Full Project – Employee empowerment and organizational performance in the private sector in Rivers state

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Chapter One

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

The employee is the repository of knowledge, skills and abilities that cannot be imitated by the competitors. Employee empowerment is creating a working environment where an employee is allowed to make his own decisions in specific work-related situations. To empower means to give power to. Power, however, has several meanings. In a legal sense, power means authority, so that empowerment can mean authorization (Thomas 2016). However, power also means energy. Thus, to empower also means to energize. This latter meaning best captures the present motivational usage of the term. The word empowerment refers to the motivational content of this new paradigm of management. As leadership expert Daniel Goleman points out “the Employee is a basic molecule of distributed leadership and basic unit in which you can change norms throughout the organization.” In the past, the organizational researchers have focused their work on empowering management practice, including delegation of decision making from higher organizational levels to lower levels and increasing access to information and resources for individuals at lower levels (Blau and Alba 2018).

Productive equipment was a valuable asset of organization in the twentieth century. While the most valuable assets of Twenty First Century institution – including commercial and noncommercial- will be the scientific employees and scientific employee’s productivity of institution and scientific employee productivity is the biggest management challenge in the twenty-first century (Drucker, 2017). During past two decades, extensive changes have been developed in the thinking of researchers and scholars of organizational concepts. Most research has focused on designing systems for human resources. Human resources are the most valuable and the rarest organizational resources. Attention to the huge resource of the organization is caused to maintain and to enhance organizational efficiency and effectiveness.

Modern organizations due to global competition and dynamic business environment have the need to quality human capital in order to compatibility of organization with existing dynamic changing environment. Employee empowerment is an absolute business essential today. It involves the expressions and avenues through which the non-managerial staff m embers are conditioned to be able to make certain important company decisions, with the support and backing of a well-planned empowerment programme. The self-willed decision-making capacity is generated from the amount of the power vested by the management within the employees, during the training provided. Training actually culminates in the whole set-up becoming an empowerment model.

Empowerment is stimulating of developing work environment (Monavarian, 2017). Employee empowerment is one of the most effective tools for increasing employee productivity and efficient use from capacities and abilities of the individual and group according to Organizational goals (Azarinia, 2018). The process of empowerment increases creativity and initiative of people and individuals committed to work more and increases job satisfaction (Wang, 2018). Empowerment improve organization effectiveness and increase the flexibility and dynamism organization and knowledge and skills (Fardin, 2014). Peter and colleagues have identified seven elements for empowerment that include: responsibility and accountability, knowledge and skills, independence, information, creativity, initiative and innovation, power and decision-making (Abraiz and Raja, 2019).

The greatest assets of any organization are its human resource and many resources are spent by organizations in building the capacities of their employees. This is due to the fact that human resource capacity building equips employees to achieve organizational goals and objectives and mandate, Mouallem and Analoui (2014).

The main goal of employee empowerment is to help the organization achieve its mission and business goals (Pinnington & Edwards, 2016).

Essentially, successful managers and owners of the firm, they have a habit of helping the employees feel competent. Furthermore, they usually consider the interests of others (Kouzes and Posner, 2012). Goodly (2018) pre assumed that empowering others are the major leadership improvement initiatives and depends on the type of leadership i.e. servant leaders possess this attribute. The social skills of leaders nowadays are many, but a notable one is developing others (McCauley and Van Velsor, 2014).

The concept of employee empowerment can be traced in the USA during the Mary Parker Follett’s management ideas, as the first formal study of empowerment conducted. She made a clear difference between the notion of -power-with‖ and -power-over‖. The power with is something within an individual and the power over coming outside individual. So she suggested looking in the passivity of starting the process of increasing power-with while decreasing power-over. If employees are empowered by managing correctly, can influence the organizational commitment and reduce employee‘s replacement. It has been urged that employee with confidence, participate decision making, and management are able to eliminate the border line between management and employee, causes an increase of productivity, performance and job satisfaction (Parker and Price, 2017).

Empowering others is a leaders‘ ability, which allows them to reinforce and develop their constituents by sharing power and giving visibility and give credit to their employees (Kouzes and Posner, 2002). Empowerment of people is a major contributor to the development of subordinates by allowing them to do extremely well by investing in themselves, even at the risk of making mistakes (Page and Wong, 2017). Servant leadership theory emphasizes empowering employees, serving them and being committed to cultivating them (Page and Wong, 2000; Spear, 2004). Empowering others to act, will lead followers to do a better job, and will aware them about their full Service potential (Kouzes and Posner, 2012).

