Performance Management - Case Study Example

The role of performance management in multinational companies Case study of First Bank Nigeria s A. TiTLE The role of performance management in multinational companies Case study of First Bank Nigeria B. BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE Performance Management has been the focus of many research studies because of its importance to employing organisations. With today’s mobile and floating working population, it has become increasingly important for the organisations to know how they can retain employees and improve their performance. Since organisations continually search for ways to increase employees’ performance, it was hoped that the study would offer some general insights. More specifically, this study will investigate the correlates of employee performance improvement and source of motivation for them in the First Bank of Nigeria. This paper will analyse several recent business and theoretical trends in the area of performance management and their effects on performance management. The aim of this research is to examine the following trends: Importance of performance management in services industry. Effects of cultural background on implementation of performance management theories, The effects of heterogeneity of work force on process of performance management. The fundamental reason for choosing this topic is that having searched literature I found that very few works have been conducted concerning the impact of performance management in services sector specifically in Nigeria. Since most of the studies have been focusing the International market. This fact has encouraged me to do this piece of work in order to contribute to the existing knowledge about this subject by adding a new point of view. c. Literature review Methods of Performance Enhancement: Motivation means different things to different individuals. For some, it may be an incentive and for others, a psychological backing or setting a good example. Motivation is something abstract and the difficulties arise when one tries to explain its meaning and application. A wide variety of assumptions have been made on motivation by observing the resultant behaviour of motivation. Based on these assumptions and research findings, motivation has been defined in a number of ways. Motivation can make the employees get all the targets settled by the Organisations. In order to motivate the employees it is important for the company to understand the basic needs of the employees. Employee Wants: Just as the definition of basic human needs is a highly complex task, it naturally follows that there are no easy assumptions concerning what employees really want from the organisation. In various surveys, the following are some of the more typically specified wants: Pay: This want helps in satisfying physiological, security, and egoistic needs. The design of a monetary compensation system is exceedingly complex since it serves to satisfy multiple needs and cannot alone motivate the whole person. This provides us with our first variable, which effects the performance of the employees leading to the hypothesis that: H1: Higher pay leads to improved performance. Security of job: Because of threats from technological change, this want is high on the list or priorities for many employees and labour unions. The underlying need of general security is also high on the list of priorities in the suggested need hierarchy of Maslow. Second variable being job security the second hypothesis reads as: H2: Higher level of job security will enhance the employees’ performance. As Locke (1976) put forward a theory of motivation based on goal setting. The individuals in the company can be motivated by setting goal as Goal Theory suggest that it is the goal that an individual is aiming for which motivates, rather than just the satisfaction of attaining it. Locke’s view is that what a person values or desires determines the goals he sets for himself, but that what actually drives him (motivates him) are the goals themselves. Locke’s own researches indicated that individual performance was better when people had been set specific goals of a challenging or difficult nature, and when they received feedback on their performance. This approach clearly has implications for the practice of management-by-objectives of target setting. Which relies for its success on the mutual agreement of specific goals between a manager and his subordinate. Goal setting can also improve the performance of the employees. Third hypothesis is: H3: Mutually agreed goal setting puts positive effect on employees’ performance. A modern and a more permanent approach to motivation are through job enrichment. This involves putting meaning into jobs. In other words, it is putting Herzberg’s two-factor theory into effect by building motivators into the job. These motivators include achievement, growth, responsibility, advancement and recognition. A number of research studies have indicated that the job content is an important factor in motivating people. So the content of a routine or repetitive task must be restructured to provide motivation to the performer of that job. One way of restructuring the job is through job enrichment, or making jobs more meaningful. If a manager can include more of Herzberg’s motivators, people who perform such jobs utilise their skills and potentials to the best of their abilities and be more productive on the job. Thus, the jobs would be richer and not just bigger. Hence stating the fourth hypothesis as: H4: Increased job enrichment will positively effect the employee performance. Employee Involvement: Employee involvement should be encouraged on every step of organisational planning, from decision making to implement change in the organisation. A program can be found effective when the employers guarantee the involvement of the employees at each and every step. The employers should encourage the involvement of employees in all the processes effecting the work place situation and the well being of employees. Following steps should be undertaken in order to get the involvement from the employees: Employees should be encouraged to give suggestions and should receive feedback from the employees with out any fear of consequences. The management should undertake effective reporting procedure regarding the employee’s intentions regarding their well being. The role of the employees should be increased in order to evaluate, recommend and undertake the process of betterment in the organisation. The needs of the employees should be analysed regarding their skills and knowledge requirements. Employees must be given proper participation while planing for the process of change in the organisation. Hypothesis 5 states that: H5: Employee involvement and improved performance are positively related with each other. Training needs and Techniques: Organisations are human communities, which are formed by bringing people together to communicate, intact and build ties to help each other to create meaning together. Information plays an important role in building these societies and providing knowledge about the task people perform. The information networks created by the organisations help the people to adopt the environment. Build and develop communication networks, improves learning process, develops sense of understanding and sharing between the people, provides a platform to discuss discoveries and innovations, provide the people with chance to learn after making mistakes. A learning organisation intentionally designs the structures and strategies in order to enhance and maximise the learning of its employees. (Dodgson, 1993) With the changing environment of business and advancing technology the notion of the Learning organisations has gained much more importance. Learning has become an important characteristic of an organisation in order to compete in the global business. Learning is a volatile and dynamic concept through which the process of updating in an organisation takes place. With the growing size of the corporations and continuous innovations in the field of technology the individual learning has transformed to the notion of the organisational learning. The notion of learning plays an important part in the progress of an individual just like that the learning on the organisational level plays an important part in the growth of an organisation. The organisational group of people can define the organisational learning as the sum of the learning activities of the individual, which takes the shape of combined effort (Dodgson, 1993; Fiol & Lyles, 1985). An organisational learning program should be designed in the way that it is not lost when the members of the organisation leave the organisation. The learning system of an effective learning organisation not only serve the purpose of the present employees but also cater the needs of the future employees by the accumulation of histories, experiences, norms, and stories. In the highly competitive environment of the business in today’s high pace changing business environment enhancing the learning capabilities of business is the solution of half of the problems (Prahalad & Hamel, 1994). Equally important is the creation of an unlearning organisation which essentially means that the organisation must forget some of its past. Thus, learning occurs amidst such conflicting factors (Dodgson, 1993). “Some of the more popular development programs include multi-skilling, cross-training and career succession - and there are clear plans to significantly expand their use in the future. There also appears to be widespread use of employee participation programs. Service organisations also use a variety of methods to identify workplace issues and for the most part intend to significantly increase their use in the future.” (Cline, 1998) H6: Learning opportunities at the organisation can lead to higher level of employee performance. Appraisal is essential for effective managing. In the Work Planning and Review approach to appraisal, It is emphasised that frequent performance discussions need to be undertaken. But performance discussions and salary actions should be dealt with at separate meetings. Appraisal measures performance in achieving goals and plans and performance as a manager, that is, how well a person carries out key managerial activities. Traditional appraisal methods that attempt to measure personality traits have serious limitations. Therefore it is more suitable to use the effective method of appraising managers against verifiable objectives. This approach is operational, related to the manager’s job, and relatively objective. Still, a person may perform well (or badly) because of luck or factors beyond his or her control therefore; the management-by-objectives approach should be supplemented by appraisal of managers as managers, that is, appraisal of how well they perform their key managerial activities. The reviews should undertaken on the basis of continuous monitoring. In the given suggested appraisal program, key managerial activities should be presented as checklist questions and grouped under the categories of planning, organising, staffing, leading, and controlling. H7: Performance improvement is positively related with appraisals. Hence the relationship between the performance enhancement and the variables discussed in the literature review can be depicted in the following figure. Figure 1: Schematic Diagram of the theoretical framework d. METHODS In the research a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used. This will be done in order to avoid the inefficiencies of both the research methods. The data will be collected both qualitatively and quantitatively. A research design consisting of mixed methodologies will overcome the deficiencies and will assist with data collection and data analysis (Jennings, 2001). Interviewing An interview is one to one and one to few interaction. The method will enable the researcher to get valid and reliable data that will be relevant to the research question and objectives. Interviews can be divided into three major types: structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews (Saunders et. al, 2000). The researcher has planned to use semi-structured interview model. The choice has been resulted because of the benefits attached with the semi-structured model. These include Flexibility. semi-standardisation . Provides the researcher a chance to acquire an analysis, explanation and description in relation to research aim and objectives. The model ekes the process of exploratory research very well. Also provides the researcher with the chance to ascertain undiscovered perspectives about the research topic. Interviews provide the researcher with the opportunity to acquire detailed information regarding the research topic. The researcher will be able to get wider and detailed information as compare to other methods from people of different perspectives (Research solutions 2005). Through the use of interviews as a research method the process of information acquirement can be maximised by interviewing few people. The interview question will be designed according to the theories reviewed in the literature review section in order to analyse the relation ship between the process of performance management and different variables effecting the process. Questionnaires A sample of 50 employees of First Bank of Nigeria will be involved in the questionnaire, because the larger the sample sized is the more adequate the results will be and the more generalisations can be drawn from the research. The event in relation to the types of answers, themes and issues, and then categorising of response (keeping a note of what the codes refer to). Then by asking some questions like what are the answers that keep repeating, what are the deviations from t Statistical Analysis: Frequency distributions, correlation, and means, standard deviations, and other statistics were obtained by the Frequencies, Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The hypothesis will be tested through the correlations obtained, t-Tests, and simple multiple regression analysis. e. TIMESCALE The study will be undertaken according to the following Gantt Chart Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Week 10 Introduction Literature Review Methodology Interviews Data Interpretation Results Compilation Results and Conclusion f. RESOURCES Finding Journal articles more specified, up to date and directed towards the specified areas, the reference material is mostly comprised of Journal articles, material provided on Internet and most importantly. Since performance management is a developing subject area. Not many current and up to date books are available. Journal articles are more helpful providing to the point and current research material. The material used is basically based on material printed in last five or six years. Material related to the performance management mostly depicts diverse direction of thinking by different practitioners, since there are not specified scientific theories. g. REFERENCES Atchinson, J.W., 1964, An Introduction to motivation, Van Nostrand, Princeton. J.J Cline, Roger S., (1998). “Hospitality 2000 - The People: A Report on the Second Global Survey of the Hospitality Industrys Leadership,” New York, winter, 1998, available at http://www.hotel-online.com/Neo/Trends/Andersen/SecondGlobalSurvey_1998.html Dixon, N., (1994). The Organisational Learning Cycle, McGraw-Hill Dodgson, M., (1993). Organisational learning: A review of some literatures, Organisation Studies, 14/3: 375-394. Fiol, C.M., & Lyles, M.A., (1985). Organisational learning, Academy of Management Review, 10/4: 803-813. Jennings, N. R., (2001). An agent-based approach for building complex software systems. Communications of the ACM, 44 (4) 35–41. McNamara, C, 1999. Information available from: www.mapnp.org/library/research/overview.htm Prahalad, C. K., & Hamel, G., (1994). Competing for the future, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Research solutions, 2005. Information available from: www.researchsolutions.co.nz/in_depth_interviews.htm Saunders M, Lewis P, & Thornhill A, 2000. Research Methods for Business Students, 2nd Ed. Pearson Education Limited. Uganda bureau of statistics, 2005. Information available from: www.ubos.org Read More