7.3 Work engagement, job satisfaction and organisational citizenship behaviours
7.3.1 Relating employee involvement with work engagement, job satisfaction,
Debunking the widely held business view that links working conditions with involvement (Warr, Cook, & Wall, 2010), participants in the current study, interrogated the continued existence of employees in most diamond mining companies operating in Chiadzwa and
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why workers facing undesirable working conditions see involvement as a benefit.
Stemming from the view that employee involvement requires extra effort and tighter work demands, qualitative findings of the study concurred to the fact that involvement can offer better compensation. However, the complementarities theory on involvement argues that it is only an organisation with greater employee involvement that depend more on employee initiative, resulting in pay practices such as gainsharing, profit sharing, and stock ownership plans being common (Bell & Neumark, 1993). This could be the basis of the company’s unwillingness to practice involvement.
However, the system could be missing another dimension of involvement which stipulates that “if employees regard employee involvement as a benefit because problem-solving tasks and job redesign relieve the tedium of traditionally-organized work” (Hackman &
Oldham, 1980, p. 159), then companies that adopt it can propose lower wages and employees would not be worse off. Taking from this perspective, it is undoubtable that through employee involvement, the problems of job satisfaction, work engagement, organisational citizenship and ultimately psychological well-being of employees faced by the company as revealed by both quantitative and qualitative findings, will be addressed.
Summing it up, employee involvement is one way an organisation can achieve its survival goal (Herbst & Conradie, 2010). However, for the company under study, it seems employee involvement requires extra effort and there are tighter work demands.
An example of a successful story on involvement is that of the Japanese manufacturing process which flourished (Handel & Levine, 2010). A similar approach with modifications can also be useful in the scope of the current study in light of the idea that most diamond mining companies operating in Zimbabwe and specifically in the Chiadzwa area had been
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warned by government and other stakeholders against their failure to incorporate and work well with the surrounding communities. However, due to lack of clear information, this had created uncertainty and unproductivity among employees.
Through devising plans with employee involvement, better compensation can be offered.
According to Semler (2013), people are naturally capable of self-direction and self-control, even in a corporate or bureaucratic setting if they are committed to the organisation’s goal and if they are treated as mature adults who can learn from their actions and errors. In light of the foregoing discussion, both quantitative and qualitative findings suggested employee involvement as a crucial process towards enhancement of employees’ well-being. Taking into consideration employees’ low rankings in the four constructs under study, qualitative findings revealed the need for employees to be involved in matters that both directly and indirectly affect them.
However, it is the nature of involvement that matters most to employees. Although this view is crucial, the role of employees towards ensuring employee well-being is not lucid.
In terms of systems approach, mutually desirable relationships where parties give and receive a range of benefits including socio-emotional, is seen as the backbone of a successful organisation where policies and strategies should emanate from. Thus, a relationship-oriented approach is advocated. Although the relationship approach is important for harmony in an organisation, understanding employees’ happiness and what makes them want to work better enables management to cultivate the best out of them (Schroeder, 2002). For the participants in the study, employee involvement has seen organisations enjoy the benefits that come with employees being part of the decision making process.
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As has already been noted in the foregoing, employee involvement does not only benefit employees alone for their input can address organisational issues affecting company to a greater extent. The underpinning cause of lack of employee involvement is that the company itself has become a hindrance towards employee involvement. Framed within the ideology of ‘cost cutting’, the system only concentrates on ‘short term’ measures of reducing costs.
It is the managements’ perspective that the system has made employees to be viewed as passive recipients of an imposed ideology. In other words, there is no fluidity in the decision-making process, resulting in frustration among employees and these has negatively affected employees’ psychological well-being as evidenced by low scores on the four constructs. What seems to have been forgotten by the system is that workers have insights into how to improve their jobs and most find that the opportunity to influence their work environment is intrinsically satisfying (Budd, Gollan, & Wilkinson, 2010).
Although answers to why management had conflicting ideologies on the ideal practices towards organisational effectiveness could not be obtained from the entire management, the prevailing system could have been in place because of management’s fear that employee involvement can shift bargaining power to an extent that the employer becomes more dependent on hard-to-monitor discretionary effort of employees. This may result in an increase of employees’ bargaining power (Dau-Schmidt & Ellis, 2011).
Employee involvement has seen organisations enjoying the benefits that come with employees being part of the decision making process. As has already been noted in the foregoing, employee involvement does not only benefit employees alone for their input can address organisational issues affecting company to a greater extent. The underpinning