The primary aim of this study was to provide empirical evidence on how reward can trigger employees to act in a way that is in tandem with an organisation’s performance evaluation criteria in the service delivery sector. In addition, it examines how organisations can use reward to influence organisational commitment.
A descriptive cross-sectional survey design was adopted. Primary data were collected using a structured questionnaire targeting the employees in the Nigerian public service sector. To test its hypotheses, the study used the data collected from 522 respondents in Nigeria Local Government (LG). Data were analysed on SPSS (version 20) using regression.
The analysis of this study identifies reward to influence performance evaluation criteria and organisational commitment in the public service sector. The results obtained demonstrate that reward has a significant influence on organisational commitment. In addition, the reward system of an organisation was found to be a significant channel to reinforce the desired behaviours that inform performance criteria.
With the findings of this study it is concluded that reward is a key variable that can help the public service sector to become more effective and efficient. However, the use of reward by managers can make performance evaluation criteria worthy of appreciation by the employees, thereby increasing organisational commitment.
This study revealed the dual role reward can play to influence employees’ organisational commitment, and the behaviours that organisations desire to reinforce in performance evaluation criteria. This is the first study that examined this relationship.
Reward refers to a potent leverage to motivate employee behaviour, a particular monetary return or event that employees receive in exchange for performed tasks in the workplace and a precondition for achieving organisational goals (Cristofori, Salvi, Beeman, & Grafman,
Organisational commitment (OC) is considered as one of the most important concepts in the area of organisational behaviour and human resource management (HRM) (Dhar,
In the service delivery sector, in which the public sector is a key player, services such as education, energy, health, security, roads, transportation, and many other services targeted at citizens, tourists, public and private companies remain part of their responsibilities. These responsibilities are channels of investment to a nation’s economy in which its daily activities are to be propelled by an effective and committed large pool of human resources for good service delivery to the people. However, in Nigeria, the Local Government (LG), which is a service delivery sector, has not provided optimal services to meet the basic needs of the people at grassroots level. One of the reasons, as provided by Onyishi, Eme and Emeh (
Studies on the relationship between reward and OC is considered less apparent in the LG and there is no study that has examined the influence reward has on performance evaluation criteria (PEC) in the service delivery sector. This is a gap that this study intends to fill. It is against this background that this study examines how organisations can use a reward system to motivate employees to act in a way that is in tandem with the organisation’s PEC and how reward influences OC. The originality of this current study reveals the dual role reward can play to influence employees’ OC and the behaviours that organisations desire to reinforce in PEC. Coupled with this is the setting of the study which is the Nigerian public service sector and no previous study has examined this relationship. This study contributes to the HRM and public service literature by revealing a deeper relationship that exists between the investigated variables, which can bring about effective public service delivery. The conceptual framework for this study is presented in
Conceptual framework.
In an increasingly competitive society as we have today, organisations that are passionate about their visions and missions are constantly adapting their strategies to attract, motivate and retain competent persons. An efficient reward system seems to be the best way to go about it. Reward is an organisational obligation to the employees to compensate for their contribution towards the attainment of organisational goals (Nwokocha,
In organisations, employees are adequately informed about their roles through the job description. This job description can include, for example, responsibilities, skills and job input that relates to the specific jobs which are expected to accurately reflect a comprehensive scope expedient for employees’ success in the organisation (Jacobson, Trojanowski, & Dewa,
Furthermore, while defining performance evaluation, Seniwoliba (
According to Duraisingam and Skinner (
Organisations that thrive in a very competitive market do consider having committed employees as part of their human resources so as to achieve their set goals and objectives (Milgo, Namusonge, Kanali, & Makokha,
One of the most widely accepted definitions of OC is given by Allen and Meyer (
In the list of decisions that an average organisation makes, one of the top priorities need to be the reward system. On one side, human resources in an organisation must be paid for their work. Meanwhile, from a general point of view, it must be stated that work is not an end in itself, rather a means that gives individuals the opportunity to acquire the resources needed to enjoy their time away from the job (Wrzesniewski, McCauley, Rozin, & Schwartz,
It is observed by Paulsen (
In the public sector, as claimed by Verbeeten (
While at the point of hiring new employees, organisations look for some specific behaviours that are core ingredients to achieve the organisational performance. By rewarding these behaviours, new or incumbent employees are routinely reminded of the goals of the organisation and how to achieve them. By so doing, these behaviours become criteria to evaluate the employees.
