meaning of the output of those analyses.

To assess the performance of a municipality in South Africa, it was essential to choose an organisational model that complied with certain diagnostic requirements. Martins and Coetzee (2009) mention that such a model must be well researched, while Olivier (2014) states that it should address as many of the elements of an organisation’s functioning as possible. Although Jones and Brazzel (2006) state that there is no one best diagnostic model to use, the Burke–Litwin model (Burke & Litwin, 1992) was considered by the researcher to comply with all the stated requirements.

The Burke–Litwin model of organisational performance is founded on a functional cause-and-effect framework and explains how linkages between 11 elements contribute towards organisational performance, which is the 12th element (Burke & Litwin, 1992). Burke and Litwin (1992) describe organisational performance as the outcome of work performance, effort and achievement, and indicators of this would include productivity, customer satisfaction and service quality. According to Jones and Brazzel (2006) and Martins and Coetzee (2009), the Burke–Litwin model highlights two distinct sets of organisational dynamics. One set is primarily associated with the transactional level of human behaviour or the everyday interactions and exchanges that create the climate of the organisation, while the second set of dynamics is concerned with processes of human transformation, amounting to sudden ‘leaps’ in behaviour. See Figure 2 for a visual exposition of the model.

A concurrent transformative mixed-methods strategy using triangulation to determine convergence validity was used (Creswell, 2009; McFee, 1992). This strategy entails the concurrent collection of both quantitative and qualitative data (Creswell, 2014), guided by the researcher’s use of a specific theoretical perspective (Creswell, 2009), the separate analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data gathered (Braun & Clarke, 2013; Creswell, 2014) and triangulation of data to determine convergence validity of the data gathered (Creswell, 2009; McFee, 1992). This strategy is depicted in Figure 3. Quantitative data were gathered by means of a survey instrument while qualitative data were gathered by means of interviews, with the Burke–Litwin model of organisational performance as the theoretical perspective on which the gathering of both types of data were based (Burke & Litwin, 1992).

The reasons for using this strategy was firstly to form a better and holistic understanding of how the local government in the study was performing by using both quantitative and qualitative performance data, which Collins, Onwuegbuzie and Sutton (2006, p. 116) refer to as ‘significance enhancement’. Secondly, it was used to establish the content validity of the questionnaire used by means of triangulation, comparing the interview data to the questionnaire data, which Collins et al. (2006, p. 116) refer to as ‘instrument fidelity’, which was necessary as the content validity of the survey instrument used had not yet been established for a local government, and thirdly, to use a validated organisational performance model to guide the quantitative and qualitative data gathering such as that propagated by Burke and Litwin (1992), which addresses all the elements of an organisation’s functioning (Martins & Coetzee, 2009; Olivier, 2014).

The research followed an organisational diagnostic approach. Organisational diagnosis is seen as central to the practice of OD, being a data gathering method of determining a valid and accurate picture of an organisation’s current functioning (Brown, 2011; Cummings & Worley, 2015; French et al., 1978). According to Cummings and Worley (2015), diagnosis is the process of understanding how an organisation is currently functioning and providing the information necessary to design improvement interventions. For this reason, various authors have over the years emphasised the importance of assessing an organisation to understand it and improve its functioning (Brown, 2011; Cummings & Worley, 2015; Ghorpade, 1971; Hall, 1999; Harrison, 2005; Lusthaus et al., 2002).

After contracting with the management team of the district municipality, the actual data were gathered by inviting all permanent officials in the municipality to participate in the process. The municipality’s internal methods, namely emails and staff meetings, were used to share information on the planned data gathering with all applicable staff members. Communication of the data gathering process included a message from the municipal manager explaining the purpose of the survey, the issue of confidentiality and anonymity, what the results would be used for and the actions the municipality would be able to take based on the information gathered.

A specific day was identified and scheduled for initial data gathering and planning and communicated to all permanent officials in the municipality. A total of 116 permanent officials were willing to participate in the study and arrived on the specified day at a predetermined venue. After confirming the purpose of the data gathering exercise, officials were requested to complete and sign an informed consent form in which they undertook to voluntarily complete a survey instrument and be exposed to individual one-on-one interviews. Thereafter, all 116 officials completed the OPQ in one venue at the same time under supervision of the main researcher. This was followed by scheduling 1-h semi-structured individual interviews with these same 116 officials over the next 5 days as follows:

Day 1: Five interviews conducted by four interviewers = 20 interviews

Quantitative data gathered by means of the OPQ were analysed by using SPSS version 23 (IBM, 2015). Cronbach’s alphas were calculated to measure the internal consistency of the OPQ while means, standard deviations and average scores for each of the Burke–Litwin elements were calculated to produce scores for the entire municipality. As the district municipality’s management team was only interested in overall scores for each Burke–Litwin element, differences in scores between the different biographical groupings were not calculated.

The qualitative data that were gathered by means of the semi-structured individual interviews were analysed in two ways. Firstly, responses were measured in terms of response rates (Vitale, Armenakis & Field, 2008). This was done by summating the ratings (acceptable or developmental area) given by each respondent to each element for a total for each element. If 75% (87) or more of the respondents, the previously determined cut-off point, indicated that an element was acceptable and should be maintained, it was noted as such. If less than 75% indicated that an element was a development area, it was also noted as such. Secondly, the specific reasons given as to why respondents considered an element to be a developmental area were analysed by means of thematic analysis, defined by Braun and Clarke (2013, p. 178) as ‘a method for identifying themes (or patterns of meaning) across a data set in relation to a research question’. This analysis followed the seven stages propagated by Braun and Clarke (2013), namely: (1) transcription, (2) reading familiarisation, (3) coding, (4) searching for themes, (5) reviewing themes, (6) defining and naming themes and (7) writing the report.

Table 2 indicates the reliability statistics that were obtained for the OPQ, which measured the 12 elements of the Burke–Litwin model. An overall reliability coefficient of 0.76 was obtained, while a low of 0.63 for the elements External Environment and Individual Needs and Values and a high of 0.91 for Management Practices was obtained. These reliability statistics indicate that the OPQ can be considered as a reliable instrument, as Babbie (2010) states that coefficients that are 0.3 and higher are considered acceptable for the behavioural sciences.

Figure 4 indicates the average scores obtained on the 12 Burke–Litwin elements measured by the OPQ for the municipality, while Table 3 sets out the interpretation of the obtained scores as previously contracted with the municipality management team. The results indicate that four of the elements obtained a score of 3.0 and above and were considered as acceptable and should be maintained (External Environment, Mission and Strategy, Culture and Individual Needs and Values), while eight of the elements obtained a score of below 3.0 and were subsequently considered to be development areas.

The results indicate that in general, the transformational aspects of the Burke–Litwin model were considered to be acceptable, that is, interaction with environmental forces (both within and without) and which require entirely new sets of behaviour on the part of organisational members (Burke & Litwin, 1992). The results also indicate that most of the development areas were situated in transactional aspects, referring to interactions that take place primarily via relatively short-term reciprocity among people and groups and which affect organisational performance (Burke & Litwin, 1992).