Keywords: Organizational Culture, Employees’ Commitment, Civil Service, Bayelsa State
1.1 Introduction
High technology caused the society to be changed to a borderless interconnected society.
The Bayelsa State civil service consists of the individuals (civil servants) employed by the state to run its public service apart from political office holders. It is organized around the twenty ministries and parastatals in the state. The civil service in Nigeria is a bureaucratic structure, originally created by the colonial administrators to facilitate their exploitation of mineral resources and creation of market for finished industrial products. The new Encyclopedia Britannica (2004) defines civil service as a body of government officials who are employed in civil occupations that are neither political nor judicial.
It may also be defined as a group of employees selected and promoted on the basis of a merit and seniority system, which may include examination. Anazodo (2009) defined civil service in Nigeria as comprising of workers in various ministries or departments apart from those who hold political appointments. The Bayelsa State civil service was established from the old Rivers state civil service on 1st October, 1996 when the state was created by the then General Sani Abacha military administration. The state is located in the southern part of Nigeria, with its capital in Yenagoa, a landmass of 21,100 Square Kilometers and located within Latitude 04o 15’ North, 05 o 23’ South and longitude 05 o 22’ West and 06 o 45’ East. It shares boundaries with Delta state on the north, Rivers state on the east and the Atlantic Ocean on the west and south.
The civil service is the main instrument and institution of public service delivery in Bayelsa State. Traditionally, the civil service performs three functions: supporting the policy making function of the government, facilitating or regulating the private sector and providing managerial leadership for operating public sector enterprises. The capacity of the Bayelsa state civil service to perform its statutory functions creditably is to a large extent dependent on its organizational culture and employees’ commitment to its goals and aspirations. The level of employees' commitment to the organization is therefore an important factor in determining their overall job performance. It may also be influenced either positively or negatively by the organizational culture. Thus, Bayelsa state civil service is expected to nurture and sustains its culture for the overall achievement of its goals and aspirations. Hence, leaders in different arms of the state civil service are expected to have an in-depth knowledge of its culture and harness it to bring about high level of employees commitment. It is against this background that it becomes pertinent to examine organizational culture and employees’ commitment in the Bayelsa state civil service.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
A civil service with ill-defined or negative culture is usually a breeding ground for corruption, indolence, nepotism, inefficiency, lack of accountability/transparency, low productivity, misappropriation and waste of public funds. The absence of a strong civil service culture in Bayelsa state, due to poor manpower development, exposes the state to the aforementioned social vices that may affect employees’ level of commitment negatively. Apart from organizational culture, employees’ commitment may also be influenced by the extent of their involvement in decision making and the existence of personnel development programs.
Much has not changed in the activities and roles of the Bayelsa state civil service since its creation in 1996; it is still characterized by the vestiges of the colonial structure in terms of leadership style and organizational structure. Though, Bayelsa state like any other state in Nigeria is in a democratic dispensation, the colonial civil service structure still remains, in spite of several reforms. The style of governance is still being characterized by government being “done” to people, rather than a people being governed by consent. The Nigerian civil servants that replaced the colonial masters adopted their management style of self-aggrandizement and exploitation of the masses. Since, the behaviour of civil servants in terms of commitment may be influenced by the norms prescribing and sanctioning such behaviours which are embedded in the organizational culture, any cultural failure or disruption in the value system may be evidenced by: intra-organizational conflicts, involvement in short-term goals, deterioration of ethos and morale of the organization and dislocation of social relations. On the contrary, a positive culture can reinforce employees’ job satisfaction resulting in increased level of commitment/loyalty and enhanced performance evidenced by employees’ feelings of pride, honour, social inter-connectedness and social entertainments (Al-Roweitei, 2004).
It is these outcomes of a positive organizational culture that informs this research on organizational culture and employees’ commitment in the Bayelsa state civil service.
1.3 Research Objectives
The objectives of the research are as follows:
1. To ascertain if there is any significant relationship between organizational culture and employees commitment in the Bayelsa state civil service.
2. To find out if there is any significant difference in the commitment of male and female employees in the Bayelsa state civil service.
3. To ascertain if there is any significant difference in the commitment of employees of different ages in the Bayelsa state civil service.
4. To find out if there is any significant difference in the commitment of employees with different length of service in the Bayelsa state civil service.
1.4 Research Questions
In addressing the problems identified in this study, the following research questions were raised:
1. Is there any significant relationship between organizational culture and employees’ commitment in the Bayelsa state civil service?
2. Is there any significant difference in the commitment of male and female employees in the Bayelsa state civil service?
3. Is there any significant difference in the commitment of employees of different ages in the Bayelsa state civil service?
4. Is there any significant difference in the commitment of employees with different length of service in the Bayelsa state civil service?