The relationship between reward and PEC was clearly understood when viewed under the lens of Skinner’s theory. According to the theorists, Luthans and Kreitner (
In other words, when organisations create the appropriate climate of organisational support such as rewards, they reinforce these desired behaviours among employees. Failure of an organisation to identify, design and roll out a reward system will automatically and purposely reinforce undesirable behaviour among employees. The effectiveness of PEC depends on how just, well and fair organisations reward their employees. The reason for an employee to have low ratings in performance may be because of the poor reward system of the organisation. In the following sequence, this study proposes the following hypthesis:
While a myriad of studies have shown a strong correlation between an organisational rewarding system and OC (Eisenberger & Stinglhamber,
However, in this section, this study intends to understand how the Social Exchange Theory (SET) is applied in this relationship. Previously, this theory has been used in health care (Guo, Guo, Fang, & Vogel,
Employees are the human resources that evaluates the favourable and unfavourable factors in the organisation before taking action. For example, the voluntary exchange of symbolic resources takes place when employees understand that there are benefits attached, according to Hsu, Yin and Huang (
On the authority of SET theorists, it has been proposed that a reward brings forth greater commitment from employees, which has a positive effect on their future engagement toward organisational goals (Tsai & Kang,
By utilising SET to examine the relationship between reward and OC, the evidence shows that better understanding is obtained with regard to the reason why employees increase their OC with a good reward practice. A social exchange relationship suggests obligation and rights on the organisation and its employees (Liu, Loi, & Ngo,
The primary data used in this study was gathered via administration of a structured questionnaire. This questionnaire was administered to LG employees in two states in Nigeria. Local government workers represent a part of the workforce under the Nigerian public service sector. Several studies that have been carried out to examine the public sector have also used LG employees as respondents of their surveys (Sam-Okere & Agbeniga,
The questionnaire that was used for this study was designed according to the literature review of this study. All the constructs in the questionnaire were measured using existing scales. The reward items were adapted from the study of Kassabgy, Boraie and Schmidt (
Descriptive statistics of the demographic variables.
Variable | Options | Frequency | Percentage |
---|---|---|---|
Gender | Male | 249 | 47.7 |
Female | 273 | 52.3 | |
Age | 30 years and below | 112 | 21.5 |
31–40 years | 163 | 31.2 | |
41–50 years | 190 | 36.4 | |
51–60 years | 55 | 10.5 | |
61 years and above | 2 | 0.4 | |
Length of Service | 1–5 years | 130 | 24.9 |
6–10 years | 89 | 17.0 | |
11–15 years | 149 | 28.5 | |
1–20 years | 110 | 21.1 | |
21 years and above | 44 | 8.4 | |
Education | BSc | 275 | 52.7 |
MA/MSc | 40 | 7.7 | |
M.Phil | 22 | 4.2 | |
PhD | 6 | 1.1 | |
Others | 179 | 34.3 |
BSc, Bachelor of Science; MA/MSc, Master of Arts/Master of Science; M.Phil, Master of Philosophy; PhD, Doctor of Philosophy.
The existing items for each of the variables of the study were subjected to principal factor analyses to ascertain if the items loaded appropriately. Based on the result, items that had a factor loading above 0.40 are retained and
Post reliability report.
