Chapter Overview
This chapter gives a background of the study-that is the motivation that drove the researcher to engage in the study. Thus it explains the situations on the ground in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as in Malawi that triggered the researcher to conduct this study. It outlines the issues of brain-drain due to poor policies in management and incentives offered to human resources in the civil service. It further outlines the time period when these problems started and what different governments tried to do in order to mitigate on the problems. It also digs out the main problems faced by governments in trying to solve the problems. These help the reader understand the in-depth of the problem and relate them well with the researcher’s choice of the questions and hypotheses which are later answered.
Background to the Study
Human Resource practices are an integral part of any organisation, be it in public, private or non-profit making organisation. Studies suggest that HR practices affect organizational outcomes by shaping employee behaviours and attitudes. For instance (Luna-Arocas & Camps 2008) argue that “high performance work practices (HPWP) increase organisational effectiveness by creating conditions where employees become highly involved in the organization and work hard to accomplish its goals, in other words, by increasing their employees’ commitment to the organisation and job satisfaction.” In turn this reduces turnover intentions as well as turn over since the two are negatively related.
Turnover on the other hand reduces the organisation’s effectiveness since most of the work is left undone due to lack of personnel to do the work. Alternatively hiring and rehiring of new skilled workers is costly and also takes a long time. This also affects the operations and the effectiveness of the organisation.
In recent years, there have been inexplicable turnovers in most of the Civil Services in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This trend started in around 1960s; however it became even more serious towards the end of the 20th Century and was projected to continue at the dawn of the 21st century (Kiragu, 1998). Malawi was no exception to this problem. In the
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Malawian context it was highly felt in the health sector where most of the trained doctors and nurses left the country to industrialized countries in search for greener pasture. For instance in 1998, medical doctor vacancy rates in the public sector were reported at 43% in Ghana and 36% in Malawi. In 1998, public sector nurse vacancy rate was reported at 48% in Lesotho this is according to (Liese, Blanchet & Dussault, 2003). The health sector in all the Sub-Saharan Africa is just a representation of the many sectors that have been hit hard by this high turnover of Civil Servants. Following this high turnover and other factors such as unsustainable high wage bills and ineffective large Civil Service, many African governments embarked on what have been termed as Public Service Reform Programmes (Lienert, 1998). Malawi also joined the bandwagon in reforming its Public Sector which also includes the Civil Service.
The Government of Malawi (GoM) implemented the latest Public Service Reform Programmes between 1995 and 2005. This however, was one of the several reforms that were ever implemented since the 1960s. The Government of Malawi therefore followed a different path in implementing the new reforms by putting up what it called the Action Plan for the reform programs.
Following this, several strategies/paths were set up and implemented in order to achieve these goals and the others that fell under the reform programmes. Such strategies included retrenchment. More importantly the objectives were set up in this manner in order to curb the massive brain drain that faces the government for its knowledge workers. Brain drain is “the emigration or flight of skilled human capital from one country to the other in search of better returns to one’s knowledge, skills, qualifications, and competencies” (Liese, Blanchet & Dussault, 2003). Simply put, the emigration of an individual is a brain drain because they are an investment loss to her country by not using the education gained (up to university level) to work there.
It is not clear however if the reform programs really achieved their intended above objectives. That is, if the reforms have finally managed to achieve the ultimate goal of reducing turnover intentions which result in total or absolute turnover. This can only be determined if there is reduced turnover intentions among the Civil Servants and thus the genesis of this paper.
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Statement of the Problem
Brain drain continues to be a big threat to the operations of the Civil Service in Malawi. Unless the government redirects its strategizes on improving working conditions, brain drain among the knowledge (professional) employees continues to hamper its development agenda. It is important therefore to study how the current Human Resources practices are impacting turnover intentions among these knowledge workers.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is to examine whether there is any relationship between job satisfaction and employee commitment, and turnover intentions; and also between selected Human Resource practices (salary, job enrichment/autonomy and job stability/security) job satisfaction and employee commitment. Finally, examine the relationship between the aforementioned HR practices and selected and turnover intentions among middle level civil servants in Malawi. In essence, the study looks at employee attitudes on various aspects that in turn have been found to affect turnover in other studies.
Research Questions
There are three main questions in this study and they are designed to examine the relationship between independent and the dependent variables. The questions are as follows:
1. Is there any relationship between employee commitment & job satisfaction, and turnover intentions?
2. Is there any relationship between HR practices (salary, job enrichment/autonomy, job stability/ security) and employee commitment and job satisfaction?
3. Is there any relationship between HR practices (salary, job enrichment/autonomy, job stability/ security) and turnover intentions?
