Case Study analysis：工作满意度和承诺的案例研究

Abstract 摘要

当员工相信和信任他们的管理，激励和鼓励员工参与决策，提高员工的努力，使员工的工作满意度和工作满意度。所有这些因素反过来，有助于一个值得信赖的经理-员工关系。虽然文献支持这一前提下，有很少的经验证据表明，在关系中的因果关系的推理模式是清楚地理解。这三部分的实证案例旨在探讨魁北克制造业企业员工信任与员工工作满意度、离职倾向、员工参与决策的关系及对员工的承诺。设计/方法/方式-这个经验的情况下，将测试五个假设，七个变量影响员工敬业度和承诺，员工离职，员工参与决策过程和工作满意度的水平。研究结果发现，员工信任管理是他们愿意参与决策的重要决定因素。员工参与决策的不足，进而导致员工工作满意度和员工承诺的低水平。员工的承诺和参与的缺失会影响员工离职的意图。研究限制/影响-工作人员的样本量是不足够的，以便有统计上的显着结果的变量之间的相关性生产部门的员工，并为办公室/行政人员。这可能有助于确定内部沟通的层次，但也对其他变量的所有其他变量的不同群体的员工。实用意义，这篇文章提供了有益的见解，在一个组织内加强人际信任，并引入员工授权的做法，管理。独创性/价值-研究结果提供了经验证据支持的理论模型，连接员工的信任，在管理，参与决策，工作满意度，承诺，离职意向，并强调这些因素对组织绩效的影响。关键词工作满意度、员工的承诺，员工敬业度、参与决策、信任、沟通、态度、决策、加拿大纸张类型研究。

Purpose – When employees believe in and trust their management it motivates and encourages employees’ participation in decision making which improves employees’ efforts, benefits their job satisfaction and commitment to work. All of these factors, in turn, contribute to a trustworthy manager-employee relationship. While the literature supports this premise, there is little empirical evidence that patterns of causal inference in the relationship are clearly understood. This three part empirical case aims to focus on studying the relations between employee trust in management in a Quebec manufacturing company and their job satisfaction, intention to quit, level of employee participation in decision making and their commitment. Design/methodology/approach – This empirical case will test five hypothesis regarding seven variables influencing the level of employee engagement and commitment, employee turnover, employee participation in decision making processes and job satisfaction. Findings – The article finds that employee trust in management is an important determinant of their willingness to participate in decision making. Insufficient employee participation in decision making in turn leads to low level of employee job satisfaction and employee commitment. Lack of employee commitment and engagement affects the employee’s intention to quit. Research limitations/implications – The sample size of the office workers was not sufficient in order to have statistically significant results of the correlations between the variables for the production department employees, and for the office/administrative staff. This could have helped to determine the level of internal communication specifically, but also the level of all of the other variables for the two different groups of employees. Practical implications – This article offers useful insights for management in relation to strengthening interpersonal trust within an organization and introducing employee empowerment practices. Social implications – Owing to lack of trust in management, there will be high employee turnover. This in its turn will have a negative effect on both the performance of management and employees’ welfare, job satisfaction and commitment. Originality/value – The findings provide empirical evidence to support theoretical models that link employee trust in management, participation in decision making, job satisfaction, commitment, turnover intentions and highlight the impact of these factors on organizational performance. Keywords Job satisfaction, Employee commitment, Employee engagement, Participative decision making, Trust, Internal communication, Attitudes, Decision making, Canada Paper type Research paper

Introduction 介绍

When employees believe in and trust their management it motivates and encourages employees’ participation in decision making which improves employees’ efforts, benefits their job satisfaction and commitment to work. All of these factors, in turn, contribute to a trustworthy manager-employee relationship. While the literature supports this premise, there is little empirical evidence that patterns of causal inference in the relationship are clearly understood. This three part case focused on studying the relations between employee trust 

in management in a Quebec manufacturing company and their job satisfaction, intention to quit, level of employee participation in decision making and their commitment. The article found that employee trust in management is an important determinant of their willingness to participate in decision making. Insufficient employee participation in decision making in turn leads to low level of employee job satisfaction and employee commitment. Lack of employee commitment and engagement affects the employee’s intention to quit. Part one of this article series gives a background to the case and problem, introduces the methodology and presents the hypotheses from the review of the relevant literature. Part two of this article series analyzed and discussed the findings of the research. Part three of this series will give a summary, key recommendations and alternatives for the solution.

