Understanding and managing employee behaviour in organisations: Case study of the broken-down urinal at the Kenya School of Government

1.0 Introduction

The case is situated at the Kenya School of Government (KSG), Mombasa Campus, located in Kizingo, Mombasa City. Mombasa is a coastal city located south of the Republic of Kenya.The Kenya School of Government is a public institution mandated to enhance knowledge, skills and competencies of public officials and contribute to the transformation of the Kenyan public service. The School provides training, consultancy and research services aimed at strengthening public-sector leadership, management, policy development and implementation, service delivery and public engagement.

As a public institution, KSG operates within formal administrative, financial and procurement procedures. While these procedures are important for accountability and prudent use of public resources, they can sometimes affect the speed with which routine operational problems are resolved.

The case which falls under the administration section of the Campus therefore provides an opportunity to examine the interaction between organizational systems, employee behaviour and the physical work environment.

The Incident: A Problem That Became an Organizational Behaviour Issue

In September 2026, a urinal located on the first floor of the Faculty Block developed a serious blockage. The facility was predominantly used by male employees and was maintained by the cleaning staff.

The blockage prevented the urinal from functioning properly and caused water to accumulate and flood the area every hour due to the frequency of use. Over time, the resulting foul smell spread beyond the washroom and affected the surrounding area, including an adjacent staff lounge. The administration officer received over twenty complaints every day from clients and staff who usually take their mid-morning and evening teas at the staff directly opposite the washrooms where the urinal is situated. The complaints were entered into the campus complaints handling system.

The problem persisted for more than a month while the institution went through the necessary procurement processes for engaging a contractor to undertake the repair.

During this period, the cleaning staff had to repeatedly deal with the consequences of continued use of the defective facility. The problem was therefore no longer merely a maintenance issue. It had become a workplace behaviour and employee-relations issue.

Figure 1 The Broken-down Urinal

Source: KSG Mombasa Corporate Communications Department

Figure 1 above shows the broken-down urinal at KSG Mombasa, the notices that were pasted on it to prevent clients from using the facility without success, and the simple masking tape that finally provided a solution by stopping use of the facility until it is repaired.

1.1 The Behavioral Problem

To discourage employees from using the defective urinal, a cleaner placed handwritten notices stating: “URINARY IS OUT OF USE.” The notices were positioned inside the washroom and near the urinal. Despite the notices, employees continued to use the urinal. The notices failed because the door to the urinal was too near to the wall that the notice was pasted on and the door opened inwards too, thus the user may not see the first notice in good time. The first notice was faint and thus not legible to all users. The second notice was out of the line of sight to the clients once they turned to use the urinal. Consequently, the facility continued to flood and generate an unpleasant smell. The cleaners became increasingly frustrated. Some perceived the continued use of the urinal as deliberate disregard for their efforts and instructions. This perception contributed to strained relations between cleaners and other employees. The cleaners also began avoiding the affected washroom where possible because of the additional work and frustration associated with managing the problem.

At this point, the situation had produced several organizational consequences: increased workload for cleaning staff, frustration and dissatisfaction among cleaners, deterioration of the workplace environment, and unpleasant conditions for employees using the floor, disruption to the adjacent staff lounge, negative perceptions between employees and support staff, and potential erosion of workplace harmony.

1.2 The Critical Observation

An employee named ZC who worked in the Faculty Block noticed the frustration experienced by the cleaners and the discomfort experienced by employees working on the floor. He began to question why employees continued using the urinal despite the notices. Two possibilities occurred to him: employees might not have been noticing the handwritten notices because they were faint and inconspicuous and secondly employees might notice the notices only after they had already entered the urinal area and begun using the facility. This observation shifted the problem from: “Why are employees ignoring the instruction?” to “Is the way the instruction is communicated sufficiently effective to influence behavior?” This was a significant change in perspective. Systems thinking dictates that parts of a system interact, connect, and influence behavior. In this case, the parts (notices) were not interacting and connecting and thus not influencing employees to change their behavior (stop use of the facility before it is repaired).

