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2.2 Theoretical Review
As earlier mentioned in chapter one, this study was anchored on the Organizational support theory developed by Einsenberger et al., 1986. Organizational support theory explained how POS developed and yielded positive results for employees and the entire organizations.
According to Shaw et al., (2016), POS provided employees with a straightforward way to understand their value to the firm, and it ranged from a positive view to the opposite extreme of disdaining them at the first opportunity. Employees considered POS partly because it met their requirements for approbation, esteem, and affiliation, as well as providing comfort during times of stress, according to Kurtessis et al., (2015). Employees felt more delighted with their jobs, they were more closely connected with the organization, they were more inclined to regard corporate goals as their own, and they became more loyal and devoted to the organization when given favorable supervision.
In addition to meeting employee demands as outlined above, POS communicated to employees that the organization was ready to assist with job tasks as needed and to reward increased performance (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2016). As a result, POS improved staff productivity and reduced absenteeism. Effective leadership, attractive HR policies, appropriate working conditions, and fair treatment were all linked to POS. (Eisenberger & Stinglhamber, 2015) suggested that employees who felt they received more support from their employers were more willing to “repay” the organization by increasing their commitment to it. As a result organizations would best serve their employees and their bottom lines by adopting policies and tactics that resulted in good employee views and attitudes toward the company.
Organization policies and procedures aimed toward employees, or human resource practices, according to Eisenberger, Fasolo, and Davis-LaMastro (2014), should have had a major positive or negative impact to POS since they were explicitly oriented toward employees. To boost POS, good HR practices were advised should reflect investment in human resources and demonstrate acknowledgement of employee contributions (Allen et al., 2013). As a result, POS were linked to HR policies including job stability, autonomy, training and development, decision-making, engagement, and prospects for rewards and promotions (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2016; Allen et al., 2013).
Despite the fact that many researchers regarded the work of (Eisenberger et al., 1986) as a significant contribution to employee commitment, research, scholars and practitioners questioned the theory’s validity and applicability (Stajkovic & Luthans, 2012; Smither et al.,
2013). According to Shanock et al., (2016), the presumption was consistent, stable, and traditional. Furthermore, there was no universally successful HR practices mechanism, and HR practices categories conceptually difficult to identify.
2.3 Conceptual literature review
This review were handled in line with the objectives of the study;
2.3.1 Employee recruitment and selection and Employee Commitment.
According to the studied literature, scholars became more interested in employee commitment. Employee commitment were linked to perceived fairness in the resourcing process by Fong et al. (2016), while Ombui et al. (2017) found a strong positive significant relationship between human resource practices and employee commitment in South African Research Institutes.
According to Chapman and Webster (2003), employee recruitment and selection were done in four stages: job advertisement, applicant acceptance, application screening, and final decisions by the recruitment and selection committee. The study concluded that recruitment was the act of gathering names of qualified candidates for a job, whereas selection was the process of appointing the correct people for the job. Methodological gaps occurred, however, because the factor of employee commitment were largely ignored in earlier empirical studies.
Building competent personnel, according to Firend and Sofyan (2016), began with picking the finest candidates for current positions. Their research found that effective employee recruitment tactics had a substantial impact on staff commitment and retention intentions at Equity Bank in Kenya. Regression study revealed that employee commitment was influenced by selection in a positive but significant way. Because surroundings were rarely similar for effective outcomes, the study’s contextual gaps showed that more empirical examination was needed in Local Government, particularly in the District Local Government of Zombo.
According to Roehl& Swerdlow (2014), a thorough job analysis can be used for a variety of purposes, including trainings, merit ratings, selection, training, incentive pay, improving work conditions, improving work methods, charting lines of responsibility, functions of the job, and lines of promotion. The findings showed that HR procedures and employee commitment were a beneficial association. The findings and recommendations were useful for managing employee resourcing; nevertheless, they were collected several years ago and relied on secondary data from outside Uganda, creating geographical and methodological gaps that necessitated a similar study in Uganda using primary data. The study did not confirm either a positive nor negative significant relationship between the two variables hence a gap that this study attempted to address
Organizations, according to Mohammad Nor (2015), must pay close attention to employees’ social needs to attach and belong. Employees, he said, needed to be in an environment that would make them feel at ease. Recruited people must share the goals and values of the organization. The problem was that in order to foster commitment, organizations must ensure that they had the right workers on board.