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Globalization has opened up various opportunities and challenges for Nigerian organizations to compete internationally. Besides technological advancement, a developed, competent and empowered workforce will give Nigerian organizations an edge over its competitors. Studies on empowerment have shown that it has a strong correlation to employee performance in terms of higher productivity, job satisfaction and reduction in staff turnover in organizations. This, leads to the question of Is this correlation applicable to the Nigerian context or more specifically, in the public sector? Empowerment is a well-studied subject in the US, but little research has been conducted in Nigeria. So far on employee empowerment in the Nigeria context, have been found to focus on the institutions rather than public sector as a whole. Studies on the impact of employee empowerment and organizational performance in the private sector, however, are still lacking. As a result, this study puts forward examine the relationship employee empowerment and organizational performance in the private sector, Rivers State.

1.4 Objectives of the Study

The major aim of this study is to examine the relationship employee empowerment and organizational performance. The specific objectives are:

To assess the relationship between training and labour turnover.
To investigate the relationship between self-determination and customer satisfactione.
To examine the relationship between access to information and profitability

1.5 Research Questions

What is the relationship between training and labour turnover?
What is the relationship between self-determination and customer satisfaction?
What is the relationship between access to information and profitability?

1.6 Research Hypotheses

H0₁: There is no significant relationship between training and labour turnover.

H0₂: There is no significant relationship between self-determination and customer satisfaction.

H0₃: There is no significant relationship between access to information and profitability.

1.7 Significance of the Study

The study will be beneficial to members of the public and staff of First Aluminum Plc

The finding and recommendation of this study will enable the manager to know how employee empowerment will enhance organizational performance.

The study will also be useful for academic purpose by other scholars. It will add to the body of knowledge on employee empowerment and organizational performance.

The findings from this study on the impact of employee empowerment on organizations performance in the private sector will add on to the existing body of literature on employee empowerment in Rivers State as well as to bridge the gap in information pertaining to employee empowerment in the same.

These findings of this study will be significant to government and other organizations because they will use the recommendations for effective policy formulation and implementation.

1.8 Scope of the Study

The Content Scope: This study focused on examining the relationship between employee empowerment and organizational performance. Literatures on both concepts and dimensions were reviewed.

The Geographical Scope: This scope covered Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

Unit of Analysis: The unit of analysis is at micro level (the individual employees of firs aluminum plc).

1.9 Operational Definition of Terms

Training: it refers to the skill, knowledge, or experience acquired by one that trains.

Self-Determination: it refers to free choice of one’s own acts or states without external compulsion

Access to Information: It means any such acts seeking to obtain information with a view to its subsequent utilisation as preclude the possibility of its alteration

Employee Empowerment: It is defined as the ways in which organizations provide their employees with a certain degree of autonomy and control in their day-to-day activities.

Organizational Performance: refers to a group ‘of individual working in a particular place for the achievement of a set of assigned tasks or goal that are anchored to ‘him, with a result indicator that would measure the accomplishment level of the organizational goal.

1.10 Organizational Profile of First Aluminum Plc

First Aluminium Nigeria group, often referred to as FAN, is one of the first Nigerian listed companies, with registration number RC2288, FAN started with the production of aluminium sheets and has introduced aluminium roofing in Nigeria and has set the standards for it. The Company took its present name First Aluminium Nigeria Plc in 1991 and became quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 1992. In 1960 the remelt and rolling mills operations started in Port Harcourt. Being one of the very few vertically integrated aluminium companies in Nigeria, First Aluminium can guarantee the quality of the product, from alloy composition to the installation of the roof.

First Aluminium does not compromise on quality. Because of this, we use the superior ‘Stucco’ embossing method for our sheets. Embossing is the mechanical deformation of the surface of the sheet to give it the needed mechanical properties, such as strength. Where other suppliers use a less effective ‘Diamond’ pattern, First Aluminum will only supply the ‘Stucco’ pattern.

The same goes for the thickness (‘gauge’) of the sheets. The minimum norm in Nigeria, set by the Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON), for roofing sheets is 0.40mm. First Aluminum will not supply roofing sheets below this norm.

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