Due to the nature of the model of the study, there are several independent and dependent variables. The model is in stages as such, job satisfaction and employee commitment at some points are independent then dependent variables.
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Model 1: the independent variables are job satisfaction and employee commitment while the dependent variable is turnover intentions. In this model, job satisfaction is treated as a variable on its own and so is employee commitment.
Model 2: the independent variables in this model are the selected HR practice variables (salary, job enrichment and job stability). This means that each independent variable is treated separately and the results are also analysed as such. The dependent variables are job satisfaction and then employee commitment. It should be noted that each of the dependent variables is treated separately in order to analyse the results independently.
Model 3: the independent variables are the selected HR practice variables (salary, job enrichment and job stability). The dependent variable is turnover intentions. Just as in model 2, all the independent variables are treated independently in terms of analysis.
Hypotheses the Study
The hypotheses are organised based on the model. Since the model is in 3 stages, the hypotheses are arranged as such and there are sub-hypotheses in each main hypothesis. In addition, turnover intentions have 3 measurable items and hence all the items are measured separately against each of these 3 items.
Model 1
1. Is there any relationship between Job satisfaction & employee commitment and turnover intentions?
Hypothesis 1: x = Job satisfaction and y = turnover intentions.
H0: There is no relationship between job satisfaction and job turnover intentions.
H0: µ= 0
Ha: There is a relationship between salary and turnover intentions.
Ha: µ ≠ 0
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Hypothesis 2: x =Employee Commitment and y = turnover intentions.
H0: There is no relationship between employee commitment and job turnover intentions.
H0: µ= 0
Ha: There is a relationship between salary and turnover intentions.
Ha: µ ≠ 0
Model 2
1. Is there any relationship between HR practices (salary, job enrichment/autonomy, job stability/ security) and employee commitment and job satisfaction?
Hypothesis 3a: x =salary strategies and y = job satisfaction H0: There is no relationship between salary strategies and job satisfaction.
H0: µ= 0
Ha: There is a relationship between salary strategies and job satisfaction.
Ha: µ ≠ 0
Hypothesis 3b: x =salary strategies and y = employee commitment H0: There is no relationship between salary strategies and Employee Commitment.
H0: µ= 0
Ha: There is a relationship between salary strategies and employee commitment.
Ha: µ ≠ 0
Hypothesis 4a: x = job enrichment (autonomy) and y = Job satisfaction
H0: There is no relationship between job enrichment (autonomy) and job satisfaction.
H0: µ= 0
Ha: There is a relationship between job enrichment (autonomy) and job satisfaction.
Ha: µ ≠ 0
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Hypothesis 4b: x = job enrichment (autonomy) and y = employee Commitment H0: There is no relationship between job enrichment (autonomy) and employee commitment
H0: µ= 0
Ha: There is a relationship between Job enrichment (autonomy) and employee commitment.
Ha: µ ≠ 0
Hypothesis 5a: x = job stability and y = job satisfaction
H0: There is no relationship between job stability and job satisfaction.
H0: µ= 0
Ha: There is a relationship between job stability and job satisfaction.
Ha: µ ≠ 0
Hypothesis 5b: x = job stability (security) and y =employee commitment
H0: There is no relationship between job stability (security) and employee Commitment.
H0: µ= 0
Ha: There is a relationship between Job stability (security) and Employee Commitment.
Ha: µ ≠ 0 Model 3
3. Is there any relationship between HR practices (salary, job enrichment/autonomy, job stability/ security) and turnover intentions?
Hypothesis 6: x = salary strategies and y = turnover intentions.
H0: There is no relationship between salary strategies and job turnover intentions.
H0: µ= 0
Ha: There is a relationship between salary strategies and turnover intentions.
Ha: µ ≠ 0
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Hypothesis 7: x = job enrichment (autonomy) and y = turnover intentions.
H0: There is no relationship between job enrichment (autonomy) and turnover intentions.
H0: µ= 0
Ha: There is a relationship between job enrichment (autonomy) and turnover intentions.
Ha: µ ≠ 0
Hypothesis 8: x = job stability (security) and y = turnover intentions.
H0: There is a relationship between job stability (security) and turnover intentions.
H0: µ = 0
Ha: There is no relationship between job stability (security) and turnover intentions.
Ha: µ ≠ 0
Significance of the Study
The findings of the study will add to the Government of Malawi research database on:
• How to improve Civil Service working conditions in order to retain the young knowledge workers who leave the government and work in other sectors, or even abroad in search for greener pasture due to frustrating working conditions. In this context, salary benefits, job design and stable jobs.