Background of the company: SV Systems International SV系统国际：公司背景

SV Systems International is a dynamic, innovative and fast-growing organization that was founded in 2000. SV Systems International (SVSI) employs 90 workers and is a division of SVSI Plastique Inc. that specializes in the manufacturing and marketing of ventilation systems for farm buildings. By constantly developing new products, SVSI offers a complete line of ventilation products designed for all types of breeding. Over the years, SVSI has become a leader in natural ventilation systems intended for modern animal buildings. First, addressing the North American market, SVSI began to offer their products on the East European market beginning of 2005. In order to develop the European market, a first Western Europe sales manager position was introduced in 2010. In 2011 the company created a new fans division named ‘‘Maxum Tech’’. Today, SVSI ventilation systems are sold throughout North America, Europe and Eastern Europe through specialized distributors. SVSI workforce is composed of a team of expert advisors, engineers and construction specialists who ensure a healthy and continual business development. The main divisions of the organization we approached are: manufacturing (36 people), management and financial administration (20 people), and marketing, customer service, shipping, and sales. SVSI currently provides high quality systems such as natural ventilation systems, mechanical ventilation systems, chimneys and roof vents, electronic controllers and is involved in a number of high added value projects that drive the company forward. SVSI acts as a leader in the natural ventilation systems market. Part one of this article series will give a background to the case and problem, introduce the methodology and present the hypotheses from the review of the relevant literature. Description of the problem In their very competitive industry and environment, SVSI is facing competition from larger companies thus bringing innovation, efficiency and high customer satisfaction at the heart of their strategy. The market pressure drives SVSI in a way to build and apply better efficient production and delivery processes, while better responding to customer specific needs. This will reinforce SVSI position as a leader in the natural ventilation systems market. The company seeks to gain more North America and International market share. This can be achieved by producing and delivering better, faster and cheaper solutions while staying compliant with strong local and global market regulations. As a growing company, SVSI has expressed complicated ways to attain and over-achieve their goals, and their general manager detailed their executive strategy they try to reach that is based on: B leveraging innovation as a competitive advantage; B deliver new quality products constantly exceeding customer needs; B improving customer experience; B increasing effective relationships with customers and vendors based on trust and respect; and B honor their commitments. 

‘‘ Insufficient employee participation in decision making in turn leads to low level of employee job satisfaction and employee commitment. Lack of employee commitment and engagement affects the employee’s intention to quit. ’’ By further debating the current company’s performance and by analyzing the alignment of the performances with their global business strategy, we realized that despite the current efforts from management to attain these goals, the company faces organizational issues that prevent SVSI from attaining and exceeding some of their executive strategy. Indeed, when discussing their internal decision-making processes, we observed that employees do not usually participate to this step. In fact, SVSI decision process is more achieved at an individual level. We discussed the idea that moving from individual decision making to group decision making can significantly bring them advantages and increase their effectiveness performance. Moreover, an interesting fact to observe is that the turnover rate in SVSI displays an average rate of 38 percent for the years of 2009-2010. In addition to knowledge that leaves, along with a period of training for new employees, a significant part of effort and time is being spent to ensure standard mandatory business continuity. It became apparent that this situation consumes energy that could be spent elsewhere; instead in improving their way of doing business, including improved production processes, the company could use this time in order to address new markets and expand effective long-term relationships with their customers, vendors and internally. Lastly, one major point we noted is the low level of employee engagement and commitment that currently limits the company to attain higher levels of achievements. Employees do not seem to express a strong feeling of belonging to their company, thus directly influencing the company’s capability to build a strong internal cooperative environment to rely on. A meta-analysis conducted by Harter et al. (2002) reinforced the concept that there is a connection between employee engagement and business results. This suggests that low employee engagement noticed at SVSI directly influences the performance of the company and counts as a strong contributor to meet their executive strategy. Harter et al. (2002) concluded that, ‘‘[. . .] employee satisfaction and engagement are related to meaningful business outcomes at a magnitude that is important to many organizations’’. Moreover, the International Survey Research (International Survey Research, 2005) team has similarly found encouraging evidence that organizations can only reach their full potential through engaging employees and customers (International Survey Research, 2005). Three main issues have been identified that contribute to the challenge the company is experiencing to support and achieve their business strategy. They can be expressed as follows: B There is not sufficient level of employee participation in their decision making processes. B There is a low level of employee commitment and engagement. B There is a high level of employee turnover. Although the company provides certain forms of work recognition such as rewards and team recognition to try to address these issues, our study is based on analyzing these three problems by gathering more data from SVSI employees through the form of a questionnaire. The results of this case study will provide findings, alternatives and recommendations based on data analysis supported by accurate research concepts and articles.#p#分页标题#e#

