CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to Study
Employee commitment to work and job satisfaction are of major interest in the field of organizational behaviour and the practice of human resource management. Organizations usually see the average worker as the root source of quality and productivity gains. Such organizations do not look to capital investment, but to employees as the fundamental source of improvement. An organization is effective to the degree to which it achieves its goals. An effective organization will make sure that there is a spirit of cooperation and sense of commitment and satisfaction within its sphere of influence. In order to make employees satisfied and committed to their jobs there is the need for strong and effective motivation at the various levels, departments and sections of these organizations.
Luthans (1998) asserts that motivation is the process that arouses, energises, directs and sustains behaviour and performance. That is, it is the process of stimulating people to achieve a desired task. The concept of job satisfaction has been vital for organizations which aim to achieve organizational excellence. As Amstrong (1999) says, job satisfaction refers to the attitudes and feelings people have about their work. Positive and favourable attitudes towards the job indicate job satisfaction while negative and unfavourable attitudes indicate job dissatisfaction. Amstrong argues that commitment to work that helps organizations to be more successful, is most likely to happen when employees are motivated, feel committed to the organization and when their jobs give them high level of satisfaction. It involves employees going an extra mile in the conduct of their duties which is imperative to the achievement of organizational goals.
Management must understand that people work for reward of some sort, that the organization has a common duty to pay wages and that there exists a wage/effort bargain (employees work for certain standards in return for certain rewards). They need to balance the fixed and variable movement through the salary structure to provide incentives and reward performance. Management needs to balance the requirement of attracting and retaining suitable skilled staff with the need to keep labour cost under control. The employment package to achieve these objectives normally consists of a number of elements which may exist together or in different combinations. These elements can be split into financial rewards such as salary, allowances, bonuses and productivity payments,