1.3 The Behavioural Intervention

The employee introduced a simple temporary intervention. Using masking tape, he created a visible barrier across the entrance to the urinal area. Two horizontal strips of tape were placed across the entrance, with additional vertical strips creating a simple visual barrier. The barrier was deliberately uncomplicated. It did not physically lock the entrance or prevent employees from removing it. Instead, it served as a clear environmental signal that the area should not be entered. The employee then informed the cleaner about the purpose of the intervention and advised that the tape should be monitored and replaced if it became detached. Other than the cleaning officer, the other employees were not sensitized on why the urinal was being blocked from use other than the notice that was pasted on the urinal wall. Despite the lack of explanation to the other staff or clients on the justification for the use of the visual barrier, remarkable compliance was witnessed. The intervention effectively changed the physical environment so that the desired behaviour which is avoiding the defective urinal became more obvious.

1.4 The Outcome

Daily cleaning reports collected by the cleaner through observations and verified by supervisor visits logged into cleaning register, and absence of client complaints regarding the urinal in question indicated great progress. The intervention produced an immediate and sustained behavioral change. For the remainder of the period before the urinal was repaired, employees stopped using the defective facility. Instead, they used the functioning toilet bowls available within the same washroom.

The consequences included: elimination of repeated flooding, reduction of the unpleasant smell, improvement of the working environment on the first floor, reduced workload and frustration among cleaners, restoration of more harmonious relationships between cleaners and other employees, improved usability of the adjacent staff lounge and maintenance of the urinal in a clean condition until repairs were completed.

The case therefore demonstrates that a relatively small change to the physical environment can produce a significant change in workplace behaviour.

1.5 Organizational behavior analysis

From the intervention and its outcome, the following organizational behaviour lessons can be deduced:

Written Communication Alone Does Not Guarantee Behavioural Compliance

The initial approach relied primarily on written communication. Although the notice clearly stated the intended behaviour, “Do not use the urinal,” it did not produce the desired compliance. This demonstrates that communicating an instruction does not necessarily mean that it has been noticed, understood or translated into action. The effectiveness of organizational communication depends not only on the message itself but also on its visibility, clarity and ability to influence behaviour.

A handwritten notice in faint lettering may technically communicate an instruction while failing to attract sufficient attention. As George Bernard Shaw observed, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” The management lesson is that communication should be evaluated by its behavioural outcomes rather than merely by whether instructions have been issued.

Workplace Behaviour Is Shaped by Environmental Cues, Context and Behavioural Reinforcement

The case demonstrates that employee behaviour is strongly influenced by the physical and organizational environment in which it occurs just as posited by Aust et al. (2023) in their study which suggested that the work environment can be improved by certain organizational-level interventions which can shape employee behavior. Employees do not act independently of their surroundings; their behaviour is shaped by established habits, workplace routines, social norms, convenience, organizational rules and environmental signals.

In this case, employees had developed a habitual expectation that the urinal was available for use. The written notice did not provide a sufficiently strong signal to interrupt this established behaviour. However, the physical barrier created a more immediate and visible environmental cue, changing the situation from one in which employees were merely instructed not to use the facility to one in which access was visibly restricted.

The barrier also served as a form of behavioural reinforcement by providing a continuous reminder of the expected conduct. Rather than depending entirely on employees remembering or recalling the written instruction, the physical environment reinforced the desired behaviour at the point of decision. This illustrates an important organizational behaviour principle: effective management systems should not rely exclusively on individual memory, self-discipline or repeated instructions. They should also be designed to make appropriate behaviour visible, convenient and easier to follow.

Kurt Lewin's (1936) proposition that behaviour is a function of the person and their environment reinforces this argument. Similarly, the experience demonstrates that managers can sometimes achieve better behavioural outcomes through simple environmental adjustments than through repeated communication or costly interventions.

Employee Behaviour Should Be Understood Before It Is Judged

An important human resource management lesson is that managers should be cautious about attributing negative intentions to employee behaviour. Initially, the cleaners interpreted the continued use of the urinal as possible disrespect or deliberate disregard of their efforts. However, the subsequent intervention suggests that the problem may have been partly attributable to ineffective communication and inadequate environmental cues rather than deliberate misconduct.

This distinction is important because not all undesirable workplace behaviour is intentional. Employees may fail to comply with instructions because of established habits, unclear communication, inadequate environmental signals or organizational arrangements that make the desired behaviour difficult to recognize or follow.