The following section describes the methodology that has been used and will then present and describe the considered hypothesis for study. Methodology The issues gathered from SVSI general manager were developed into five hypotheses, which will be validated by our study. To validate the hypotheses we used the following approach: B The literature review was done to develop the hypotheses and to prove empirical links between dependent and independent variables. B The field research was conducted to collect the data and find the correlations between the variables in five proposed hypotheses. Data were collected through a survey of the production staff and administrative staff. A total of 20 copies of the survey questionnaire in both English and French were distributed within the survey pool of which 17 were returned giving an acceptable response rate of approximately 85 percent. The survey did not ask respondents to provide any information that would identify them directly. Respondents were simply asked to indicate their agreement with the above items on a scale ranging from ‘‘strongly disagree’’ to ‘‘strongly agree’’. See the Appendix, Figure A1 for data on the sample. Development of hypotheses Based on the literature review and the information obtained through a qualitative analysis of the company five hypotheses were defined. H1 investigates the relationship between the dependent variable employee participation in decision making (PDM) and the independent variable trust: H1. Insufficient level of trust in management leads to unwillingness of employees to participate in decision making. H2. Ineffective internal communication leads to low level of employee engagement and commitment. H3. Insufficient employee participation in decision making leads to low level of employee job satisfaction. H4. Low level of employee satisfaction leads to low level of employee commitment. H5. Lack of employee commitment and engagement affects their intention to quit (turnover). The linkage between the variables within the hypotheses based on literature In this part of the article we will review the literature to investigate the links between the independent and dependent variables within the hypotheses. H1 Trust within organizations is very complex aspect which plays an important role in the well-functioning of organizations (Reychav and Sharkie, 2010). Our study will concentrate on employees’ trust in top management. Although this concept is not popular among the literature, some theorists believe that trust in management is necessary to ensure successful employee participation. Jones and George (1998) suggest that effective management requires trust, which is the foundation for cooperation and teamwork in organizations. In order for employee participation effort to be successful, a certain level of trust with management must exist (Jones and George, 1998). The interviews conducted by Hatcher et al. (1991) with 149 supervisors and non-management employees in five gain sharing companies revealed that ‘‘apathy and negative attitudes’’ toward management were important individual determinants in an VOL. 45 NO. 4 2013 jINDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL TRAINING j PAGE 225  
 

employee’s decision to not participate in suggestion-making process (Hatcher et al., 1991). Another study conducted by Reychav and Sharkie (2010)investigated antecedents of perception of trust as a foundation for extra-role behavior in the public sector non-profit organizations. The findings supported the importance of trust in management in the employee evolvement in decision making (Reychav and Sharkie, 2010). However some researchers believe participation is a means to gain trust. The study performed by Martin and Singh (2004)at Alabama River Companies, proved the existence of strong positive relationship between trust in management and participation. And further analysis showed that ‘‘participation garners trust and trust doesn’t necessarily garners increased participation’’ (Martin and Singh, 2004). H2 The link between internal communication and employee commitment and engagement appears to be well supported in the literature. Moreover studies exploring the relationship between communication and commitment state that communication precedes commitment and influences it. The research conducted by Zeffane et al. (2011) demonstrated the importance of effective communication within organizations and its relationship with trust and organizational commitment. The study shows that trust and commitment ‘‘do not just happen’’; they should be maintained through effective communication (Zeffane et al., 2011). Another study performed by Appelbaum et al. (2009) also supported the link between commitment and communication. The results demonstrated that organizational commitment can be increased through effective communication between employees and management (Appelbaum et al., 2009). In addition, effective internal communication has been identified as a factor affecting engagement. The empirical study by Hayase and Traudt (2009) showed a positive relationship between factors of internal communication and factors of employee engagement. The results also indicated that communication channel satisfaction and channel combinations were linked to employee engagement (Hayase and Traudt, 2009). H3 Numerous studies have demonstrated that participation in decision making (PDM) increases employee job satisfaction (Witt et al., 2000; Scott-Ladd et al., 2006). This link is based on the presumption that employees who can influence decisions affecting them are more likely to appreciate the outcomes, which in turn reinforces satisfaction. The greatest satisfaction comes with high-level involvement, which takes place when employees are involved in ‘‘generating alternatives, planning processes and evaluating results’’ (Scott-Ladd et al., 2006). The study conducted by Daniels and Bailey (1999)proved that there is a direct linear relationship between PDM and job satisfaction. Researchers also found that participation in determining long-term organizational objectives is not the most important aspect of this relationship. Instead, participation in day-to-day decisions ‘‘may better meet an intrinsic biological need to influence the environment’’ (Daniels and Bailey, 1999). Witt and Myers (1992) also conclude that by including employees in decision-making processes and describing how decisions are made, managers can promote employee perceptions of fairness in the organization and thus facilitate favorable organizational outcomes. They also note that although the importance of PDM has been empirically identified, some managers still avoid PDM practices (Witt and Myers, 1992). H4 The literature suggests a positive correlation between employee job satisfaction and employee organizational commitment. Most of the research has treated job satisfaction as an independent and organizational commitment as a dependent variable (Gunlu et al., 2010; Gaertner, 1999; Vondrasek and Feinstein, 2000). For instance, the research conducted by Gunlu et al. (2010) in large-scale hotels in Turkey indicated that job satisfaction has an effect on organizational commitment. Gaertner (1999) examined the determinants of job PAGE 226 jINDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL TRAINING j VOL. 45 NO. 4 2013  
 

satisfaction and organizational commitment and the findings also demonstrated that job satisfaction is a cause of organizational commitment. Another research performed by Vondrasek and Feinstein (2000) analyzed the effects of job satisfaction on organizational commitment among the restaurant employees and the findings proved that satisfaction level would predict their commitment to the organization. However, some researchers have argued that organizational commitment may be an independent variable which may affect job satisfaction. As an example, Lau and Chong (2002) claim that managers who are highly committed to the organizations may experience higher levels of job satisfaction. H5 The relationship between job satisfaction and turnover is one of the most thoroughly investigated topics in the organizational behavior literature. However, numerous empirical studies suggest that employee commitment is more strongly related to turnover than is job satisfaction (Slugoski and Barton, 2008; Lazar et al., 2005). For example, the empirical study performed by Slugoski and Barton (2008) examined employee retention in Saskatchewan’s Crown corporations. The findings showed that among the other variables, organizational commitment had the greatest effect on intent to stay. The organizational behavior literature also supports the link between employee engagement and their intention to quit. The research conducted by Schaufeli and Bakker (2004) in four different Dutch service organizations showed that engaged employees are likely to have a greater attachment to their organization and a lower intention to leave their organization (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004). The study Albrecht and Andreetta (2011)also found a positive correlation between engagement and turnover. More specifically, the study showed that engagement partially mediated the influence of empowerment on affective commitment, which in turn affected turnover intentions. Part two of this article series will analyze and discuss the findings of the research. References Albrecht, S.L. and Andreetta, M. (2011), ‘‘The influence of empowering leadership, empowerment and engagement on affective commitment and turnover intentions in community health service workers’’, Leadership in Health Services, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 228-237. Appelbaum, S.H., Carrie`re, D., Benmoussa, K. and Elghawanmeh, B. (2009), ‘‘RX for excessive turnover: lessons in communicating a vision (part 1)’’, Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 41 No. 5, pp. 238-247. Daniels, K. and Bailey, A. (1999), ‘‘Strategy development processes and participation in decision making: predictors of role stressors and job satisfaction’’, Journal of Applied Management Studies, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 27-42. Gaertner, S. (1999), ‘‘Structural determinants of job satisfaction and organizational commitment in turnover models’’, Human Resource Management Review, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 479-493. Gunlu, E., Aksarayli, M. and Nilu¨fer, S.P. (2010), ‘‘Job satisfaction and organizational commitment of hotel managers in Turkey’’, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 22 No. 5, pp. 693-717. Harter, J.K., Schmidt, F.L. and Hayes, T.L. (2002), ‘‘Business-unit level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: a meta-analysis’’, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 87 No. 2, pp. 268-279. Hatcher, L., Ross, T.L. and Collins, D. (1991), ‘‘Attributions for participation and nonparticipation in gainsharing – plan involvement systems’’, Group & Organization Studies, Vol. 16 No. 1, p. 25. Hayase, L. and Traudt, P.J. (2009), Internal Communication in Organizations and Employee Engagement, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV. International Survey Research (2005), Employee Surveys, Towers and Watson, New York, NY. VOL. 45 NO. 4 2013 jINDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL TRAINING j PAGE 227  #p#分页标题#e#

