This chapter presents the idea and the foundation work of this study and gives the bedrock in which the research was administered. The components of this chapter include the background of the study, the problem statement, the importance of the study, the research questions, and the operational definition of the key terms of the study including the delimitations of the research.
Background of the Study
The past decades have seen substantial disorder in public sector of most industrial and developing countries. This fast development coupled with globalization in the world caused crucial changes and structuring in conventional public administration. The scope, organization and the management of public services have radically changed since the 1970s (Farnham &
Horton, 1996). Private sectors in most cases are considered more effective than public sectors.
Public sectors are now adapting processes such as organizational forms (teamwork), restructuring, reorganizations including concepts that are used in private sectors such as performance management and project management which have supported the changes in the public sector (Steijn, 2002). Consequently, these variations generate a pressure on public sector institutions about providing high-quality and public-oriented services. This pressure is increasing especially in The Gambia where a new government is now in power and the general public is having a greater desire for better and more effective services such as the supply of electricity, water and infrastructural development. Thus, to improve their organizational performance, public sector organizations have to take numerous initiatives especially benchmarking the private sectors successes. The Gambia public sector have to consider enhancing personnel management, thereby showing interest in human resource management applications such as performance management, performance pay, employee and manager evaluation, and job satisfaction to improve organizational effectiveness. This study is conceptualized behind the many needed improvements in public institutions in The Gambia.
Osborne and Gaebler (1992) argue that government structure and functionality must be transformed by moving away from bureaucratic to establishing structures that are competent to adapt to rapid changing work environments. In so doing, organisations should show the capacity for transformation. Public institutions should be maintained but needed changes should be in place and re-invention of institutions can be done. For change to take place, there
2 should be a willingness for the change purpose followed by incentives for motivating staff in the same vain, there should be measures for accountability and a clear power structure.
(Osborne & Plastrik, 1997) this sequences created a culture of public entrepreneurship mentality where everyone takes responsibility for actions taken. As for The Gambia, in order to adapt to this changing initiatives, people with innovative ideas and expertise should be involved in the process of transforming public institutions. Leaders and expertise in the private sector should be involve in the design and development of public sectors.
Nowadays, organizations are concerned about the ability of their employees to fit into the organization culture as it is believed that resources which includes time, money, and effort devoted in preparing staffs in order to carry out their jobs responsibilities. The integration of an employee into an organizational culture is a very significant element that may reflect on his or her performance and efficiency. Employers are also concern about employees who leave their jobs due to reasons such as feeling a sense of mismatch concerning their desires and the culture of the organization they work for. Hesketh and Myors (1997) stated that both the person and the organization are significance influences on adjustment. Attaining a high level of person-organization fit is believed to be a key in retaining workforces with high degree of flexibility and the organizational commitment which is crucial to meeting competitive challenges. If one feels comfortable in the work he/she does, he becomes more fit in his/her work environment. The concept of commitment has been studied and available in many literatures making an assumption that committed employees are valuable to organisations, which is a long tradition in management literature (Swailes, 2002), the notion of commitment in The Gambia public sector is generally seen by the public as weak and public institution workers are not creative and innovative in their jobs. Many studies assume that organisational commitment is generally thought to lead to a range of positive outcomes and is a determinant in the management of change (Coopey & Hartley, 1991; Guest, 1997; Iverson, 1996). This is why this study considers doing research on the commitment, fit and satisfaction of employees of public institutions in The Gambia.
In the 1960s at the time when The Gambia gained independence, there were solid civil service with a sound level of capacity. The Gambia losses a lot of professional and educated personnel resulting to brain drain. The government is finding it hard to attract and retain highly skilled workforce.
The Gambia in the 1980s and early 1990s, had an initiative to improve centralized management of human resources and career development in the public service which gave birth to the establishment of Personnel Management Office (PMO) and it was subsequently granted
3 autonomy under the revised 1991 Public Service Act. The payroll system was computerized and the pay and grading system were revised, which included the reduction of the salary grades.
There was a staff inspection program with a performance based staff appraisal system developed in an effort to link compensation with performance which was not effectively implemented leading to system weakness.
Statement of the Problem
The Gambia like most developing countries is faced with the problem of brain drain. It is believed that The Gambia's civil service has a number of key capacity weaknesses. Pay is too low to hire, motivate and retain key technical and professional staffs. Staffs are not managed to achieve results, neither rewarded for good performance nor sanctioned for poor performance or breaking the rules. Frequent removals and transfers of Government officials have undermined job security and institutional knowledge. This study looks at the level of workforce fit, their satisfaction and commitment in the context of the of The Gambia public sector. Strengthening and retaining qualified public servants is a major issue facing the government of the Gambia? Qualified public servants may not be committed working for the government due to the poor bureaucratic processes in the public service and the compensation packages.
