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Chapter One of The Effect of Work Ethics and Discipline on Organizational Performance in a Non-governmental Organization
Background to the Study
Organizations, in any form, comprise groups of people and individuals who are associated, and work together in a bid to achieve common goals and objectives of the organization. Thus, these people associate with one another on a daily basis to perform their job-roles and to contribute efficiently and effectively to their organizations. By the way, individuals are recruited at work with their own unique personality traits like abilities, attitudes, values and perceptions, and this in itself can be a source of conflict in any organization (Knight & Ukpere, 2014). In the same vein, in a formal organization or establishment, as a result of conflicting interests, and acquisitive nature of some people, the behavioural attitudes of such people is deviant from the ethos, rules and regulation of the organization.
Other factors that are also essential to every organization the work ethics and discipline. Employees who strongly supports the work ethic is an employee who has a high commitment to the organization and subsequently more likely to make changes where such changes do not have the potential to change the basic values and goals of the organization and is considered beneficial for the organization, compared to employees who are less supportive work ethic and less committed to their organization that is more likely to make changes. Ethics and discipline need for working when people began to realize that progress in the field of business has led to people increasingly excluded from human values (humanistic), in a tight business competition that excels not only a company that has business criteria that good, but the company has ethics good business. The purposes of a organization’s own guidelines on ethical and disciplinary foundation for the apparatus related to the nature of power that tends to deviate. The power of an organization can only be implemented through discipline and ethics. At the same time the apparatus of organization, especially management of the organization also need to have a strong faith and high moral reference. Only the authorized capital such personalities, management can be developed further in order to build a more specific moral commitment to comply with the ethical and disciplinary values of the profession, manifestations of ethics and discipline adopted and implemented various social groups that differ from one another. Therefore ethics and discipline that describe the moral teaching and formation of character is always changing and evaluation of the community that supports it, as the dynamics of community life itself. The approach used in studying ethics and discipline, although it is moving dynamically, stays at the level of moral philosophy (normative ethics) and metha ethics. On the one hand, will give a moral justification frame and rejection of the merits of an attitude or action, on the other hand metha ethics appear to give meaning to all the assessment conducted by the formal philosophy (Djaenuri, 2015).
Organizational performance, work ethic and discipline in an organization affect job satisfaction and performance of employees. Some executives or leaders of the organization consider that the fulfillment of compensation, job satisfaction will follow. It is true because compensation is one of the important variables in the fulfillment and performance improvements. However, in reality there are also employees who are less satisfied although the standard of their needs are met, this could be for instance because he felt alienated, isolated in various ways, or treated unfairly by his superiors, or even its existence is not considered important by other employees, causing a sense of frustration. If this condition lasts for a long time, the effect will be difficult to repair; it can even lead to lethargy and low performance which will directly have effect on the organization.
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Statement of the Problem
It is believed that most non-governmental organizations workers in Nigeria operate on the principles of ethics and discipline that guide their work. Most of these principles are not duly followed by many of the employees as they often come too late, they do not have a sense of responsibility to come to the office in a timely manner, and it is strongly associated with the ethics of each employee. An employee who has ethics should feel embarrassed when coming late to the office, but in fact, many employees still arrive late, and they do not feel guilty with the action. Besides the issue of discipline, many employees do not do their work effectively and efficiently. They do a job without any sense of a caring attitude on the end result. This is indicated by the number of employees who work only so long. When they were asked to explain archive or file in question, the employee cannot do it. It showed a lack of sense of responsibility which is owned by the employee to work and is strongly related to the performance of each employee concerned. On several occasions found any employee who leaves a job for personal affairs in working hours. This is shown by the low intensity of services provided to the people who need the service. Some employees only come to be absent in the morning after an exit permit for personal business until late afternoon. The lack of a sense of responsibility which is owned by employees to be one cause of this state, and the sense of responsibility is related to the ethics and discipline of each employee. Therefore, this study will seek to understand how work ethics and discipline are being implemented in organizations to achieve a better organizational performance. This study shall use a non-governmental organization, Amnesty International as a case study.
Objectives of the Study
The broad objective of this study is to determine the effect of work ethics and discipline on organizational performance in a non-Governmental Organization by using Amnesty International, Lagos as a case study. The specific objectives are:
1) To appraise the impacts of employee work ethic and discipline on organizational performance
2) To identify employees’ perceptions towards workplace ethics
3) To examine the influence of employees’ decisions and behaviour at the workplace
4) To find out the determinants of organizational effectiveness in disciplinary actions
Research Questions
The following are the research questions that guide this study:
1) What are the impacts of employee work ethic and discipline on organizational performance?
2) What are the employees’ perceptions towards workplace ethics?
3) What is the influence of employees’ decisions and behaviour at the workplace?
4) What are the determinants of organizational effectiveness in disciplinary actions?
Research Hypotheses
The following hypotheses shall be tested for this study:
1) There is no significant relationship between employee work ethic and discipline and organizational performance?
2) There is a significant correlation between employees’ decisions and behaviour at the workplace
Significance of the Study
Discipline and ethics in every organization are highly instrumental to effective organizational performance. This study is of the essence and useful to the government and nongovernmental organizations in Nigeria in establishing the influence of workplace discipline and ethics and its contribution towards organization performance. It gives the measures and recommendations which will impact positively performance of employees and organization in general if well capitalized. It provides also challenges for other researchers to carry out similar research on workplace ethics and add to their existing knowledge. It also offers inputs to policy makers. Thus, this study will reveal the impact of effective disciplinary measures on both employee and organizational performance. It is believed that this study will contribute to existing body of knowledge and it will be highly beneficial to management of both private and public organizations, the general readers and future researchers who may be interested in this kind of research work
Scope of the study
This study focuses primarily on an appraisal of the effect of work ethics and discipline on organizational performance in a non-Governmental Organization, specifically; the interest of the study will be restricted on the Amnesty International, Lagos.
Limitations of the Study
There are the possible problems the researchers may face in the course of conducting the research work which may include:
Financial Constraint: Every good and successful research work requires sufficient finance. However, this research work may face the problem of finance as a result of the little financial resources at the disposal of the researchers.
Time constraint: The conduct of all activities relating to the research work is time consuming whereas the institution has specified limited time for the conduct of the research work. The allotted time for study is too short for the conduct of the research and this may limit the scope of the research work.
Definition of Terms
Employee: Personnel otherwise known as employee are the body of men and women who are employed to accomplish a particular task or render a particular service in an organization and are being paid for the work done or service rendered
Work Ethics: is a belief that hard work and diligence have a moral benefit and an inherent ability, virtue or value to strengthen character and individual abilities. It is a set of values centered on importance of work and manifested by determination or desire to work hard.
Discipline: Discipline as a system of rules and mechanism for ensuring that disciplinary codes are followed. This implies that every organization has its rules and regulation “dos and don’ts”. Observance of these sets of rules in itself is discipline.
Organization: This is a body of people assembled together to accomplish a specified or predetermined objective
Performance: Performance is the consistent ability to produce results over prolonged period of time and in a variety of assignments. Its elements include effectiveness, efficiency, productivity, quality and behaviour. Performance can thus be tangible or behavioural. It also implies output in relation to a job done or practice undertaken
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