ABSTRACT
This research project set out to
assess the impact of job content and job context factors on employee
performance using Lagos State Civil Service and selected manufacturing
organization as a case study.
The success or failure of
an organization depends largely on how well or best its employees perform their
function with available resources.
These also depend on job
satisfaction and how well management can manage their employee to performed
better on their job. And this issue of job satisfaction has been the major
problem facing by both the employer and employee, different theories of
motivation has been put to use by most employer, but yet the problem still
persist.
However, employee
performance has been found to have a significant relationship with the
expectancy of reward. This reward in turn supposed to satisfy a set of need,
job satisfaction is the one of the expectation of employee from the work
organization. It is an integral part of a tacit psychological contract,
unconsciously entered into by both the employee and the organization.
The primary source of information was
gathered for this research to prepared a proper understanding of the phenomenon
such as, text books, journal and internet will be consult to provide materials,
a library search will also include Lagos State University, Ojo and Charted
Institute of Personnel Management, Alausa Ikeja where other source of materials
will be used for the course of study.
Finally the research concluded that
the job context and job content factors such as fringe benefit, organization
policies, working condition ,status and opportunity for growth and advancement
enhance the performance of employee in the private sector more than that of
their counterpart in public sector.
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
Title Page i
Certification ii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgement iv
Table of content v
CHAPTER
ONE
1.1 Introduction 1
- 4
1.2 Statement
of the problem 5
- 6
1.3 Purpose
of the study 7
1.4 Aims
and objectives 7
1.5 Research
question 7 – 8
1.6 Hypotheses 8
- 9
1.7 Significant
of the study
1.8 Scope
of the study 10
1.9 Limitation
of the study 11
1.10 Definition of the terms 12
1.11 Organization
of the study 12
CHAPTER
TWO
LITERATURE
REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
2.0 Introduction 13
2.1 Job
context factors 13
- 14
2.1.1 The
reward system: an overview 15
- 16
2. 1.2 Characteristic
of the reward system 16
- 17
2.1.3 Pay 17
- 18
2.1.4 Pay and
performance 18
- 19
2.1.5 Money as
a motivator 19
- 20
2.1.6 Fringe
benefit 21
- 22
2.1.7 Good
interpersonal relations 22
- 23
2.1.8 Social
relation and employee performance 23
- 25
2.1.9 Working
Condition 25
- 27
2.1.10 Job security 27
- 29
2.2 Job
content factors 29
- 30
2.2.1 Feelings
of achievement 30
- 31
2.2.2 Feelings
of achievement and employee performance 31
-33
2.2.3 Recognition
for achievement 33
- 34
2.2.4 Linking
recognition programmes and reinforcement theory 34
2.2.5 Employee
recognition programmes in practice 34
- 35
2.2.6 Increase
in responsibility 35
- 36
2.2.7 Opportunity
for growth and achievement 36
- 37
2.2.8 Work it
self 37-
39
2.2.9 Company
policies 39
2.2.10 Status 40
- 41
2.2.11 mentally
challenge job 41
2.2.12 Individual
abilities and task demanding in relation to 41
- 42
Performance
and satisfaction
2.2.13 Job design 43
- 45
2.2.14 Self-esteem 45
2.2.15 Autonomy 45-
46
2.3 Theoretical
Relationship of content and context factors 47
and
job satisfaction/dissatisfaction
2.4 Extrinsic
financial rewards and intrinsic motivation 47
- 52
2.5 Different
expectation from work 52
- 53
2.6 Employee
performance 54
CHAPTER
THREE
RESEARCH
METHODOLOGY
3.0 Introduction 55
3.1 Research
design 55
3.2 Sampling
procedure 56
- 57
3.3 Data
Collection Method 57
3.4 Operational
measure of the variables 57
- 58
3.5 Analysis
technique 58
3.6 Historical
Background 59
- 61
CHAPTER
FOUR
DATA
ANALYSIS AND HYPOTHESES TESTING
4.0 Introduction
62
4.1 Descriptive
analysis 62
- 63
4.2 Data
analysis 63
- 68
4.3 Empirical
Analyses of the hypotheses 68
- 69
CHAPTER
FIVE
SUMMARY,
FINDING, RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION
5.0 Introduction 70
5.1 Summary
/ finding 70
- 73
5.2 Recommendations 73
- 74
5.3 Conclusion 74
Reference 75
- 77
Questionnaire
letter 78
Questionnaire 79
- 82
CHAPTER ONE
1.1
INTRODUCTION
The demand
for the employees in an organization is derived demand. They are hired because
of the real or anticipated need for the goods and services they will produce.