To get a great level of person-organization fit is believed to be correlated to positive work-related outcomes, this is more significant in the global market were companies are in a war for talent (Ng & Burke, 2005). A thorough assessment of fit levels in the public services should be done to motivate qualified employees and giving them the right working environment to deliver results in the jobs. The importance of exploring and testing person-organization fit concepts and measures in a greater variety of cultural settings and with more diverse groups within the labor market has been acknowledge as an important academic endeavor and one which now forms part of the landscape of this area of enquiry (Erdogan & Bauer, 2005; Yaniv
& Farkas, 2005; Turban, 2001), but one too which poses many significant challenges because of disparity in culturally derived value systems and wide variation in the meaning and centrally of work in the cross-cultural, and increasingly heterogeneous workforce context. The cultural context of The Gambia cannot be generalized with other countries as each and every country has its own unique way of life. The fit levels of an employee are hard to determine but this study aims to work on evaluating the levels of employee fit, their job satisfactions and commitment to their jobs.
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Significance of the Study
There are many researches on antecedents and outcomes of organizational commitment but only a few research is done on non-western settings especially on the public sector of The Gambia. Generalizing of research across cultures may not present some meaningful outcomes across cultures. Cross-cultural comparisons present difficulties due to factors including scale translation, cultural differences in response biases, and some respondents in some cultures may not be familiar with the questionnaires. Given the increasing recognition of workforces as a very critical resource in the job market, there has been continuous academic interest on the effects that person-organization (P-O) fit has on employee work attitudes and behaviour (Hoffman & Woehr, 2006; Cooper-Thomas & Wright, 2013; Peng, Lee, & Tseng, 2014).
One important contribution of this study is to understand the relationship among the level of compatibility between employees and the public institution they work for. Secondly, the study will look into how committed public servants are in The Gambia. Thirdly, this study would like to study the satisfaction of employees within The Gambia public institutions. This study will enable the analysis of the relationship between person-organization fit and several outcome variables in a public organization. Lastly, the study will add to a body of knowledge about how person-organizational fit, organizational commitment is correlated to job satisfaction in the public institutions of The Gambia. Another important contribution of this study is that it allows researchers to move significantly to understanding fit of employees in The Gambia where little comparative data has been published. This type of research is also significant in understanding the mediating role organizational commitment plays in the relationships examined from both an academic and a practical standpoint.
Purposes of the Study
The research is to fulfil the following purposes.
1. To examine the effect of perceived person-organization fit on job satisfaction in The Gambia public sector.
2. To examine the effect of perceived person-organization fit on organizational commitment in The Gambia public sector.
3. To examine the effect of organizational commitment on job satisfaction in The Gambia public sector.
5 4. To examine the mediating effect of organizational commitment on the relationship
between perceived person-organization fit and job satisfaction in The Gambia public sector.
Questions of the Study
The following questions are generated for the purpose of the study.
1. Does perceived person-organization fit have a positive relationship with job satisfaction in The Gambia public sector?
2. Does perceived person-organization fit have a positive relationship with organizational commitment in The Gambia public sector?
3. Does organizational commitment have a positive relationship with job satisfaction in The Gambia public sector?
4. Does organizational commitment have a mediating effect on the relationship between perceived person-organization fit and job satisfaction in The Gambia public sector?
Delimitations of the Study
This research is delimited by the scope of the study. To begin with, the research population is strictly limited to public sector employees in The Gambia. It is presumed that while this study concentrating on a public sector workers of The Gambia, generalizations may possibly not be applied to wide range of such institutions due to difference in environment and cultural background outside the purview of The Gambia public sector.
Moreover, this research focuses only on one-person environment fit variable of person-organisational fit (P-O F). This is a broad study of The Gambia public sector thus, there will be no specific report on any specific institution. Data collection from public sector employees in The Gambia is not always smooth and the time and resources will not cover all the public sector institution.
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Operational Definition of Key Terms
This section provides a brief definition of the key terms for this study.
Person-Organization Fit
Person-organization fit as a variable in this study refers to the level of compatibility between the employee’s values and the organization he or she is working for within public sector of The Gambia. Using a 5 point Likert’s scale
Organizational Commitment
Organizational commitment as a variable in this study is defined as a feeling of connection employees has with their organisations, which includes a feeling of fit and having an understanding of the goals of their organizations. The measurement for organisational commitment in this study is affective commitment scale items, continuance commitment scale items and normative commitment scale items using a 5 point Likert’s scale.
Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction as a variable in this study is defined as how satisfied public sector employees in The Gambia are with their jobs. Job satisfaction was evaluated using the short version of Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) comprising twenty (20) questions using a 5 point Likert’s scale.
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