Variable | Number of retained items | New Cronbach’s Alpha |
---|---|---|
Affective | 3 | 0.83 |
Continuance | 3 | 0.57 |
Sub total | 6 | 0.70 |
Reward | 5 | 0.75 |
PEC | 12 | 0.84 |
OC, organisational commitment; PEC, performance evaluation criteria.
Employee perception on performance evaluation criteria.
Items | Mean | Standard deviation |
---|---|---|
Reliability | 1.9518 | 0.77334 |
Behaviour | 2.0116 | 0.92366 |
Work management | 2.0751 | 0.86331 |
Communication | 2.0809 | 0.85492 |
Decision-making | 2.0906 | 0.92242 |
Innovativeness | 2.0983 | 0.90685 |
Ability to receive instruction from superior | 2.1252 | 0.92463 |
Ability to understand | 2.1252 | 0.91624 |
Ability to finish work on time | 2.1464 | 0.92673 |
Handling office equipment | 2.1676 | 0.93662 |
Leadership | 2.2697 | 1.08360 |
Interpersonal relations | 2.4066 | 1.06653 |
The correlation statistics are presented in
Correlation analysis.
Variables | Mean | SD | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
OC (1) | 3.16 | 0.60 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - |
Reward (2) | 2.77 | 0.86 | 0.363 |
1 | - | - | - | - | - |
PEC (3) | 2.14 | 0.56 | 0.147 |
0.179 |
1 | - | - | - | - |
Age (4) | 2.37 | 0.95 | 0.018 | 0.011 | 0.042 | 1 | - | - | - |
Gender (5) | 1.52 | 0.50 | −0.004 | −0.051 | 0.092 |
−0.107 |
1 | - | - |
Length of Service (6) | 2.71 | 1.28 | −0.088 |
−0.024 | 0.022 | 0.634 |
−0.078 | 1 | - |
Education (7) | 2.57 | 1.84 | 0.087 |
0.073 | 0.048 | −0.074 | −0.062 | −0.028 | 1 |
OC, organisational commitment; PEC, performance evaluation criteria.
, Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed);
, Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Using regression analysis, based on 522 entries, the two hypotheses of this study were tested and
Regression analysis of the influence of reward on performance evaluation criteria.
Variable | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Gender | - | - | - | - | 1.937 | 0.085 |
Organisational tenure | - | - | - | - | 0.620 | 0.027 |
Education | - | - | - | - | 1.616 | 0.071 |
Gender | - | - | - | - | 2.179 | 0.094* |
Organisational tenure | - | - | - | - | 0.747 | 0.032 |
Education | - | - | - | - | 1.334 | 0.058 |
Reward | - | - | - | - | 4.505 | 0.194 |
PEC, performance evaluation criteria.
, Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed);
, Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed);
, Correlation is significant at the 0.001 level (2-tailed).
Regression analysis of the influence of reward on organisational commitment.
Variable | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Gender | - | - | - | - | −0.249 | −0.011 |
Organisational tenure | - | - | - | - | −2.006 | −0.088 |
Education | - | - | - | - | 1.969 | 0.086 |
Gender | - | - | - | - | 0.139 | 0.006 |
Organisational tenure | - | - | - | - | −1.923 | −0.079 |
Education | - | - | - | - | 1.503 | 0.062 |
Reward | - | - | - | - | 8.783 | 0.360 |
OC, organisational commitment.
, Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed);
, Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed);
, Correlation is significant at the 0.001 level (2-tailed).
As shown in
In this cross-sectional study based on LG employees, the important objective was to present more grounds for understanding how reward positively influences the behaviours that organisations desire to reinforce in PEC and how reward influences OC. The discussion of the findings of this study is presented below.
The results of this study showed that reward significantly influences OC. The public service sector needs to give commensurate reward to their employees in exchange for their services. A lot of empirical findings have given credence to the fact that reward greatly influences organisational commitment. For instance, Chen, Yang, Gao, Liu and De Gieter (
Accordingly, the organisational reward is essential for the actualisation of the essence of the primal idea of PEC, a proactive behaviour, amongst the employees. Based on the findings of this study, it was found that reward influenced PEC positively. This is because organisational goals require some attitudes and behaviours that are essential to attain set objectives. Due to this they become part of the criteria to reward performance. In short, these attitudes and behaviours are seen, recognised and harvested by the organisation from their employees because they reward it.