Once these employees are recruited, it becomes the functions of management to
utilize them in the accomplishment of organization objectives. On their part,
the employees come to the organization with one set of needs or the other hand
and see the organization as a path through which they are achieve this goal or
set of goals. Although the need of these employees differs due to the
difference in their belief, attitudes, values, biases, preferences perceptions,
social as well as ethnic background etc. it becomes the function of the
management to make employees’ goals congruent with organization goals for
harmonious co-existence.
To accomplish this, the manager has
to:
1. Communicate
with the employees in order to encourage goal congruency.
2. Leads
so that the coveted goals may be achieved.
3. The employee has to be motivated in
order to ensure that the original momentum remains unabated. Amongst these
three, one major problems confronting management is that of motivating workers
to perform assigned tasks to meet and surpass predetermined standards.
Today, it will be naive to pretend
that most Nigerian workers are not disenchanted with their jobs, their
companies, their supervisors and even with themselves.
A strewed observer could hardly fail
to notice the deplorable state of job satisfaction among the majority of the
Nigerian workers.
Take a work across many factories, either in
the public or private sector, the story is the same, their morale is low, very
low. In an economy burdened by such terrifying economic and social woes as
rapid price increases, declining growth, shortage of essential consumer good,
lack of basic infrastructure, rapid falling standard of living, poor job
design, and worse still mounting job insecurity, inequitable reward system, and
public policy indifferent to their plight, the workers certainly have a good
reason to be disillusioned and disenchanted (Banjoko 1985. 81). This is
particularly so as work plays an important role in the life of every
individual, it is also true that apart from providing for economic and social
needs of the individual, it also satisfies some personal values and
psychological needs of many workers. To the extent that is true, the assumption
could be made that work behaviour of people is influence by their motivation to
fulfill their needs. Unfortunately, the social-psychological, economical and
political realities of our work environment have made the satisfaction of these
needs very difficult.
For thousands of Nigerian workers, either in
the public or private sector, the nature or work life has become boring and
unrewarding. In spite of the stage of our political and economic development,
there remains growing emptiness in the work life experiences of many Nigerians.
Many people work because there is no other
choice and not that they look forward to something particularly rewarding or
satisfying coming to them at the end of the month.
What most people earn today is barely
sufficient to keep them above the subsistence level. Banjoko (1955) asserts
“many private Nigerian Companies, the plight of workers reflects Taylor’s
thesis on factory management where managers are technically oriented. Greater
emphasis is placed on output; higher production and cost savings, no matter the
human lost that may be involved in the process of achieving these objectives.
Sometimes, the working environment is
unhealthy hazardous, noisy and very dehumanizing workers wakes up at dust and
work till dawn for salaries and wages that are barely sufficient to maintain a
minimum standard of living”. This is further buttressed by the popular slogan
among Nigerian workers to the affect that “their take home pay cannot take them
home”. On the other hand, workers in the government parastatals and agencies
contend grudging with delayed or irregular salaries, poor job design, too rapid
civil service policies, lack of autonomy and opportunity to use their
initiatives and poor working conditions. Study or training leaves with pay
which used to be the pride of the public service in the early 1970’s has ceased
to be feasible. Worse still is fact that employment in the civil service is
politically sensitive and often seen as a social responsibility. The days when
public servant could boast of job security has gone beyond recall. Today you
are there, tomorrow you are out. This is evidence that the quality of working
life is at its lowest ebb.
