Advantages and Disadvantages of Ombudsman Country and Non-Ombudsman Country

This research is based on the advantages and disadvantages of ombudsman and non-ombudsman Asian countries. This paper will make a comparison between those countries and find out whether the ombudsman and non-ombudsman countries get any benefits that the other country. The reason behind choosing Malaysia is because Malaysia is an active member of Asian Ombudsman Association but does not implement ombudsman in its country. So the purpose of this research is to compare one of the ombudsman countries in Asia with Malaysia in order to find the advantages and disadvantages of ombudsman and non-ombudsman countries. This paper will describe whether it is important for Malaysia to implement ombudsman in the country or not.

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Significance of the Study
The ombudsman institute has played a great role as a pillar of democracy in the world as an effective instrument to resolve conflicts between two or more countries. Ombudsman can play a great role to as a contributor to good governance. Besides that, ombudsman has many other roles such as resolving legal issues, different executive policies and many more. The major objective of ombudsman is to improve the performance of the public administration and the enhancement of government accountability to its people. Thus ombudsman is very important to maintain a sustainable and peaceful democracy. And that is why this topic is very important to study.
Research Objectives
Major objectives of this research are:

To identify the advantages of ombudsman
To analyze the disadvantage of ombudsman
To investigate the impact of ombudsman on the public administration a country.
To investigate the importance of ombudsman in Malaysia.

Research Question
The research questions are given below:

What is the impact of ombudsman on the public administration of a country?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the ombudsman?
How important it is for Malaysia to implement ombudsman?

According to Dunser, (2009), ombudsman is an official appointed to investigate individuals’ complaints against maladministration, especially that of public authorities. It has been flourished and played a significant role in democracy for more than 50 years all around the world. So the existence of ombudsman has a great influence on the overall public administration of many countries. The landscape of public administration in the context of ombudsman covers a wide range of sectors including jurisdiction, social, economic and politics. This means that ombudsman have been playing a significant role in the resolution of several conflicts and issues in many countries.
According to Gottehrer, (2009), the main advantage of ombudsman is that it is independent from government of any country. Being a self-regulatory organization ombudsman has always been fair to any countries that implemented it. There are several other benefits of not being influenced by the government. One of the main benefit of that comes to light when resolving any resolution based on political interest. If the issue is resolved by ombudsman, then it is likely that no political influence will be there when resolving the issue. So being a self-regulatory entity and also being independent from the government, ombudsman is very reliable to implement.
According to Hubeau, (2009), the countries in Asia that are actively implementing ombudsman is Thailand, Philippine and Indonesia. They are called ombudsman country. There are several other countries that non-ombudsman country as they did not implement ombudsman in their jurisdiction. Malaysia is another country that did not implement ombudsman in its jurisdiction although the country has been an active member of the Asian Ombudsman Association. The purpose of this research is to investigate the benefits and disadvantages that Malaysia is facing for not implementing ombudsman. The purpose is to recommend whether they should implement ombudsman.
According to Hubeau, (2009), the ombudsman can be very slow in resolving complex problems and it doesn’t focus on the specific issues a particular problem and that is why the complains sometimes has no impact on the investigation done in ombudsman. This can impact badly on the public sector of a country as well.

Figure: Theoretical Framework (Robertson, 1993)
Research Philosophy
Most researches put a great deal of emphasis into developing appropriate research philosophies before devising appropriate methodologies for conducting the research. Before scientific methods were exclusively used in conducting research, the researchers conducted were largely based on ideologies and philosophies. Research was more concerned about the environment of the research and the ideological outcome that may be derived. Those can be considered as approaches based mainly on ideas. Those ideas have also been carried forward to modern research. At present, research philosophy deals with the environment of the research and the basic questions that will be answered through the research.
Research Approaches
Research approach involves laying out the different plans and procedures of conducting the main research (Singleton Jr., Straits and Straits, 1993). The broad assumptions of the research and the steps involved are also discussed elaborately. The detailed methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation are also dealt with. Several decisions are considered regarding research approaches. The primary decision deals with setting the source of the data and the methods that will be used for collecting it. This will provide the necessary information for carrying out the research. This will help the researched in deciding whether to set up grounded theories in the beginning or start with hypothesis testing. It also lets to decide on whether to use quantitative or qualitative data. There are mainly two basic research approaches. These are inductive research and deductive research. These approaches have been discussed in the following section.
In the case of this research, I have used deductive research as there are already a few theories present that are related to the main purpose of this research. Even though no specific studies have been conducted, here are certain relevant theories that fit the purpose of the research.
Types of Investigation
There are mainly three different types of investigations in research. These are descriptive, comparative and experimental. Descriptive investigation is concerned with providing relevant details and discussions on a number of related topics of the research. They also allow for the proper classification of the topics. Comparative investigation is related to the observation of the subject matter in a number of different situations. Experimental investigation deals with undertaking certain investigations for the purpose of producing results related to the degrees of certain relationships in the investigation. Experimental investigations are used to understand the degrees of influence of certain independent variables on the study. For this particular study, I have used both descriptive and comparative investigations in order to understand how the different telecom operators use social media and how the customers respond to their efforts and how this affects customer loyalty.
Research Design
The design of the research, along with the different types of research investigation allow for a proper understanding of the different types of phenomena and the actual occurrences that take place. The main types of research design are explanatory, descriptive and exploratory. Short descriptions of the mentioned research design types and the one that has been applied for this research have been provided below.
The nature of my research is exploratory. For this, both quantitative and qualitative form of data have been analyzed. As there are different types of data involved, the number of relevant factors are also multiple.
Data Collection
This research is based on secondary data. This data has been collected from blogs, magazines, journal articles and past studies conducted in the area. Data and information obtained from these sources work to paint a relevant picture related to the subject matter of the study. The nature of the data is both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Different quantitative statistics have been used and there are also many qualitative factors, such as customer loyalty. It is necessary to use both forms of data as applying only one form will lead to errors and misleading information. Appropriate methods have been used for the collection of the data and the data has been carefully analyzed for maximum accuracy of results. Below, brief descriptions of both quantitative and qualitative data have been provided.
Accessibility Issues
Accessibility to relevant and useful data sources is one of the main concerns of any research at the time of conducting a study. In many cases, it is denied access to many reliable data sources that may have been valuable for his research. In such cases, it is required to cover up using primary data instead. Such information would have made the understanding of certain aspects of the research easier. Despite the lack of accessibility to such useful data, I have used available data sources to extract valuable information that has simplified the research in many ways.
Ethical Consideration
Ethics is an important consideration in all forms of studies. It is important to be careful about the different ethical considerations and implications at the time of conducting the research. The ethical considerations may involve factors related to the company or industry that is being studied, the respondents of the research and the methods or techniques that have been applied for conducting the research. It is important to consider all three of the factors. So, it is important to ensure that the data collected are not damaged in any way and that the actual findings are presented in the research with proper justification. Data and information must not be altered in any way.
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