FINANCIAL REWARD AND WORKERS’ COMMITMENT IN RIVERS STATE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES AND PARASTATALS

Owoupele, Z. M.

Department of Management, Faculty of Management Sciences, Rivers State University,

Port Harcourt, Nigeria

ABSTRACT

The study examined the relationship between financial reward and workers’ commitment in Rivers State Government Agencies and Parastatals. The study used financial reward as the predictor variable while affective and normative commitments were used as the measures of the criterion variable. The population of the study consisted of 341 employees drawn from twenty nine (29) civil service agencies in Rivers State, however, due to the complexity of accessing all the workers, which amounts to 11,883 employees according to records from the Administration department of the Head of Service, a convenient sampling was used to derive four (4) agencies, namely, Rivers State News Paper Cooperation (The Tide), Rivers State Civil Service Commission, Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission, and Rivers State Tourism and Development Agency. The study took a cross sectional survey design approach on covering the 4 agencies in Rivers State, which has a total population of three hundred and forty one (341) employees, while Taro Yamene formula Sampling technique was used to derive a sample size of two hundred and seventy five (275) employees. The researcher distributed 275 copies of questionnaires and received 269 representing 98% used for the analysis and the data gathered were presented using frequency tables, simple percentages, bar chart, descriptive statistics of mean, standard deviation, and variance were used to analyze data. Also, the hypothesis was tested using Spearman ranking order correlation of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0. Findings revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between financial reward and affective and normative commitment in Rivers State Government Agencies. Based on the findings it was concluded that there is a significant positive relationship between financial reward and workers’ commitment in Rivers State Government Agencies. Therefore, the study recommends that the Rivers State Civil Service administrators should review salary increment and the provision of bonuses and allowances for workers, train and retrain employees to develop their knowledge and inject appreciation and recognition into the system to enhance productivity and workers’ commitment to the service.