According to Banjoko (1955:82), the first
noticeable crack came with the increasing neglect of the importance of the
content and context elements of job as a way of enhancing workers satisfaction
and hence performance – a situation that eventually led to a lot of workers’
malaise.
Nwachukwu (2000:120) perhaps put more
succinctly, that one of the major factors that influence an employee’s
productivity is the situational factors. He believes that an employee could
come to work with the ability and the will to work, but end up being very
unproductive because of the situational factors at the work place. He further
asserts that lack of definite expectations; infighting within the organization,
poor work design, and conflict of authority and responsibility could result in
reduced productivity. As a result the essence of work is being called to
question in the face of many bewildering economic, social and political
problems.
It is in acknowledgement of these facts and
having x-rayed the bitter truth about the performance of the Nigerian workers
as well as the assumption about the individual and their motivation, that it
becomes expedient and exigent to ask: has the increased emphasis has been
placed on such context factors as annual salary increment; annual promotion
without reference to achievement fringe benefits such as car loan, rent subsidy
and medical facilities that are not tied to the need of the employees – cafeteria
approach etc. enhanced the performance of the workers in the public sector more
than that of their counterparts in the private sector where priority is given
to such content elements as autonomy, innovativeness, promotion based in
ability and achievement and the reinforcement of desired behaviour through
recognition programs?
It may be safe that it has not. Unlike the
case of the private sector, there seems to be a missing link, which explains
the motivational input in the public sector has not resulted in the
much-desired motivational output. The obvious truth is that in public sector,
too much emphasis has been increasingly placed on financial factors at the
expense of the non-financial rewards, which appears to be paramount as with the
case of the private sector.
This is particular so as Maier (1973) has
shown that many items very important, depending upon the condition under which
the employees are working from the foregoing discussion there has been a
significant number of studies on the effect of job content and job context
factors on employee performance. This growth of scholarly activity within the
organization framework is among significant development in the sociology of
knowledge. Yet despite a background of intensive studies on the subject,
something remains lacking: a rigorous comparative study of the effect of job
content and job context factors on performance.
To fill this gap in the past studies, this
study attempts to compare the effect of job contents and job context factors on
the performance of workers in the public sector with that of their counterparts
in the private sector.
1.2 STATEMENT
OF THE PROBLEM
The
success or failure of an organization depends largely on how well or best its
employees perform their function with available resources.
These also
depend on job satisfaction on the part of the employee. And this issue of job
satisfaction has been the major problem facing by both the employer and
employee, different theories of motivation has been put to use by most
employer, but yet the problem still persist.
However, employee
performance has been found to have a significant relationship with the
expectancy of reward. This reward in turn supposed to satisfy a set of need,
job satisfaction is the one of the expectation of employee from the work
organization. It is an integral part of a tacit psychological contract,
unconsciously entered into by both the employee and the organization.
According to kotler 1973, a
psychological contract is the set of expectation held by the individual and
specifying what the individual and the organization expect to give and receive
from each other in the course of their working relationship, employee therefore,
have some expectations which they hope will met by the work organization. The
inability of the organization to satisfy these need or expectation result to
frustration of the employee and lead to low productivity, high labour turn
over, loss of capable employee and absenteeism etc.
Nigeria employer organizations are
face with the problem of motivating their subordinates in other to achieve the
organization as well as individual goals. In spite of the numerous effort by these organizations
(both public and private) to provide some basis needs of their workers, the
Nigeria worker are still not motivated to greater efforts. This is because they
have not been able to determine exactly what their workers want in their jobs.