1.5 Research Hypotheses
In view of the above research questions, the following null hypotheses were formulated:
1HO: There is no significant relationship between organizational culture and employees’ commitment in the Bayelsa state civil service.
2HO: There is no significant difference in the commitment of male and female employees in the Bayelsa state civil service.
3HO: There is no significant difference in the commitment of employees of different ages in the Bayelsa state civil service.
4HO: There is no significant difference in the commitment of employees with different length of service in the Bayelsa state civil service.
1.6 Literature Review
Many researchers, in their respective studies have found that organizational culture was linked to employees' commitment to their organization. In the same vein, Lau and Idris (2001) found that organizational commitment is influenced by corporate culture because it reflects the relative strength of employees’ attachment or involvement with their organization.
Boonand Arumugam (2006) also found out that significant relationship exists between corporate culture and the commitment of employees of semi-conductor organizations in Malaysia. They concluded that both organizational culture and organizational commitment when implemented successfully will bring about change initiatives in an organization.
Drenth, Thierry and Wolf (1988) observed in their research that a positive relationship exists between a high level of employees ‘organizational commitment and organizational culture. Nystron (1993) in his study also observed that a significant correlation exists between organizational culture and employees ‘organizational commitment. Some studies have also found that significant relationship exist in some instances between employees’ organizational commitments with some demographic factors such as gender, age and length of service. Olanrewaju and Kanisola (2010) and Irving et al (1997) observed that employees ‘organizational commitment is influenced by sex and concluded that female employees exhibit greater organizational commitment to their job when compared to the male employees. Akinbayo (2010), however, found that male respondents show higher level of organizational commitment than the female respondents. In relation to the relationship between age and organizational commitment, Irving et al (1997) in their studies found that age was not a significant predictor of organizational commitment. However, Meyer etal., (1991) found that age has influence on organizational commitment. They argued that age might be correlated with commitment in the sense that seniority is associated with the opportunity to better ones position on the job.
In their study, Ell emmer, Gilder and Herval (1998) found that older employees are more committed to their job than younger employees. Organizational commitment has also been found to be related to the employees' length of service in an organization. Akinbayo (2010) however found that no significant difference exist between organizational commitments of respondents with above ten years of experience on the job than those with below ten years working experience. Ellemmer, Gilder and Herval (1998) in their studies found that a demographic variable such as employees' length of service is related to organizational commitment. They found out that employees with more length of service are more committed to their job than those with lesser length of service.
It appears from the above review that the relationship between organizational culture and employees' commitment on one side and the differences in the level of commitment of employees of different sex, age and length of service to their organization on the other hand has been a subject of controversy by researchers. It is based on this background that this study was set out to examine critically the relationship between organizational culture and employees' commitment in the Bayelsa state civil service.
1.7 Conceptual Framework
While organizational culture refers to the set of values, beliefs and behaviour patterns that shapes employees behaviour and forms the core identity of the organization(Lund, 2003), employees’ commitment refers to the willingness of employees to accept the goals and values of the organization and work towards achieving them(Muthuveloo and Rose, 2005). According to Mullins (2007), the culture of an organization is one of the factors that strategically come together to develop an organization. He stressed that the culture of an organization, like, the culture of the people can be a motivating factor in maximizing the value of human capital for organizational success.
Deal and Kennedy (1982) defines organizational culture as a set of values that underline how we do our duties around here. Harrison et al (1992) states that organizational culture refers to a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguish one organization from others.
They stressed that these shared meaning are a set of characteristics the organization values and the essence can be captured in seven primary characteristics that exists on a continuum from low to high: innovation and risk taking, attention to detail, outcome orientation, people orientation, team orientation, aggressiveness and stability. They concluded that the appraisal of an organization on these seven characteristics, gives a composite picture of the organization's culture.
The four dimensions of organizational culture as identified by Harrison et al., (1992) include power dimension, role dimension, achievement dimension and support dimension. The power dimension describes the organization culture based on inequality of access to redemption. Role dimension focuses mainly on job description and specialization. Achievement dimension refers to task culture which involves focusing on realizing organizational goals. The support dimension describes an organizational climate that is based on neutral trust between the individual and the organization. Some other literatures such as Meyer and Allen (1991) identified communication, training/development, rewards/recognition, effective decision making, risk taking for creativity and innovation, proactive learning, team work, and fairness and consistency in most practice as dimensions of organizational culture. However, teamwork, communication, training/development and reward/recognition are the four dimensions that have greatest effect on employees' behaviour/commitment (Lau and Idris, 2001).This is the view adopted by this research.
Meyer et al., (1991) identified three types of commitment, namely affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment. The affective commitment involves the employees' emotional attachment to identify with and involve in the organization. The continuance commitment involves commitment based on the cost that the employee associates with leaving the organization. The normative commitment on its part involves the employees' feelings of obligation to stay within the organization. Meyer et al., (1991) stressed further that the three components of organizational commitment are not mutually exclusive. This means that employees could be simultaneously committed in an affective, continuance and normative commitments at different levels of intensity. The employee may have commitment profiles that may reflect high or low levels of all components. These different profiles would eventually lead to different effects on work place behaviour and could be influenced by many factors, one of it being organizational culture (Herseovitch et al, 2002).