• There will be new information that never came to light during the previous research due to the fact that most of these young workers were not consulted fully in the programme implementation as (Liese, Blanchet & Dussault, 2003) suggest. Thus the reforms did not take care of other incentives that would really motivate the civil servants. Thus the hidden needs of the civil servants were not dug into to find out other motivating incentives other than the ones that are already common and highly perceived.
• It will further predict whether Middle Range Civil servants are more likely to turn over their jobs in the next few (1-5) years.
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• Finally, the results will act as a starting point for future researches since it will show what attitudes employees have and how they are impacting their satisfaction, commitment and also their future employment.
Definitions of Terms
Civil Servants: refers to employees on the government pay roll whether or not they occupy established, non-established and industrial class positions. However, this definition excludes employees in parastatals and local government whose salaries may be funded by the central government through subsidies and grants. This definition has also been used in the (Civil Service Pay and Employment Study of the World Bank, 1994).
Salary: pay given to employees which is meant to compensate for the services rendered. This includes all employees on exempt positions and therefore do not receive any overtime pay. Exempt pay is calculated at an annual or monthly rate rather than hourly (Republic of Malawi: Public Administration Country Profile).
Job Enrichment (autonomy): can be defined as giving workers more tasks to perform and more control over how to perform the tasks (Moorhead & Griffin, 2004).
Job autonomy: this means, giving more freedom to the employee to execute most of the important decisions on how the job has to be done. The meaning of enrichment in this paper is fluid-encompasses the meaning of autonomy as well. Most of the authors (Moorhead & Griffin, 2004; Miner, 2005; Allen & Meyer, 2003) have used the two words interchangeably and so is in this paper.
Job stability: Job stability looks at the employee’s mobility in terms of job or employer. In other words this is the tenure of continuous service rendered (both) to the job and/or the employer (Farber, 1998). In this paper, the focus is on leaving the employer. Thus job stability for the purposes of this study is the longevity of service to the employer.
Job security: on the other hand this refers to the probability that an individual will keep his or her job; a job with a high level of job security is such that a person with the job
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would have a small chance of becoming unemployed involuntarily (Ongori, 2007). Since the two items are studied side by side or alternatively, this paper alternates their use and definition (Meyer & Allen, 2003).
Job satisfaction: is the “affective or emotional response to one’s job associated with the factors identified by Herzberg as motivators, for example, achievement, recognition, characteristics of the work itself, responsibility and advancement” (Kreitner & Kinicki, 1998, p.158).
Employee Commitment: is the degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organization (Meyer & Allen, 1991).
Employee Turnover Intentions: the voluntary decision intending to quit the job or/and the employer by the employee (Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski & Erez, 2005).
Delimitations and Limitations Delimitations
There are several delimitations to this study. The first delimitation is that the paper was an e-research paper. This means that the questionnaire was administered online.
Participants had to respond online. This was very convenient to the participants as they did not have to consult any gatekeepers on whether to participate in the survey or not. This enhanced the true opinions and perceptions of the participants on the issues under study.
Secondly, the method was time and cost effective in several ways. The researcher did not have to wait for permission from the authorities in order to administer the questionnaire.
Getting permission in government is very hard due to the bureaucracies (official procedures to be followed). It takes a long period of time for people to get permission to do anything in government and this would have delayed the whole process of data collection and the rest of the processes. It was quicker and easy for both the researcher and the respondents to send
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and fill the online questionnaire respectively. These reasons brought about good representation of the evaluation of the Civil Service working conditions since the respondents were Civil Servants who really felt the need to have conditions and other incentives improved. This method was also highly private and confidential which also maximised participation and confidence of the respondents since there was no face contact with the researcher. This was very important in maintaining confidence in the respondents and reducing fear of being betrayed. This was also a safer way for the researcher since the government does not allow anybody working for the government to conduct any kind of surveys of his nature if the person is not contracted by the government to do so.
Limitations
There were other limitations as well to this study. Since it was a snow-ball web-based questionnaire, some participants may have chosen not to participate as the questionnaire may have landed in the bulk folder. Alternatively, they may simply have ignored it for no apparent reason. The survey was also limited to those who have access to internet only and this may have excluded those who hardly access the internet especially those working in rural areas.
Another limitation concerns the return rate: it was not possible to know the return rate because all questionnaires were being administered online and through snowball. It was not possible to know the total number of sent questionnaires and the respondents to come up with a concrete return rate.
The other problem was the use of self-report questionnaire on all measures. This means that respondents had to rate their own attitudes by themselves. The other limitation is that no random sampling was used. Snowball sampling was used and this may have created a problem of biasness since respondents may only be those who are really interested in the topic or people (interested parties only). Alternatively, respondents may have sent to their friends only who also had the same interests. The other limitation concerns the measurements of some latent (hidden) factors with a few observable variables.
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