CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Organizations, just like individuals, have their own personalities more typically known as organizational cultures. Understanding how culture is created, communicated, and changed will help a manager be more effective (Beslin, 2007). Organizational culture according to Chatman & Eunyoung (2003) refers to a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs that show people what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Organizational cultures can be a source of competitive advantage for organizations. Strong organizational cultures can be an organizing factor as well as a controlling mechanism for organizations. Beslin (2007) opines that, if an organization’s culture is going to improve the organization’s overall performance, the culture must provide a strategic competitive advantage, and beliefs and values must be widely shared and firmly upheld. A strong culture can bring benefits such as enhanced trust and cooperation, fewer disagreements and more efficient decision-making. Culture also helps to create an understanding among employees about what is important to the organization. Organizations that have strong defined cultures can justify the behaviors of their employees at work because those behaviors align with the culture of the organization. Conversely, an ineffective organizational culture can bring down the organization’s effectiveness and its leadership, disengages employees, and also promotes poor customer relations and lower profits, Lawal (2005). However, the components of organizational culture as seen in ralph (2004) are the beliefs, norms, values, and attitudes and theses have been codified by the organization’s leadership into expectations, policies, and procedures.
Job enrichment occurs when an employer through development and intensification, placed extra amount of work on employees with the aim of making it more interesting, meaningful and increasing job challenge and responsibility, (Bowling, 2007). Jobs are enriched to motivate employees by adding to their responsibilities with a greater need for skill varieties in their jobs, (Bratton 2007).
Due to the rapid changes in the environment and increasing level of competitive rivalry, organizations are now beginning to shift from the traditional ideological orientation of seeing money as the greatest motivating factor to a situation where workers today will continue to value their work, have more control in scheduling their work and deciding how best the work should be done and to be esteemed for the work they do (Hower, 2008). In job enrichment, workers derive pleasure and fulfillment in their position with a greater variety of skills and tasks that requires self-systematic technique of “harnessing works processes and procedures for stimulating employees’ performance and satisfaction” (Robbins & Judge, 2011).
However, Mione (2004) posited the core dimensions of job enrichment as; motivation, idea generation, autonomy, Skill variety, job satisfaction, experience, task significance, feedback. This implies that workers can sense job dissatisfaction when they realize their job lacks adequate recognition, respect, creativity and other motivators as well as repetitive procedures and this could in turn have negative impacts on organizational performances. Ralph (2004) concluded that enriching job brings about internal work motivation and not just more work for them to do. Hence, Job enrichment serves as a roadmap to job fulfillment by improving the level of employees’ responsibility, acknowledgement, creativity, autonomy and control of the job to be performed in the organization, (Deal and Kennedy 1982).
Although, job enrichment plays a vital role in organizations but there is another factor that can influence the performance of employees and that is the “Culture of the organization”. Organizational culture according to Hartmann (2006) is defined as the way employees complete tasks and interact with each other in an organization. Mokhlas, (2015) argued that organizational culture is often depicted in a shared sense, patterns of beliefs, symbols, rituals, and myths that evolve over time and serve as the glue that unifies the organization. The cultural paradigm comprises various dimensions (beliefs, values, and symbols) that govern the operating style of the people within a company. Corporate culture binds the workforce together and provides a direction for the company. Organizational culture is very important in determining the success of the organization. Organizational culture can be learned in the social environment and can encourage the innovative behavior among members of the organization. Organizational Culture is a shared value system within an organization that determines the level of how employees perform activities to achieve organizational goals (Robbins 2006).
In creating a positive motivation within the organization, the management has to believe that their employees are capable of decision making and controlling the situation. According to Hartmann (2006) without motivation, employees become inefficient and costly to the organization. In building up the employee motivation, employers have to invest more such as providing more benefits to the employees, promotion, transfer, job enlargement, job enrichment and training outside the organization. Richard (2002) posited that Culture represents the beliefs, ideologies, policies, practices of an organization. It gives the employees a sense of direction and also controls the way they behave with each other. Culture brings all the employees on a common platform and unites them at the workplace. Therefore, organizational culture should be taught to members including new members in order to have a common perception shared by members of the organization.
It is in this context that the researcher wishes to examine the relationship between organizational culture and job enrichment using Siba group of companies as the case study.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
The principle of job enrichment in organizations has tremendously been seen as a dynamic process of increasing the work structures and processes with an environment that gives room for autonomy, flexibility, personal growth and satisfaction to the workplace Aguinis, (2009). Several studies have indicated that when tasks are routine, monotonous, repetitive and unrewarding with an over controlled authority structure, workers tend to be highly dissatisfied, bored and demotivated.
The problem of boredom and job dissatisfaction which consequently result in workers’ low productivity, delay in administrative performance, work stress, psychological breakdown, absenteeism and lateness and eventually withdrawal of services of employee are as the result of management of the organizations failing to understand the importance of job enrichmentin the organizations, Raub (2008). Lack of job enrichment in an organization as seen in Bowling (2007) has led the employees to poor advancement in career, lower responsibilities, un-meaningful task, lower corporate morale, lower individual performances and lower or no experiences.
Hartmann (2006) opined that organizational culture can reflect on employee’s motivating factor in an organization. Many organizations fail to provide a culture that is in line with the objectives of the organization and they fail to understand the importance of organizational culture and this alone has brought about a lot of problems like job dissatisfaction and low productivity amongst others. Furthermore, lack of proper organizational culture has also made the employees to lack team spirit, have unfriendly competition, decrease in engagement, lack of trust, poor communication and increased employee turnover, (Kotila 2001).
In the light of the above, this study therefore sought to examine the effect of organizational culture and job enrichment on organisations using Siba group of companies, Ikot Ekpene as a case study.