2. Research Methodology
A descriptive research design was adopted for this study. The population of study consists of the entire 20,000 employees in the 20 ministries and parastatals in Bayelsa state. A sample size of 200was judgmentally determined from 10% of the population size. The sample respondents of 200 were selected from the 20 ministries and parastatals using simple random sampling technique. A research instrument tagged `Organizational Culture and Employees Commitment Questionnaire' was used for the generation of primary data. It which consist of three sections: Section A, seeks demographic information about the respondents, Section Measures the four dimensions of organizational culture while Section C, measures the three components of employees’ organizational commitment. Responses to the items on the questionnaire were on a 4 point likert scale ranging from Strongly Agree (SA) - 4 points, Agree (A) – 3points, Disagree (D) - 2 points and Strongly Disagree (SD) - 1 point.
The content validity of the research instrument was determined by experts in test and measurement who matched its contents with the research questions and hypotheses to ensure that the research instrument actually measures what it was designed for.
The validity of the questionnaire was determined through a pilot study using test- retest technique on 30randomly selected respondents who are not involved in the study. After 14 days;the instrument was re-administered to the same respondents.
The data collected on the two pilot tests were subjected to Pearson product moment correlation analysis. A computed reliability coefficient of 0.83 was obtained indicating a high degree of reliability of the research instrument. The questionnaire was personally administered by the researcher with the aid two research assistants.
The data collated for the study were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The descriptive statistics used in the study include frequency counts and percentages. Hypothesis 1 was tested using the Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, hypothesis 2 was tested using the independent statistical t-test while hypotheses 3 and 4 were tested using ANOVA. All the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance for sampling error.
3. Results
3.1Demographic Profile of Sample Respondents
The demographic profile of the sample respondents is as shown in table 1
Table 1: Demographic Profile of Sample RespondentsTable 1 shows that 123 i.e. 61% of the sample respondents are male while the remaining 77 i.e.39% are female. Further, 40 i.e. 20% of the respondents are below 30 years, 82 i.e. 41% are between 30 and 45 years old while 78 i.e.39%of the sample respondents are above 45years old. Lastly, majority of the of bthe sample respondents comprising of 93 i.e. 46.5% have worked with Bayelsa state civil service between 10 and 25 years, 47 i.e.23.5% have worked below 10 years while 60 i.e.30% of the respondents have worked above 25years.
3.2 Test of Hypotheses
The analysis of data to test the four hypotheses formulated for this study are presented in tables 2-5.Hypothesis 1: states that there is no significant relationship between organizational culture and employees’ commitment in the Bayelsa state civil service. The result of the analysis is presented in table 2.
Table 2: Summary of Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient of Organizational Culture and Employees Commitment in the Bayelsa State Civil ServiceTable 2 shows that a calculated r-value of 0.88 resulted as the relationship between organizational culture and employees’ commitment in the Bayelsa State Civil Service. This calculated r-value is significant since it is greater than the critical r-value of 0.195 given 198 degree of freedom at 0.05 level of significance. Hence, the null hypothesis is rejected while the alternative is accepted. This shows that there is a significant relationship between organizational culture and employees’ commitment in the Bayelsa state civil service.
Hypothesis2: states that there is no significant difference in the commitment of male and female employees in the Bayelsa State Civil Service. The result of the analysis is presented in table 3.
Table 3: Summary of Independent t-Test Analysis of the Difference in the Commitment of Male and Female Employees in the Bayelsa State civil ServiceThe result of table 3 shows that a calculated t-value of 5.09 resulted as the difference in the commitment of male and female employees in the Bayelsa state civil service. This calculated t-value is significant since it is greater than the critical t- value of 1.96 given 198 degree of freedom at 0.05 level of significance. Hence, the null hypothesis is rejected while the alternative is accepted. This shows that there is a significant difference in the commitment of male and female employees in the Bayelsa state civil service.
Hypothesis 3: states that there is no significant difference in the commitment of employees of different ages in the Bayelsa state civil service. The result of the analysis is presented in table 4.
Table 4: Summary of One-Way Analysis of Variance on the Difference in the Commitment of Employees of Different Ages in the Bayelsa State civil ServiceThe result in table 4 shows that the calculated f- value of 11.56 resulted as the difference in the commitment of employees of different age groups in the Bayelsa state civil service. This calculated fvalue is significant since it is greater than the critical f-value of 3.04 given 199(2+197) degree of freedom at 0.05 level of significance. Hence, the null hypothesis is rejected while the alternative is accepted. This shows that there is a significant difference in the commitment of employees of different age groups in the Bayelsa state civil service.