Similarly, as Guzzo and Noonan (2016) pointed out, there were a variety of strategies that companies could use to help employees feel appreciated as the recruitment and selection process progressed. They must share information about the organization, provide assistance to employees during the recruitment and selection process, and communicate the organization’s primary interests and principles. Only descriptive analysis was used to identify the gaps in these various publications. There was no correlation regression analysis presented. This left loop holes in the context, necessitating a similar study in Uganda based on descriptive inferential analysis and confirming the degree of association. More so, although relevant the findings of this study should cover recent timespan owing to the recent changes seen in Local Government. This, therefore, called for a related study to be carried out in Uganda now especially in this era of change management in the public sector, thus a justification for this study.
2.3.3. Rewards and Employee Commitment
According to Alamelu et al., (2015), if an employee was satisfied with his or her salary, his or her attachment to the company would grow or remained the same. Remuneration was one of the elements that led to employee engagement in firms, according to Ooi and Arumugam (2016). The majority of employees were motivated and performed better job as a result of financial incentives provided by their employer. They became much more productive if the compensation they received made it worthwhile for them to do so. In addition, motivation benefits included not only monetary rewards but also employee support programs such as subsidized cafeterias, travel discounts, and so on. Therefore, if the remuneration is executed well, it will make employees feel motivated. There existed contextual gaps as more study needed to be done in district Local Government and a shift focused to other players facing Town Council.
O’Driscoll and Randal (1999) found that any acceptable rewards supplied by the business had a big impact on the employees’ dedication in their study based on a sample of 350 workers in Ireland and New Zealand. As a result, the employer chose the optimal remuneration package to give the employee in order to enable him to attain the degree of satisfaction he required in exchange for his whole dedication. According to Miner et al. (2016), motivation was made up of wants, drives, and rewards, as well as their interactions. Every manager had control over motivation, which was supposed to be a good drive that led to exceptional performance and the formation of habits. It should be recognized that motivation came from both within and without. It was internal when it was in form such as job attraction, growth, recognition and achievement or external when it was in such form as employee’s actions and concerns were impressed by external incentives like reward, feedback, and punishment. Carter et al., (2011) reaffirmed that motivation was affected by three factors, information, reward and personal elements. He further noted that employees could be encouraged and motivated through provision of some special allowances and fringe benefits when we referred to their good performance and specific skills, this would in turn increase the job commitment of employees. The findings and recommendations were relevant for managing employee commitment; however, the study relied on secondary data gathered outside Uganda, this resulted in both geographical and methodological gaps thus calling for a similar study in Uganda basing on primary data. The study did not confirm either a positive nor negative significant relationship between the two variables hence a gap that this study would attempt to address.
2.3.2. Training and development and Employee Commitment.
Training and development were found to link with employee commitment. According to Garcia (2005), training and development seemed to have a positive relationship with employee commitment .Bradley, Petreseu and Simmons (2004) elaborated that creating an on-going learning as well as training at work place had a high significant impact on employee commitment. Tannenbaum and colleagues (19991) in their studies noted that training can induce positive or negative attitudes that trainees carry with them into the work place. Those attitudes, explained Berlet (2001) were so important that they could be considered as a result of training.
According to Roehl and Swerdlow (2017), training and development led to a positive relationship with employee morale, perceptions of supervisors’ quality, awareness of rules, and thus organizational success, as well as employee commitment. In Brazil, Scheible and Bastos (2015) discovered that effective training and development programs are linked to employee commitment, job happiness, high performance, and the intention to continue in government jobs. Meanwhile in South Africa, Nkosi (2015), also noted among his respondents of a local municipal, that training had significant impact on employee’s performance and commitment. Contextual gaps were present thus more study should cover recent timespan owing to the recent changes seen in the public sector budgets hence a gap that this study must attempt to cover.