Consequently, before labelling employees as careless, disrespectful, irresponsible or resistant to organizational instructions, managers should examine whether the workplace environment and organizational systems adequately support the expected behaviour. As Deming (1986) argues in Out of the Crisis, organizational performance is significantly influenced by the systems within which individuals work.

The broader management implication is that effective supervision requires diagnosing the causes of behaviour before assigning blame or introducing disciplinary measures. Addressing the underlying conditions may produce more sustainable improvements than focusing exclusively on individual employees.

1.6 The Human Resource Management Dimension

Although the incident involved a physical facility, its consequences extended directly into human resource management such as employee well-being (The foul smell and poor sanitary conditions affected the quality of the workplace environment), employee relations (The situation created tension between cleaners and other employees), job satisfaction (Repeatedly dealing with an avoidable problem could contribute to frustration among cleaning staff), respect and dignity (The cleaners perceived continued use of the urinal as a possible disregard for their work), organizational culture (The incident illustrates how seemingly minor workplace practices can influence perceptions of respect, responsibility and cooperation), and employee engagement (The eventual solution was initiated by an employee who noticed the problem and took constructive action. It also demonstrated how the voice of one employee, outside the organizational formal structures, can provide a solution to operational problems if shared and heard. The case further reveals the level of psychologically safety within the organization which allows employees to perform their best in experimenting and innovating a without fear of punishment, humiliation or reprimand. This illustrates the potential value of encouraging employees to identify and solve operational problems within appropriate boundaries).

1.7 Public Administration & Governance Analysis

While the immediate symptoms of this case were behavioural, the root cause lies within public sector administration. Public institutions often suffer from systemic rigidities that transform routine administrative tasks into protracted crises.

Bureaucratic Red Tape vs. Operational Responsiveness

The core delay which was a minor facility repair remaining unaddressed for over a month was driven by compliance with public procurement regulations. In public administration, frameworks like Kenya's Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act (PPADA) prioritize transparency, competition, and prevention of corruption. However, when petty cash thresholds or emergency procurement mechanisms are too rigid or underutilized, administrative processes override operational effectiveness. Public managers must balance legal compliance with the administrative duty of care to maintain a conducive work environment. Max Weber in Economy and Society says that "Bureaucracy develops more perfectly the more it is 'dehumanized,' the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation." , (Weber, 1978, p. 975)

Public Sector Silos and Street-Level Bureaucracy

The case illustrates a classic disconnect between operational administrative departments:

Procurement/Finance: Focused on procedural compliance, documentation, and cost-control thresholds. However, Republic of Kenya (2022) highlights how the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act allows for emergency procurement to address situations of urgent need where waiting for standard competitive procedures would cause severe harm, loss, or operational disruption. This could reduce delays as formal procedures are pursued so that clients would not need to suffer. This case would have benefited more had the emergency procurement procedure been activated much earlier.

Estate/Facilities Management: Responsible for physical infrastructure but constrained by bureaucratic approvals.

Support Staff (Cleaners): Acting as "street-level bureaucrats" on the front lines, bearing the physical burden of systemic failure without the authority or resources to fix the root cause.

When public management systems fail to empower frontline staff or provide rapid-response channels for basic facilities, public services (and internal morale) deteriorate quickly. Lipsky (2010) in the Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services "The decisions of street-level bureaucrats, the routines they establish, and the devices they invent to cope with uncertainties and work pressures effectively become the public policies they carry out."

Administrative Leadership and Public Service Value

Public Sector Value is created not only through high-level policy formulation but also through efficient internal operations. A core responsibility of public sector leadership is administrative friction reduction ensuring that lower-level staff are not left to cope with infrastructure failures caused by upper-level administrative inertia.

2.0 Literature Review

2.1 Leadership & Management Analytical Frameworks

From this case, several core management and behavioural frameworks can be applied:

Figure 2: Illustration of Procurement and Bureaucracy Source: Author

Figure 2 above compares the traditional approach that did not produce expected results in the case and behavioral interventions that were applied and worked.

2.2 Comparative Analysis of Nudge Theory, Adaptive Leadership and Attribution Theory

Rather than treating Nudge Theory, Adaptive Leadership and Attribution Theory as separate explanations, their explanatory value becomes clearer when they are applied together to understand the behavioural and organizational challenges surrounding the broken-down urinal at the Kenya School of Government Mombasa Campus.

The three theories offer complementary but distinct perspectives. Nudge Theory explains how the physical environment influences employee behaviour; Adaptive Leadership explains how an individual can respond to a persistent organizational challenge without formal authority; while Attribution Theory explains how different employees interpret and assign responsibility for the problem.

2.3 Comparative explanatory value of the three theories

2.4 How the three theories complement one another

2.4.1 Nudge Theory: Changing the environment to influence behaviour

Beshears & Kosowsky (2020) while explaining the Nudge Theory, defines nudges as interventions that influence behavior by changing the environment in which decisions are made, "without restricting the menu of options and without altering financial incentives. "Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge Theory provides the most immediate explanation for why the masking tape intervention was effective. The written notice required employees to notice, read, interpret and remember the instruction not to use the defective urinal. This approach depended on conscious attention, which employees might not consistently exercise during routine workplace activities.

By placing masking tape across the urinal, Employee ZC changed the immediate choice architecture. The warning became physically prominent, visually salient and difficult to ignore. Although employees retained the theoretical freedom to remove the tape, the intervention made compliance easier and non-compliance more noticeable.

2.4.2 Adaptive Leadership: Addressing the organizational challenge

While Nudge Theory explains why the intervention influenced behaviour, Adaptive Leadership explains why Employee ZC's initiative was important in the wider organizational context.

The plumbing breakdown represented a technical problem requiring specialized expertise, financial resources and procurement processes. However, the continued misuse of the defective facility, employee frustration and poor coordination represented an adaptive challenge requiring changes in behaviour, communication and collective responsibility.

Employee ZC demonstrated leadership without formal authority by recognizing that the organization could not wait for the technical problem to be resolved before addressing the behavioural consequences. The masking tape was a simple, immediate and virtually cost-free intervention that helped manage the situation while the technical repair remained pending.

2.4.3 Attribution Theory: Understanding perceptions and avoiding blame

Fritz Heider’s Attribution theory explains how people interpret the causes of events, behaviors, and outcomes.

N'gbala, A., & Hilton, D. (2023) explains internal and external attributions and clarifies how people interpret the causes of their own and others’ behavior and how causal explanation influence subsequent behavior. Attribution Theory adds another important dimension by explaining how employees interpreted the situation and the behaviour of others.

For instance, cleaners might have interpreted continued urinal use as evidence of employee carelessness, arrogance or disregard for their work. Such interpretations risked personalizing a problem that was partly caused by ineffective communication and an inadequately designed warning system.

Employee ZC's response reflected a more systemic diagnosis. Rather than assuming that employees deliberately ignored instructions, he addressed the environmental conditions that made non-compliance possible.

This perspective highlights the importance of distinguishing between individual responsibility and organizational factors when diagnosing workplace problems.

2.4.4 Transferability of Lessons across Organizational Functional Areas

2.4.5 Application to Other Organizational Situations

The principle demonstrated in this case can be applied well beyond sanitation facilities in areas such as workplace safety (Instead of simply posting “Danger Do Not Enter,” organizations can combine signage with physical barriers and access controls), information security (Rather than telling employees to protect confidential documents, organizations can use controlled access, password protection and document-management systems), time management (Instead of merely reminding employees about meetings, organizations can use calendar alerts and automated reminders), customer service (Instead of telling employees to follow a particular customer-service procedure, organizations can redesign workflows and provide prompts at the point where decisions are made), records management (Rather than simply instructing staff to file documents correctly, organizations can use clearly labelled storage systems, electronic workflows and mandatory fields), and occupational health and safety (Organizations can combine training and written instructions with environmental design that makes unsafe behaviour more difficult).

3.0 Pedagogical Discussion Questions

Category A: Public Administration & Policy Execution

Procurement vs. Operations: How can public institutions like KSG balance statutory compliance under public procurement laws with operational agility for minor maintenance issues?

Delegation of Authority: What administrative policies or petty cash mechanisms could be introduced to prevent a 30-day delay for routine repairs?

Street-Level Bureaucracy: How do frontline support staff (e.g., cleaning personnel) experience bureaucratic delays, and what measures should public managers take to protect their dignity and morale?