The public sector has set objectives which are accomplished through employees displaying some required abilities. Additionally, they know these abilities and their employees are evaluated based on them, coupled with a reward attached to it. Having a reward system that is openly rolled out fairly and justly to employees who perform well can increase the dexterity in expressing expected and demanded abilities towards subordinates and tasks assigned to them. In other words, rewarding employees can be a medium to ensure that the public sector gets the specific types of behaviour they are looking for. As a tool to direct these behaviours for organisational benefits, managers use them as criteria for performance evaluation. However, according to the equity theory, when employees observe an imbalance in the reward for their input (which reflects the criteria for performance evaluation), the more distress they may experience in the form of anger (Al-Zawahreh & Al-Madi,
The Nigerian public sector rewards employees who have the required knowledge about their job, show a high level of honesty and trustworthiness, coupled with reliability under pressure, and display good behaviour and a high level of commitment. These are classed as the top five most important criteria perceived by the respondents of this study, which is a mirror of what the public sector rewards most since it is key to excel in service delivery. It does not mean that the public sector does not reward skills like the ability to handle office equipment, leadership skills or interpersonal relations (which are the three criteria of least importance), but this order speaks volumes of what they want most from their employees. Hence, the positive relationship established in this study points out that the most important criteria in performance evaluation is what the Nigerian public sector places preference on in terms of values and reward.
From a theoretical perspective, this study enriches the understanding of Skinner’s theory of reinforcement (Skinner,
From a managerial perspective human resource managers in the Nigerian public sector need to know which criteria are appropriate and also ensure their employees are aware of these criteria that would be used to carry out the performance evaluation and influence their rewards. An organisation should be meticulous and flexible to juxtapose their required evaluation criteria with the observed performance of the employees. This brings about feedback and extensive review that is satisfactory, thereby allowing a fair and just reward system. A public sector that wants to satisfy their customers needs to identify the most important attitudes and behaviours inherent in their employees and create an evaluation system that adopts these attitudes and behaviours as criteria to be evaluated and rewarded. This will bring about good service delivery to the service consumers.
Nevertheless, managers need to understand that what is rewarded will be repeated irrespective of the capacity, responsibility and level the good employees occupy in the public sector. This can cause a causal sequence in the organisation that will yield positive results especially when the salient use of these attitudes and behaviours are within the scope of the evaluation criteria. In as much as the public sector understands the importance of commitment, reward can be utilised to influence it. Fair and just reward attached to impressive competencies makes OC increase among the employees. Managers in the public sector can seize this opportunity because it turns out to be a channel of relevant work efficiency of the employees. In addition, managers can class reward as a germane factor of current OC programs in their organisations, for it has the potential to foster the progress factor in line with the performance of employees.
While this study was carried out, the researchers were faced with some limitations which include the characteristics of the respondents in the population and the sample size. The pool of the respondents was drawn from employees in LG with a small sample size. Coupled with this is the problem of common method bias. The items of the questionnaire used for the survey of this study were mixed and the collected data was self-reported. However, the research design was cross-sectional. We suggest that future studies can use a longitudinal or experimental design to get a better result.
This work is based on the doctorate degree dissertation of K.G.S. titled ‘Examining the effect of human resources practices on organisational commitment in the Nigerian public service sector’, which will be submitted (planned date of completion: June 2020) to the Near East University, North Cyprus. The co-author of this article is the supervisor of the dissertation.
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
Both the authors contributed equally to the planning, researching, structuring, writing and the revision of the manuscript.
This article followed all ethical standards for a research without direct contact with human or animal subjects
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors.