MANAGER NEED OF INFORMATION ORIENTATION FOR IMPROVED ORGANIZATION PRODUCTIVITY

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

1. DEFINING EMPLOYEEORIENTATION

Orientation can be viewed as a special kind of training designed to help new employees to learn about their tasks, to be introduced to their co-workers and to settle in their work situation – a vital ingredient of internal corporate communication (Bennett, 2001).

Employee orientation can be broadly defined as the familiarization with, and adaptation to, a new work environment. It refers to the process by which a new employee is introduced to the organization, to the work group, and to the job. Traditionally, organizations approach orientation by describing to the new employee the organization’s history, structure, fringe benefits, rules and regulations. A more progressive approach is to view orientation as an opportunity to communicate the organization’s vision and values, shape the new employee’s values and integrate him/her into the organization’s structure (Asare-Bediako, 2008). The first few months within any organization represent the critical period during which an employee will or will not learn how to become ahigh performer .According to Mathias and Jackson (1991) it is this principle of learning that ensures that productivity potential is enhanced, while, simultaneously, both the company and employee expectations are integrated.

Employee orientation is the procedure of providing new employees with basic background information about the firm and the job. It is more or less, considered as one component of the employer’s new-employee socialization process. The socialization process could be seen as an ongoing process of initialing in all employees the prevailing attitudes, standards, values, and patterns of behavior that are expected by the organization. Socialization is important for employee performance and for organizational stability. For new employees, work performance depends to a great extent on knowing what they should or should not do. Understanding the right way to do a job is a measure of effective socialization (Asare- Bediako,2008).

In the western world, for example United States of America, United Kingdom etc., a person is hired and reports to work. After completing the documentation required, he/she is expected to perform the role with minimal introduction. However, the process is different for a Nigeriaian firm. The prevalent business environment is highly competitive and is influenced by globalization, the outcomes of which are privatization and deregulation of markets, aggressive competition and ever-rising expectations of customers. Years of research have concluded that employee oriented companies perform better than companies that are less employee oriented. To achieve employee focus, a firm with a high degree of employee orientation cultivates a set of shared values and beliefs about putting the employee first and reaps results in the form of a defendable competitive advantage, decreased costs and increased profits (Desphande,1999).

It would appear, therefore, that the term ‘orientation’ should mean some reflection or representation of the total motivational state of an individual at a particular point in time. This state will portray the effects of needs, values, attitudes, abilities and other behavioral aspects. It might thus be considered to represent what an individual wants from a situation and the extent to which he believes he will be successful in achieving such wants. The operational definition of orientation could then be that it is an expression of how the individual views his situation in terms of what he desires from it and the extent to which he expects these desires to be achieved or not (Beatty,1988).

Apart from being a means of defining the situation, orientation will also define the person. It therefore becomes the link between the individual and his situations - both of which are variables which may change and may then change the orientation (Bennett, 2001).

The reasoning for orientation is, in the main, to alleviate fear or anxiety which can be experienced by newcomers in relation to how well they would fit into the organization and how well they would perform. The components of an effective orientation system include preparing for new employees, determining what information is needed and when it is needed, presenting information about the workday, the organization itself, its policies, rules and benefits, all to be evaluated and followed up (Mathis and Jackson, 1991). Most importantly and to the fore, employees would be introduced to the channels of communication in the workplace and, thus, leading to effective coordination.

1. A MODEL OF EMPLOYEEORIENTATION

The previous discussion leads quite naturally to the consideration of a model which depicts the total process involved with the concept of orientation. The model suggested here isbased on a simple ‘systems concept’; the input -process-output idea. Here the inputs can be considered to be of two basic types: the first being situational variables (nature of job, home- life, economic demands, and others) whilst the second is concerned with background factors (past jobs, education and others) These inputs are not always in the same order since today’s situational variables may become tomorrow’s background factors (that is; stored experience). Support for these ideas can be found in the literature (Bennett, 2001). The outputs of the model may be considered to be different types of orientation. It may at first seem an arbitrary task to determine what these orientations are.

However, according to Bennett (2001) there is substantial support for adopting three different orientations, namely: instrumental (a desire for economic and material ends from work, together with security); relational (social needs are interpersonal relationships); and personal growth (self-development and the use of skills etc). These three orientations accommodate another approach, that of intrinsic extrinsic satisfaction as demonstrated by Alderfer (1969). Take, for example, the idea of people seeking intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.

1. EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE: DEFINITION, MANAGEMENTAND APPRAISAL

The online Business dictionary defines performance as the accomplishment of a given task measured against preset known standards of accuracy, completeness, cost, and speed. According to the Baldridge criteria(this is the model behind the US Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, an award process administered by the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and managed by the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), an agency of the US department of Commerce), performance refers to output results and their outcomes obtained from processes, products, and services that permit evaluation and comparison relative to goals, standards, past results, and other organizations. Performance can be expressed in non-financial and financial terms.

The performance appraisal may be defined as a process, typically delivered annually by a supervisor to a subordinate, designed to help employees understand their roles, objectives, expectations and performance success. Performance management is the process of creating a work environment in which people can perform to the best of their abilities (Belcourt, Bohlander and Snell, 2008). In many cases, appraisals provide the basis for noting deficiencies in employee performance and for making plans for improvement. However according to Asare-Bediako, (2008), traditional performance appraisal has failed to deliver the desired Human Resource outcomes of morale, motivation, attitudes and performance. Today’s organizations are shifting more and more from the narrow focus on performance appraisal to a focus on total performancemanagement.

1. ORGANIZATIONALPERFORMANCE

Organizational performance as a concept suffers from problems of conceptual clarity in a number of areas. The first area is in the definition of the concept. The term performance is often used indiscriminately to describe everything from efficiency and effectiveness to improvement. It has been argued that companies are driven by profit yet should be driven from a customer satisfaction perspective. If customers are happy, they buy more, recommend products and services to others and profits grow. While this emphasis on profit is due mostly to demanding shareholders, it does put much emphasis on hard (financial) benefits that are usually quantified in monetary terms. Business performance has been defined using a plethora of measures such as profit growth rate, net or total assets growth rate since the mid- 1900s and has progressed since then to include return on sales, shareholder return, growth in market share and number of new products (Prahalad and Hamel,1990).

Organizational performance is defined as a measure of how well organizations are managed and the value they deliver to customers and other stakeholders. On the other hand, organizational excellence is defined as outstanding practice in managing organizations and delivering values to customers and other stakeholders (Moullin, 2007). These definitions are the short forms of those given by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM, 1999) and demonstrate a clear relationship between organizational performance and

organizational excellence. The above-mentioned definitions prompt managers to aspire for excellence by attempting to reach the highest levels of performance, by any means whatsoever.

Many of the perspectives that dominated the early thinking concerning firm performance have their roots in traditional economic theory, with an emphasis on market power and industry structure as determinants of performance (Caves, 1971; Caves and Porter, 1977). These studies emphasize economies of scale and scope, the optimization of transactions costs across subsidiaries and critical market characteristics to explain different firm-level strategies of performance. In this theoretical context, firm performance is designed through the alignment of resources, knowledge and vision to create competitive advantage by responding with unique capabilities to environmental changes. This is an alignment of firm strengths with external opportunities (Barney, 1991; Porter, 1985).

External environmental conditions and industry structure are largely assumed to shape the firm’s performance. In recent years, however, other streams of research emphasizing a “resource-based” bundle of capabilities perspective on organizational performance have evolved to characterize the firm’s evolution and strategic growth alternatives (Dierickx and Cool, 1989; Dosi, 1988; Itami, 1987). The resource-based view of the firm suggests that the firm’s internal characteristics, especially the cultural patterns of learning and human capital asset accumulation, have significant impact on the firm’s capability to introduce new products and compete within disparate markets. Moreover, these same characteristics define firm heterogeneity through strategic intent and their knowledge base. Consequently, how a firmstrategicallydeploysassetallocationinsupportofitsuniquecomparativeadvantageis significant in determining its future strategies. Thus, a firm’s competitive advantage is derived from its unique knowledge (Spender, 1993). the connection between firms’ capabilities and competitive advantage also has been well established in the literature. Andrews (1971) and, later, Hofer and Schendel (1978) and Snow and Hrebiniak (1980) noted the centrality of “distinctive competencies” to competitive success. More recently, Prahalad and Hamel (1990) and Ulrich and Lake (1991) reemphasized the strategic importance of identifying, managing and leveraging “core competencies” rather than focusing only on products and markets in business planning.

The resource-based view takes this thinking one step further: it posits that competitive advantage can be sustained only if the capabilities creating the advantage are supported by resources that are not easily duplicated by competitors. In other words, firms’ resources must raise “barriers to imitation” (Rumelt, 1984). Thus, resources are the basic units of analysis and include physical and financial assets as well as employees’ skills and organizational (social) processes. A firm’s capabilities result from bundles of resources being brought to bear on particular value-added tasks (e.g. design for manufacturing, just-in-time production). Hansen and Wernerfelt (1989) examined a sample of 60 Fortune 1000 firms and found that economic factors (industry variables, market share and firm size) represented 18.5 per cent of variance in business returns. Their findings also indicated that organizational factors (goal emphasis and human resources) contributed 38 per cent of performance variance. The research suggests that organizational factors influence firm performance to a greater extent than economicfactors.

1. EFFECT OF EMPLOYEE ORIENTATION ONORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE

There appear to be several benefits of employee orientation. It is widely accepted that organizational performance depends at least partly on the behavior of employees and that these behaviors can constitute a source of sustainable competitive advantage (Huselid, 1995; Huselid et al. 1997; MacDuffie, 1995). The results of empirical studies are for and against the proposition that a company’s performance is positively related to its employee orientation. Employee orientation affects organizational performance through its effect on employee learning and behavior. Employee orientation determines the type of skills and motivation of these employees, and the opportunities and incentives that these employees have to design new and better ways of doing their jobs (Becker and Huselid, 1998; Huselid, 1995). This orientation promotes skill development, motivation and discretionary effort is often labeled as high-involvement employee orientation (Huselid,1995).

As indicated earlier, several studies have tested the relationship between employee orientation and organizational performance with generally supportive results. In fact, current research in this area has advanced beyond testing for the relationship between various employee orientation and organizational performance to identifying the mechanisms through which employee orientation affect organizational performance (Boselie et al., 2005; Collins and Smith, 2006; Hailey et al., 2005). However, recent reviews of the research on the relationship between employee orientation and organizational performance have questioned the methodological rigor of these studies (Wall and Wood, 2005). These reviews suggest that it is premature to assume an unequivocal positive relationship between employee orientation and organizational performance and argue for further research using more rigorous research designs.

In general, employee orientation is believed to be positively related to performance. For example, Matsuno and Mentzer, 2000; Narver and Slater, 1990; Pelham, 2000, all subscribe to the belief that employee orientation is the key to successful business performance, and Belcourt, Bohlander and Snell, 2008 noted that sometimes underperformers may not understand exactly what is required of them, but once their responsibilities are clarified, they are in a position to take the corrective action needed to improve their performance .This clearly supports the need to properly orient new employees in order to optimize their performance