The Impact of Organizational culture on employee Performance at Cameroon Development Corporation Bota-Limbe

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to add to the body of knowledge and empirically investigate how organisational culture affects worker performance at Bota-Limbe, a division of Cameroon Development Corporation. The three main goals of the study were as follows: How much does employee involvement as a component of company culture affect how well they accomplish their jobs? How much does consistency in organisational culture affect how well employees accomplish their jobs? How much does the organization’s mission, as part of its organisational culture, affect how well employees perform their jobs? The Statistical Package for Social Sciences was used for the analysis (SPSS).

The use of both qualitative and quantitative analytical techniques was combined with a descriptive analysis, one-sample t-test, and correlation analyses. The study’s participant population consisted of 53 employees. The information was gathered via a self-administered questionnaire.

The findings from the analysis of the variables support the third hypothesis H3 that the organisational culture of consistency at CDC Bota-Limbe significantly affects employee performance. Additionally, contrary to the first and second hypotheses, the organisational mission and culture of involvement have little to no impact on employee performance at CDC Bota-Limbe (H1and H2) Given this outcome, it is strongly advised for manufacturing industries like CDC to determine the best combination of organisational cultures to guarantee employees’ satisfactory performance.

CHAPTER ONE

 INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Organisational culture encompasses values and behaviours that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organisation. According to needle (2004), organisational culture represents the collective values, beliefs and principles of organisational members and is a product of factors such as history, product, market, technology, strategy, type of employees, management style, and national culture; culture includes the organisation’s vision, value, norms, systems, symbols, language, assumptions, environment, location, belief and habits.

The term culture in the organisational context was first introduced by Dr Elliott Jaques in his book “The changing culture of the factory” in 1951. This is the published report of a case study of developments in the social life of one industrial community between April 1948 and November 1950. This case is a publicly held British company that engages principally in the manufacture, sales, and servicing of metal bearings. The study is concerned with the description, analysis, and development of corporate group behaviours.

According to Dr Elliotte Jaques, the culture of the factory is its customary and traditional way of thinking and doing things, which is shared to a greater or lesser degree by all its members, and which new members must learn and at least partially accept. To be accepted into service in the firm. In simple terms, to the extent that people can share common wishes, desires and aspirations, they can commit themselves to work together. It is a matter of being able to care about the same things, and it applies to nations as well as to associations and organizations within nations.

There has been significant research in the literature to explore the impact of organisational culture on employee performance and productivity, for instance, scholars (Hofstede, 1980; Ouchi, 1981; Hofstede and Bond, 1988; Kotter & Heskett, 1992; Magee, 2002) state that organisational culture could be used for measuring the economic performance of an organisation. Therefore, a supportive culture as pointed out by Ritchie (2000) is considered a motivational instrument which promotes the employees to perform smoothly and ensures better productivity (Ritchie, 2000). Research has been carried out on various issues of organisational culture, for example, organisational culture types (Tharp, 2009) emphasize the stages of culture across the organisation whereas organisational psychology (Schein, 1990) focuses on how culture makes an impact on employees’ psychology and performance, these two issues of organisational culture set up an equilibrium where an organisation can achieve its maximum level of effectiveness and efficiency (Deem, Barnes, Segal &Preziosi, 2000)

Notwithstanding organisational culture and employee performance have been studied over the past decades. The relationship between organizational culture and employees has been the subject of abundance. This study has been examined by many researchers (Kotter and Heskett 1992; Denison, 1990; Van der Post et al. 1998; Schwartz & Davis, 1981; Ojo, 2009). Despite the plethora of studies on corporate culture in the last few decades, there is no widely accepted causal relationship between corporate culture and performance.

The empirical evidence emerging from various studies about the impact of organisational culture on employee performance has so far yielded mixed results that are inconclusive and contradictory. Furthermore, there is no empirical research conducted on the impact of organisational culture on employee performance, particularly from an emerging country perspective like Cameroon. Very little attention has been given to the manufacturing industries.