The question is why the lackluster
attitude to work that has been evidenced in the public sector of our economy. A
visit to any public service department convinces one of the clear evidence of
poor attitude to work and disgusting performance. There is indiscipline;
authoritarian style of leadership and the situation get worse as one get to the
lower level of the organization hierarchy. All resource are very poorly
utilized and civil service policies act as deterrent rather than facilitator of
decision-making, there is over concentration of decision making in one person
and delegation is non existence. Where it exists, responsibility is delegated
and commensurate authority is withheld. Two of the three major skill required
by the managers –human skill, and conceptual skill are generally lacking. The
sight of able-body youthful individuals wearing sullen look, typist sleeping on
their computer system, secretaries manicuring their figure and engaging in idle
gossip with other colleagues, middle management engaging in chat over peanut,
banana and orange and in some cases arguing about football, worse still is the
ease with which they demand were hired call a lot of question to mind.
As with the civil service, so also with all
else. However, this is a complete departure from what obtain in the private
sector, as it is entrepreneurial driven. Thus armed with an understanding of
their needs management can reduce its labour turn-over rate, poor attitude to
work, maintain a stable labour force and motivate the worker to increase their
performance and enhance productivity.
Based on the above, this study seek to
examine motivational drive of employee in the public sector and that of their
counterparts in the private sector, and determine the extent to which job
content and context factor can enhance their performance in Nigeria work
setting by taking a look at the Lagos State Civil Service and selected
manufacturing organization in Lagos State
1.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
We intend to
compare the impact of job contents and job context factors on workers’
productivity in the public and private sector and to examine the motivational
drive of employee in the public and private sector and determine the extent to
which job content and context factor can enhance their performance on
productivity in Nigeria work setting. And for the partial fulfillment of the
requirement for the Award of Bachelor of Science in Industrial Relations And
Personnel Management.
1.4 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
v To compare the motivational drive of workers
in the private sector of the Nigerian work setting against their counterpart in
the public sector.
v To compare the effect of job content and
context factors on the performance of workers in the private sector of the
Nigerian work setting vis- a-vis those of their counterparts in the public
service.
v To make an appropriate recommendation base on
the findings.
1.5 RESEARCH
QUESTIONS
In the light of the problem stated above, a
number of research question demand answers from this study.
1.
Would opportunity
for growth/advancement and status enhance the performance of workers in the
private sector more than that of their counterparts in the public sector?
2.
Would recognition
for achievement and feelings of achievement, and increase in responsibility
enhance the performance of workers in the private sector more than of their
counterparts in the public sector?
3.
Would performing
challenging job and the job itself enhance the performance of workers in the
private sector more than that of their counterparts in the public sector?
4.
Would job
security and the regular payment of salaries enhance the performance of workers
in the private sector more than that of their counterparts in the public
sector?
5.
Would fringe
benefits and increase in salary enhance the performance of workers in the
private sector more than that of their counterparts in the public sector?
6.
Would working
condition, organizational policy and interpersonal relationship enhance the
performance of workers in the private sector more than that of their
counterpart in the public sector?
1.6 HYPOTHESIS
In order to ascertain the reliability
and validity of this research work, some hypothesis will be tested to provide
empirical evidence.
Such as:
1.
HO: There
is no significant relationship between opportunity for growth/advancement and
employee performance in the private and public sector.
HI: There is significant relationship between opportunity
for growth/advancement and employee performance in the private and public
sector.
2.
HO:
Opportunity for growth/advancement and status will have no positive
influence on the performance of employees in the private and public sector.
HI:
Opportunity for growth/advancement and status will have positive
influence on the performance of employees in the private sector than that of
their counterpart in the public sector
3.
HO: Job
security and regular payment of salary will have no significant influence on
the performance of employees in the private sector than that of their
counterparts in the public sector.
HI: Job
security and regular payment of salary will have significant influence on the
performance of employees in the private sector than that of their counterparts
in the public sector.
4.
HO:
Fringe benefit and increase in salary will have no positive and
significant influence on the performance of employees in the private sector
than that of their counterparts in the public sector.
HI: Fringe benefit and increase in salary will
have positive and significant influence on the performance of employees in the
private sector than that of their counterparts in the public sector.
