Institutionalising Recruitment Integrity Failures: Opacity, Discretion, and Trust in Uganda’s Service Commissions
Keywords:
Discretionary governance, Institutionalisation, Institutional trust, Procedural Opacity, Recruitment integrityAbstract
Service Commissions are central to merit-based recruitment and equitable access to public employment in Uganda. Recruitment integrity depends on transparent procedures, bounded discretion, and consistent enforcement. Yet recruitment concerns raise questions about how integrity failures become embedded within practice. Existing research treats opacity, discretionary decision-making, and weak accountability as separate problems. Less attention is given to how these conditions combine to normalise integrity failures and weaken trust. This study examines how recruitment conditions contribute to the institutionalisation of recruitment integrity failures in Uganda’s Central and District Service Commissions. The study uses qualitative analysis based on 38 semi-structured interviews with job applicants, human resource officers, Service Commission members, and oversight actors. Thematic analysis identifies three conditions shaping recruitment integrity. These are procedural opacity, discretionary variability, and fragmented enforcement. Procedural opacity restricts access to recruitment information. Discretionary variability produces inconsistent interpretation of recruitment rules. Fragmented enforcement weakens accountability across recruitment processes. These conditions generate uncertainty about recruitment decisions and avenues for challenge. Persistent uncertainty weakens institutional trust in the fairness and legitimacy of Service Commissions over time. The study contributes an institutionalisation model that explains how conditions transform integrity failures into normalised practices. The model positions opacity as an enabling condition, discretion as a mechanism of variable application, and fragmented enforcement as a condition of persistence. This contribution shifts analysis from isolated recruitment violations toward processes that reproduce them. The study provides a basis for strengthening recruitment integrity through transparency, bounded discretion, and consistent enforcement.
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