This means that the impact of organisational culture on employee performance in the manufacturing industry such as CDC has not received adequate research attention in Cameroon. Thus, there is a major gap in the relevant literature on Cameroon which has to be covered by the research.

This research attempts to fill this gap by studying the situation in Cameroon’s manufacturing industry and providing more empirical evidence on the effects of organisational culture on employee performance based on Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) level data.

Since multinational corporations have been extending their cooperation in emerging countries, this would be critical to examine how organisational culture affects employee performance and productivity. The main aim of the paper is to examine the impacts of organisational culture on employee’s performance and productivity in the context of Cameroon development corporation (CDC)

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The responsibility of the management is to enshrine good cultural values which will eliminate negative behaviour and enhance the performance of the employees and foster a positive work environment or a positive organizational culture. For Davoren (2014) organisational culture consists of a framework which determines the behaviour of employees in the organisation. It is a pattern of shared beliefs, assumptions, values and beliefs that provide the awareness of what is considered appropriate and inappropriate behaviour in an organisation. Success indicators such as revenue, sales volume, market share, and stock prices leading to the realization of organisational goals are the result of employee performance as a result of good organisational culture. Maintaining an organizational culture where employees are recognized as an integral part of the organisation’s growth process results in employee commitment to the organisation. They are motivated to make a positive contribution to the attainment of the goals and objectives of the organisation and feel responsible for the overall well-being of the organisation. Consequently, when the management rewards the employees accordingly it leads to employees’ performance and organisational success. Organisational culture should also take cognizance of the culture of the environment so as not to operate an organisation that is antagonistic to the environment as the firm interacts with the wider society. Upholding the wrong culture could result in poor employee performance and organisational failure.

The relationship between corporate culture and performance has been the subject of decade’s research in several fields, including strategic management, organisational behaviour, and industrial organisation. This study has been examined by many researchers (Kotter and Heskett 1992; Denison, 1990; Van der Post et al. 1998; Schwartz and Davis, 1981; Scholz, 1987; Choe, 1993; Rashid and Anantharaman, 1997; Deshpande and Farely, 1999; Ojo, 2009). Despite the plethora of studies on corporate culture in the last few decades, there is no widely accepted causal relationship between corporate culture and performance, the empirical evidence emerging from various studies about the impact of organisational culture on employees’ performance has so far yielded mixed results that are inconclusive and contradictory. Because of these contradictory results, the question of whether organisational culture improves or worsens employees’ performance is still worthy of further research. In addition, despite the existence of these studies, not much research has been given to the manufacturing industry. This means that the impact of organisational culture on employee performance in the manufacturing industry such as CDC has not received adequate research attention in Cameroon. This study was intended to fill this gap by studying the situation of the Cameroon manufacturing industry and providing more empirical evidence on the impact of organisational culture on employee performance. This knowledge gap also comes in the sense that little has been done to bring out the joint effect of the four traits in Denison’s model underlying organisational culture on each of the four measures of employees’ job performance in the manufacturing industry. This study will therefore examine the influence of three of the four traits: involvement, consistency and mission on employee performance in CDE. Therefore, the problem confronting the research is to investigate the impact of organisational culture on employee performance. A case study of Cameroon development corporation CDE Head office Bota-Limbe

1.3 Research Question

The main research questions are;

• To what extent does the organisational mission as an element of organisational culture influence employee performance?
• What is the extent to which employee involvement as an element of organisational culture influences employees
• To what extent does consistency as an element of organizational culture influence employee performance?
• OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The main objective of this study is to examine the extent to which organisational culture affects employee performance.

The specific objectives are as follows;

• To assess the effect of organisational mission as an element of organisational culture on employee performance
• To analyse the extent to which employee involvement as an element of organisational culture influences employee performance.
• To evaluate the impact of consistence as an element of organisational culture on employees’ performance

fURTHER READING:

The Consequences and effects of organisational culture on employee’s performance at Cameroon Development Corporation Bota-Limbe.