ROLE OF SECRETARIES AS TOOL FOR ENHANCING THE QUALITY OF SERVICES RENDERED BY GOVERNMENT ESTABLISHMENT IN NIGERIA
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of study
Interest in service delivery is increasing in the corporate world and especially in both public and private organizations. This is due in part, to changes in technology and emphasis on maximization of output through increased efficiency and effectiveness (Jerich, 2000). The interest could also be attributed to the competitive nature of business in the current global economy and improved awareness of individuals of their civic rights. Owing to the fact that the world is increasing a global village and people are demanding more and more of effective and efficient services in the ways they are treated as customers, the provision of better services to customers in an organisation remains a priority. According to the 1995 White Paper on Transformation of the Public Service in South Africa (Setsetse & Makansi, 2007), the need to meet customers’ basic needs through improved service delivery is advocated and justified on social and moral grounds, taking into consideration their past history. Improving the delivery of secretarial services in an organisation means addressing the imbalances of the past while ensuring continuity of service delivery with a view to ensuring that customers obtain effective and efficient delivery of secretarial services. Achieving meaningful service delivery is challenging in the combined efforts of attempting to meet the needs of customers within a changing work environment as well as ensuring timeliness under very limited and stressful situation.
Every profession has certain concepts associated with it. The same is true for secretarial services. Nwosu (1998) traced the word “secretary” to the Latin word secretarius meaning a person entrusted with secrets. In the business circle, the term has three broad connotations. Primarily, it is applied to a person:
- That is employed to prepare, preserve and transmit all forms of information as well as render stenographic services.
- One who serves in certain legal, administrative or accounting capacities as a secretary to a company or a statutory body; and
© someone in-charge of a Local, State or Federal Government department.
In an organization, secretaries, in addition to the roles enumerated above, attend to administrators, staffs, customers. These categories of persons attended to by secretaries are referred to, in this research, as customers in a general sense. Customers are those who receive the an organisation’ services from secretaries.
