Employees’ Attitudes towards Organizational Change and Its Effects on Employee Commitment

Organizations are expected to enhance their capacity to ensure employees are provided with the necessary support for the acceptance for change initiatives. Review of relevant literature reveals that high extents of organizational activities towards acceptance of change are unsuccessful as studies have generally agreed that employee resistance is one of the leading causes for the failure of change initiatives (Bovey and Hede, 2001; Beer and Nohria, 2000). In studies that have inspected the conditions in which workers support authoritative change, specialists have concentrated on different attitudinal factors that represents employees’ states of mind toward hierarchical change. These factors include preparation for change, responsibility to change, openness to change, and pessimism about authoritative change. These factors have distinct meaning and implications for the organization and thus serve as representative assessment of employees’ evaluation and worries about specific change activities. This study examines the attitudes of employees towards organizational change through review of relevant literature and discusses how attitudinal factors relate to organizational change, the inherent antecedents of each factor and its influence on employee commitment. Based on the discussion, possible recommendations will be made for industry practitioners and policy makers

Corporate Social Responsibility as a Determinant of Sustainability of Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

In the pursuit of profit maximization as a major objective of business organizations, several firms forfeit their social and economic responsibility whilst focusing on activities that are deemed to solely profit the firm, without taking into cognizance the effect of their operations on the society in which they operate. Business analysts have however, realized the determinant role of social responsibility in corporate performance, such that firms that are able to imbibe corporate social responsibility in their core business operations may be able to take advantage of the social reputation gained across their several stakeholders. Small and medium enterprises operating in highly competitive markets are also advised to leverage on this reputation gained from being socially responsible, if they seek ways to remain relevant in the same markets dominated by multinational corporations. Adapting a case study approach, this study highlights the advantages (such as employee and customer loyalty) gained by House of Tara, a small business operating in the beauty and make-up industry in Nigeria, resulting from the firm‘s commitment to advancing the society in which it operates through several social responsibility activities. It is observed that although competing with major makeup brands such as MAC, Maybelline, Dior, Mary Kay and others, House of Tara has been able to not only thrive, but gain a sizeable market in the Nigerian makeup industry, because several consumers purchase their products not solely because of the quality or price of their product, but because they perceive themselves as buying into the firm‘s CSR vision. This study therefore recommends that small and medium enterprises that may lack adequate resources (manpower, technology, capital) needed to successfully compete with multinationals, can harness the potentials in the reputation and loyalty gained from adequate investment in corporate social responsibility

Organizational Culture and Performance

The success or otherwise of an organization is heavily dependent on the skills, knowledge, ability and the underlying characteristic governing the organization. The underlying characteristic here goes fairly deep into the enduring part of the organization: the values and beliefs governing the members of the organization. This study aims at investigating how the collective values, beliefs and principles of organizational members determine the success or otherwise of an organization. Through case-study methodology, this paper analyzes the success of Covenant University, Nigeria, which despite the challenging Nigerian business environment characterized by lack of infrastructures, unfavorable government policies, and high inflation rate, has seen tremendous growth and development in the twelve years of existence as exhibited by its position as the number one University in Nigeria and West Africa as a whole in the recently concluded webometrics ranking. It is observed that the success of the University is as a result of the core values of the organization, which has trickled down from the entrepreneur to every level of management, teaching and non-teaching staff and which is duly enforced on the students of the University

Surveydataonemployees’ perceptionofthe impact ofcommunitydevelopmentinitiativeson the corporateimageofoilandgas firms in Nigeria

Severalsourcesoftoday'spressureonmanagersinstrategic decision-making aredirectlyassociatedwithsocialissuesrather than traditionalstrategicmanagementissues.Itisbelievedthat firms thatinvestincommunitydevelopmentaremorelikelyto operateinharmonyinthesocietyoftheiroperations,assuch reduce interferencefromtheirhostcommunity,thusleadingto enhanced corporateimage.Therefore,itbecomespertinentto present datatoshowtheexistenceorotherwiseofarelationship between communitydevelopmentinitiativesandthe firm's cor- porateimage.Thisdataisgottenfrom336respondentsfromfour top oilandgas firms quotedintheNigerianstockexchange. Responsesweegatheredfromtheemployees’ of the firms, asitis believed theyhave first handinformationonthe firm's corporate social responsibilitypolicies.Thedataispurelydescriptiveand wasgottenthroughquantitativemethods,specifically througha surveyquestionnaire.Thequestionnairehadtwosections;section A containedbackgroundquestions,whilesectionBconsistedof questionsthatwerespecific tocommunitydevelopmentinitiatives and corporateimage.TheCronbachalphainternalconsistency of the questionnairerevealedareliabilitycoefficient of0.732,thus revealingahighconsistencylevel.The field data set is made widely accessible to enable critical investigation into the subject