CHANGE MANAGEMENT IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: THE CASE OF ONE-STOP-SHOPS (OSSS) IN KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

Since their establishment in 2005, one of the major challenges at One-Stop-Shop Public Service Centers (OSS PSCs) in Kazakhstan has been the ineffectiveness of employees in providing better public services, mainly due to their maladaptation to the change (digitalization). Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to explore how employees at OSS PSCs in Kazakhstan can be effectively adapted to the change (digitalization) in order to provide world-class public services, particularly by implementing the ADKAR Change Management model in which ‘A’ stands for awareness of the need to change, ‘D’ stands for the desire to support and take part in the change, ‘K’ stands for knowledge of how to change, ‘A’ stands for the ability to implement the change, and ‘R’ stands for reinforcement to sustain the change. The data in this paper was collected mainly from the survey questionnaires which were distributed among 51 employees and semi-structured interviews which were conducted among 10 employees at 10 branches of One-Stop-Shops (OSSs) in Astana city. Based on the main findings of this research, there is a positive correlation between each element of the ADKAR Change Management model and effective performance of employees, especially at OSS PSCs in Kazakhstan. The limitation of this paper is in its scope since the main findings of this paper are based on the data collected only from Astana city. Limited literature is also another limitation of this paper. However, the findings of this paper can be used by the government of Kazakhstan to improve employees’ productivity at OSS PSCs as well as in other countries with similar contexts; it can also be used for further relevant researches and class discussions.