Jones, G.R. and George, J.M. (1998), ‘‘The experience and evolution of trust: implications for cooperation and teamwork’’, The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 531-546. Lau, C.M. and Chong, J. (2002), ‘‘The effects of budget emphasis, participation and organizational commitment on job satisfaction: evidence from the financial services sector’’, Advances in Accounting Behavioral Research, Vol. 5, Emerald Group Publishing, Bingley, pp. 183-211. Martin, G. and Singh, D. (2004), Measuring the Relationships of Increased Employee Participation: An Analysis of Alabama River Companies, Northcentral University, Prescott Valley, AZ. Reychav, I. and Sharkie, R. (2010), ‘‘Trust: an antecedent to employee extra-role behavior’’, Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 227-247. Schaufeli, W.B. and Bakker, A.B. (2004), ‘‘Job demands, job resources, and their relationship with burnout and engagement: a multi-sample study’’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 293-315. Scott-Ladd, B., Travaglione, A. and Marshall, V. (2006), ‘‘Causal inferences between participation in decision making, task attributes, work effort, rewards, job satisfaction and commitment’’, Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 27 No. 5, pp. 399-414. Slugoski, E. and Barton, C. (2008), Employee Retention: Demographic Comparisons of Job Embeddedness, Job Alternatives, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Commitment, University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ. Vondrasek, D. and Feinstein, A.H. (2000), A Study of Relationships between Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment among Restaurant Employees, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV. Witt, L.A. and Myers, J.G. (1992), ‘‘Perceived environmental uncertainty and participation in decision making in the prediction of perceptions of the fairness of personnel decisions’’, Review of Public Personnel Administration, Vol. 12 No. 3, p. 49. Witt, L.A., Andrews, M.C. and Kacmar, K.M. (2000), ‘‘The role of participation in decision-making in the organizational politics-job satisfaction relationship’’, Human Relations, Vol. 53 No. 3, pp. 341-358. Zeffane, R., Tipu, S.A. and Ryan, J.C. (2011), ‘‘Communication, commitment and trust: exploring the triad’’, International Journal of Business and Management, Vol. 6 No. 6, pp. 77-87. Further reading Allen, N.J. and Meyer, J.P. (1990), ‘‘The measurement and antecedents of affective, continuance and normative commitment to the organization’’, Journal of Occupational Psychology, Vol. 63, pp. 1-18. Downs, C.W. and Hazen, M.D. (1977), ‘‘A factor analytic study of communication satisfaction’’, Journal of Business Communication, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 63-73. Farace, R.V., Monge, P.R. and Russell, H.M. (1977), Communicating and Organizing, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, p. 281. Latham, B.W., Seijts, G.H. and Tasa, K. (2004), ‘‘Goal setting and goal orientation: an integration of two different yet related literatures’’, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 47 No. 2, pp. 227-239. Littlejohn, S.W. and Foss, K.A. (2008), Theories of Communication, Thomson Wadsworth, Belmont, CA, p. 19. Meyer, J.P. and Allen, N.J. (1991), ‘‘A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment’’, Human Resource Management Review, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 61-89. Meyer, J.P., Allen, N.J. and Smith, C.A. (1993), ‘‘Commitment to organizations: extension and test of a three-component conceptualization’’, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 78 No. 4, pp. 538-551. Probst, T.M. (2005), ‘‘Countering the negative effects of job insecurity through participative decision making: lessons from the demand-control model’’, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 320-329. Schaufeli, W., Salanova, M., Gonza′lez-Roma, V. and Bakker, A.B. (2002), ‘‘The measurement of engagement and burnout: a two-sample confirmatory factor analytic approach’’, Journal of Happiness Studies, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 71-92. PAGE 228 jINDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL TRAINING j VOL. 45 NO. 4 2013  
 

Appendix FigureA1GeneralinformationaboutthesampleCorresponding author Steven H. Appelbaum can be contacted at: shappel@jmsb.concordia.ca To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: reprints@emeraldinsight.com Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints VOL. 45 NO. 4 2013 jINDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL TRAINING j PAGE 229  

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