1.7 SIGNIFICANT
OF THE STUDY
This research work will be of
immense contribution to the understanding of the cause of employee performance
especially in the public and private sector of our economy. In every
organization, the desire of management is to ensure that organization objectives
are achieves. However, the achievement of the set objective will depend on
whether or not the worker are happy or satisfy with their jobs, and also on
whether or not they understand what is expected of them. It is often said that
a satisfy worker is a happy worker, this presuppose that such a worker will
strive hard toward the attainment of organization goals. Concomitant with the
above is the fact that human need differ. Hence, an understanding of this
differing could, to a large extent, enable the employer of labour to
concentrate effort on the identified need or class of need to ensure enhanced
or effective and efficient job performance. This study will also categorically
bring into limelight the advantages and contribute to knowledge, to organization
and society at large
1.8 SCOPE
OF THE STUDY
We are to examine
the impact of job context and job content factors on employee performance and
compare between public and private sector
The research
focus on the motivational drive of worker in private sector of the Nigerian
work setting against those of their counterpart in the public sector and
whether the job context and job content factors as any effect, impact or
influence on employee performance in an organization.
The major issues
that attract attention are as follows:
1.
Whether
opportunity for growth/advancement and status enhance the performance of
workers in the private sector more than that of their counterparts in the
public sector?
2.
Whether
recognition for achievement and feelings of achievement, and increase in
responsibility enhance the performance of workers in the private sector more
than of their counterparts in the public sector?
3.
Whether
performing challenging job and the job itself enhance the performance of
workers in the private sector more than that of their counterparts in the
public sector?
4.
Whether job
security and the regular payment of salaries enhance the performance of workers
in the private sector more than that of their counterparts in the public
sector?
5.
Whether fringe
benefits and increase in salary enhance the performance of workers in the
private sector more than that of their counterparts in the public sector?
6.
Whether working
condition, organizational policy and interpersonal relationship enhance the
performance of workers in the private sector more than that of their
counterpart in the public sector?
7.
1.9 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
The successful
completion of the study was not without some limitations. Research has shown
that completed questionnaires are never return one hundred percent (100%), and
even some of those complete and return are never properly fill out. This study
is no expectation to problems
Non response is a
critical limitation of mail survey.
Time was another
major constraint of this study. It is a major constraint because this was
carried out simultaneously with other work like going to work during the day
and writhing during the night and weekends.
Obtaining
employee performance record posed some difficulties. This is specific to the
Civil Service where it objective is often stated as “Service to the people” And
hence hard to measure.
The non corpora
ting attitude of some manager and supervisor in some of ministries and
departments to release employee’s performance records was another serious
limitation
Not to be left
out is the difficulties that were experience in trying to get the employee and
supervisor to understand the academic nature of the study. There is the innate
belief on the part of employee and supervisor that such information may be used
for purpose other than doe which they were sought. Besides, they were scared
that divulging such official secrete would result in their sack from their job.
However effort were made to ensure that the desire information was obtain from
these respondents
1.10 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Various authors
that have written in this area have employed a variety of terminologies. The
basic theory is known both as the two-factor theory and as Herzberg’s (two-factor)
theory; both terms will be used in this paper.
The
two factors themselves are known by many names. One has been called the hygiene
factors, the maintenance factor, the extrinsic factor, the dissatisfies, and
the job context factor, for the purpose of the paper, it will be called
Context.
This
study will look at the workforce of the civil service workers in Lagos State,
referred to as the public sector, and the workforce from selected manufacturing
organizations herein referred to as the private sector.
1.11 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
This
study is divided into five chapters:
Chapter
one deal with the overviews of the problem, statement of the problem, purpose
of the study, research questions, hypotheses, significant of the study,
limitation of the study.
Chapter
two deal with the review of the related literature
Chapter
three attempt to describe the research design, sampling procedures/ sample side
determination, data collection method, operational measure of variable and data
analyses technique.
Chapter
four deal with presentation and analyses of data.
Chapter
five present the discussion, recommendation and conclusion of the research
finding and direction for further research.
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