According to Lamba and Choudhary (2013), employee training in areas such as work orientation, safety, and promotional activities were primarily targeted at expanding HR skills so that they become more proficient. Increasing staff knowledge through training and offering a sense of appropriate career counseling was to contribute to a sense of future security and the development of self-efficacy (Guest, 2017). These training programs were usually led by experienced and skilled managers from the same firm, but specialists from outside agencies were occasionally enlisted with the goal of increasing the organization’s worker efficiency.. Engaging consultants to train the employees can be expensive for the organization but may be more beneficial as current managers may not deliver the required results (Lim & Ling, 2012).
Schmidt et al (2007) examined whether a match between employees preferred mode of training in which the employee participates made a difference in employee commitment at work place. Findings from the survey done indicated that if an employee most often received training using the methodology he or she believed was most effective for himself or herself, it was considered a match. However, a non-match was a situation in which an employee most often received training using a methodology other than the one he or she believed was most effective in helping him or her-self learn. A t-test was conducted and it was found that there were significant differences with employee commitment when a respondent preferred methodology most often used in providing respondent with training and development. The methodology used in training had an effect on employee commitment. Given this findings, it was crucial that the method used by Local Government to train staff be established in order to establish their effectiveness.
In summary, an organization’s training efforts had a significant effect on employees and on the organization. Attitudes about training and development were not limited to the training situation. Instead, they were crucial pieces in employees’ feelings about the job and organization.Rowden and Canine (2013) recommended additional research to further understand this apparent powerful link between work place learning and employee commitment. If this powerful link continue to exist in local governments, managers concerned with human resource practices and employee commitments may want to encourage more learning opportunities in the work place.
However, their various reviews did not establish the period that previous data may be ascertained too. This still led to the issue of methodological gaps in that the dimension of employee commitment was hardly considered in past empirical findings hence a gap that this study would attempt to address.
2.3.4 Employee Commitment of DLGs
According to literature reviewed, there were so many definitions of employee commitment but most researchers agreed that the best definition of commitment is a multidimensional psychological connection of an individual to the organization (Dordevic, 2017).
Organizational commitment, according to Allen and Meyer (1990), had three aspects: affective, continuation, and normative. According to Owoyemi et al., (2016), employee commitment was typically determined by their level of trust and relevance to the firm. Designing and implementing a performance management system that was efficient and successful in enhancing employee performance could maximize trust and relevance.
Employee commitment, according to Bartlett and Kang (2016), was an extremely valuable intangible asset that every organization should have had in order to succeed. It aids in determining the organization’s overall progress. As a result, management should increase employee commitment because it ass one of the aspects that determined an organization’s success. Furthermore, according to Awamleh (1996), deeper and more widespread devotion can help organizations evolve, flourish, and survive. Unless workers were content with the company, it would never achieve competitiveness in terms of product and service quality (Stewart,2016).
It was a common belief, according to Batau and Mohamed (2016), that insufficient pay, fewer benefits, fewer opportunities for career advancement, a hostile work environment, unattractive remuneration, a lack of training, development, and recognition provided by public organizations to their employees had caused them to become emotionally and mentally detached from the organization.. Thus, the employees were not committed and hence resulted to dismal performance of the department.
2.4 Summary of literature review
The literature reviewed in this study revealed that employee commitment can be explained using Organizational Support Theory which posit that employees would reciprocate by staying with the organization based on their perceived organizational support in training and career development. However, the literature was not conclusive on the possible outcome of employee training, better reward and improved work environment for instance, employee being highly committed to serve as a proof of employees being committed to their job when such is done.
Furthermore, the literature revealed insufficient evidence on the extent to which job analysis and selection factors contribute to affective, normative and continuance commitment in the Local Government work.
The review further revealed that HR practice which includes managing entry, stay, and exit shows contextual and empirical gaps in the relationship between HR practice and employee commitment. For instance, at contextual level all the studies above were carried outside Uganda (Ushie, Agba, and Okorie, 2015; Roehl& Swerdlow,2014; Hossian et.al.,2017), apart from students’ unpublished dissertations and proposals in various libraries of universities and other Higher Institutions of learning. Despite the expansive body of literature reviewed above, there is limited empirical evidence directing HR practice to employee commitment. Indeed, it’s not clear what HR practice will reciprocate to more meaningful levels of employee commitment. This study therefore intends to bridge gap by interrogating the extent to which HR practice will impact the employee commitment of Paidha Town -Zombo district, Uganda