Hypothesis 4: states that there is no significant difference in the commitment of employees with different length of service in the Bayelsa state civil service. The result of the analysis is presented in table 5.
Table 5: Summary of One-Way Analysis of Variance on the Difference in the Commitment of Employees with Different Length of Service in the Bayelsa State civil ServiceThe result in table 5 shows that the calculated f-value of 12.18 resulted as the difference in the commitment of employees with different length of service in the Bayelsa state civil service.
This calculated f-value is significant since it is greater than the critical f-value of 3.04 given 199(2+197) degree of freedom at 0.05 level of significance. Hence, the null hypothesis is rejected while the alternative is accepted. This shows that there is a significant difference in the commitment of employees with different length of service in the Bayelsa state civil service.
4. Discussion
Hypothesis 1 found that there is a significant correlation between organizational culture and employees’ commitment in the Bayelsa state civil service. This finding is consistent with the findings of Lau and Idris (2001), Boon and Arumugam (2006) and Nystron (1993) where they all found that significant relationship exist between organizational culture and employees’ organizational commitment. A plausible reason for the finding could be the present state of high unemployment rate in Bayelsa state may have elicited more commitment from civil servants as a way keeping their jobs.Another plausible reason could be that employees tend to be more committed to an organization where the organizational culture such as values and beliefs are closely related to the employees personal values and beliefs or vice versa.
Hypothesis 2 found that there is a significant difference in the organizational commitment of male and female employees in the Bayelsa state civil service and that male employees show more organizational commitment than female employees (male; mean = 54.12, SD = 7.22) and (female; mean = 49.13, SD = 6.03). This finding is in agreement with the findings of Akinbayo (2010) where he found that male employees show higher level of organizational commitment than females. A plausible reason for the finding could be that male employees are more committed to work in the office than home responsibility. The female employees are on the other hand are less committed to work in the office than home responsibilities. The society expects women to be the manager of home, which could have affected their level of commitment to work place duties. This finding however contradicts the finding of Olanrewaju et al (2010), where they found that female employees exhibited greater organizational commitment than male employees.
Hypothesis 3 found that there is a significant difference in the organizational commitment of employees’ of different ages in the Bayelsa state civil service, and that employees that are older show higher organizational commitment than younger employees (above 45years; mean= 51.5, SD= 6.80), (30-45 years; mean= 49.5, SD= 5.98) and (below 30 years; mean= 41.00, SD=6.77). This finding is in agreement with the findings of Ellemmer et al, (1998) and Meyer et al (1991), where they found that older employees show higher organizational commitment than younger employees. This could be attributed to the fact that older employees believe that the chance of getting other jobs elsewhere especially energy related work is remote when compared to younger employees. Based on this, the older employees tend to have unalloyed loyalty and high level of commitment to their organizations. This finding however contradicts the study of Irving et al (1997), who found that age has no influence on organizational commitment.
Hypothesis 4 found that there is a significant difference in the organizational commitment of employees with different length of service in the Bayelsa state civil service and that employees with more length of service are more committed to the organization than those with less length of service (above 25 years; mean =53.80, SD= 6.39), (10 - 25 years; mean =50.50, SD= 6.09) and (below 10 years; mean= 48.50, SD= 6.17). The study supports the findings of Ellemmer et al. (1998). This could be attributed to the fact that the more experience one gains on job, the more one gains confidence.
This confidence makes an employee to be happier with his job and as such he or she will be more emotionally attached to the organization. This study however contradicts the findings of Akinbayo (2010) who found that no difference exists in the organizational commitment of respondents with different length of service.
5. Conclusion
Based on the findings of this research, it canbe concluded that organizational culture is related to employees' commitment in the Bayelsa state civil service. It can further be concluded that there are significant differences in the commitment of employees of different sex, ages and length of service in the Bayelsa state civil service. In summary, the findings of this study provide some understanding on the importance of organizational culture on employees’ commitment in a formal work environment. Therefore, future study on this could be embarked upon with larger sample size covering the entire country.
6. Recommendations
In the light of the findings and conclusion of this study, it is recommended that Bayelsa state government should;
1. Improve on the current reward system in its civil service to improve employees level of ` commitment to their jobs as well as improve output.
2. Sustain and improve on the current ways of recognizing employees who perform well in their duties to enable them to be more committed to the civil service.
3. Sustain and improve on the level of teamwork or sprit among civil servants by organizing team building programs or exercises for them.
4. Improve on the current training and development programs for civil servants to enhance efficiency and effective in public service delivery.
5. Improve on the current channels of communication existing within the state civil service by creating and building trust through open communication and dialogue.
6. Involve civil servants in decisions making on issues that concern them to ensure a sense of ownership on part of civil servants in the execution of government policies.
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