Effect of Organizational Structure on Employee Involvement and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour in Select Telecommunication Firms in South-East Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined the relationship between employee involvement (EI) and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) by exploring organisational structure (OS) as contextual variable influencing EI and OCB in the Nigerian telecommunication industry. Cross-sectional survey was used to obtain data from the respondents. The accessible population of 800 comprised of the employees in the state branches of the selected telecom firms in the major cities of the five states of the South-East region of Nigeria. The Krejcie and Morgan’s (1970) table on sample size determination was used to get a sample size of 260. The five point Likert Scale was used in the questionnaire distributed to respondents while the Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient was used to identify and test the strength of a relationship between the sets of data. The partial correlation technique was used in testing the multivariate association between the predictor, the criterion and the contextual variable at a 95% confidence interval. The findings from our analysis indicate: that OS significantly moderates the relationship existing between EI and OCB in the telecommunication firms in Nigeria. The study therefore concluded that EI exists in the telecommunication industry in Nigeria, and these influence employees’ OCB. The study recommends that the decentralized nature in the organizational structure of the telecommunication firms in Nigeria should be encouraged. This is because it has improved interpersonal relationship, communication, enhanced workers show of ingenuity, creativity as well as deeper display of organisational citizenship behaviour to the firms. Finally, by exploring the effect of contextual variable influencing EI and OCB, organizations can develop stronger organisational structure that can enhance their competitive advantage and ensure effectiveness.

Keywords: employee involvement, organisational structure, organisational citizenship behaviour, telecommunication firms