Category B: Organizational Behaviour & Leadership

What assumptions did the cleaners make about the intentions of the employees?

Why did the masking-tape barrier appear to be more effective than the handwritten notices?

What organizational behaviour theories or concepts can be used to explain the employees' behaviour?

What does the case teach managers about diagnosing the causes of employee behaviour before taking corrective action?

What role can ordinary employees play in identifying and solving organizational problems?

What lessons from this case can be applied to employee motivation, communication, and performance management and workplace relations?

Category C: Strategic Leadership & Change

Leadership Without Authority: How can public sector leaders foster a culture where employees feel empowered to introduce low-cost, emergent innovations like Employee ZC's intervention?

Reframing Problems: How does shifting from a "compliance/punishment mindset" to a "choice architecture mindset" change how leaders resolve organizational bottlenecks?

4.0 Conclusion

The case of the broken-down urinal demonstrates how an apparently minor operational problem can become a significant organizational behaviour issue. The persistence of the problem was not simply a question of a defective facility. It involved communication, employee habits, perceptions, environmental cues, workplace relationships and the response of employees to organizational instructions.

The experience also demonstrates that effective management does not always require complicated or expensive solutions. The temporary masking-tape barrier was simple, inexpensive and easily implemented, yet it produced a sustained behavioural change.

The most important lesson is that managers should seek to understand why people behave as they do before judging the behaviour. Where desired behaviour is not occurring, managers should examine the interaction between the employee, the message, the environment and the organizational system.

In this sense, the broken-down urinal provides a useful metaphor for organizational management: when a desired behaviour is not occurring, changing the environment or system may sometimes be more effective than simply repeating the instruction. Aspects of behavioral design such as environmental characteristics are drivers that shape personal and behavior change of individual employees. These changes compliment management practices such as communication and policy implementation.

The broader implications for public-sector management are particularly significant. Public institutions operate within complex administrative structures, where service delivery, accountability, resource utilization and employee performance depend not only on formal policies and procedures but also on everyday organizational practices. The case demonstrates that public-sector managers should look beyond the existence of policies and administrative directives to examine whether the institutional environment facilitates the behaviours and standards expected of public employees. For instance, improving workplace sanitation, promoting responsible use of public facilities, strengthening adherence to administrative procedures and encouraging professional conduct may require a combination of clear communication, appropriate infrastructure, behavioural prompts and supportive supervisory practices.

Furthermore, the case highlights the importance of innovation and prudent resource utilization in public administration. In resource-constrained public institutions, managers can achieve meaningful improvements by identifying the underlying causes of operational challenges and adopting low-cost, evidence-informed interventions rather than automatically resorting to expensive reforms or additional administrative controls. Such an approach can contribute to improved organizational efficiency, responsible use of public resources and better-quality public service delivery.

5.0 Recommendations

Based on the lessons drawn from the case of the broken-down urinal at the Kenya School of Government, Mombasa Campus, the following five recommendations are proposed:

Strengthen Workplace Communication: Organizations should adopt clear, visible and strategically positioned communication methods to ensure that employees notice, understand and act on institutional instructions. Written notices should be complemented by appropriate visual cues where necessary.

Integrate Behavioural Insights into Workplace Design: Managers should redesign workplace environments to encourage desired behaviour. Simple, visible and low-cost interventions, such as physical barriers, warning signs and behavioural prompts, should be used to reinforce compliance and discourage undesirable practices.

Promote Employee Participation and Innovation: Organizations should encourage employees at all levels to identify operational challenges and propose practical solutions. Management should create an enabling environment where staff can exercise initiative and demonstrate leadership without necessarily holding formal authority.

Strengthen Responsive Maintenance and Administrative Systems: Public institutions should establish efficient maintenance reporting and response mechanisms, provide adequate resources for routine repairs and utilize appropriate procurement procedures to prevent minor operational problems from becoming prolonged organizational challenges.

Promote Supportive Supervision and Continuous Monitoring: Managers should investigate the underlying causes of employee behaviour before assigning blame or taking disciplinary action. They should also monitor the effectiveness of interventions through inspections, employee feedback, complaints records and operational reports to ensure sustainable improvements.