A study on efficiency and effectiveness of suggestion system : A case study of oil products distribution

Article history: Received October 29, 2012 Received in revised format 15 December 2012 Accepted 17 December 2012 Available online December 19 2012 One of the most important tools for improving the relative efficiencies of any organization is to establish suggestion system. Having a reliable system, which could reflect all employees’ comments and concerns, helps managers take necessary actions to remove any possible obstacle in the system. In this paper, we measure efficiency and effectiveness of suggestion system in the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution. We also provide practical suggestions for improvement and necessary actions required to review the system. The proposed study of this paper uses a sample of 297 people from 1294 employees who work in different position for some of the regional offices of this firm in north part of Iran. The study has used two separate questionnaires, where the first one consists of 40 questions in Likert scale trying to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the suggestion system. In addition, we use another questionnaire to rank important factors detected in the first stage. The results of questionnaires have been analyzed using different statistical tests. © 2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.


Introduction
During the past few years, suggestion systems have received increasing attentions from researcers.Suggestions systems definitly can increase management capabilities on learning through feedback received and improving the entire system.A good suggestion system can disclose any existing shortcomings in the system and helps management team detect better solutions to overcome troubles.Despite the advantages, many manegers try not to use such systems for various reasons such as fear in management resistence, weakness in suggestions system, etc.However, there are many evidences, which indicate that management teams normally attempt to underestand their shortcoming through suggestion systems (Milner et al. 1995;Recht & Wilderom, 1998;Heresy & Blanchard, 2001;Anderson, 2004).Nouri and Ahanchi (2012) investigated the barriers of having recommendation systems in education system and focused on management team's shortcomings.They reported that lack of accepting risk among management team is number one barrier in having suggestion system followed by existing conflict between management style and suggestions system and lack of management's belief to suggestions system, weakness in education for suggestions system and fear in management disruption because of having suggestions system.The other barriers coming in the last priority in terms of their relative importance include lack of management's support to suggestions system and weakness in management position because of accepting suggestions system.Pirayesh et al. (2012) presented a study to study the effect of information technology, hiring high quality skilled management team, using high quality standards and increasing employees' awareness on managing internal control.The survey implemented a questionnaire based on Likert scale and distributes among the people who work in either administration or financial sectors of governmental agencies in province of Zanjan, Iran.Their results showed that the implementation of information technology positively influences management team to control their system, more effectively, using more skilled and specialized managers positively influences management internal control, an organization with suitable standard positively influences management internal control and increasing employees' awareness positively influences management internal control.Jun et al. (2006) performed an empirical investigation on the transferability of total quality management (TQM) practices to offshore manufacturing enterprises by validating relationships among top management commitment, human resource (HR)-focused TQM practices, employee satisfaction, and loyalty.The research objective was to isolate critical TQM practices, which would enhance employee satisfaction and loyalty among maquiladora workers.The results indicated that employee empowerment, teamwork, and employee compensation had an important and positive impact on employee satisfaction.Gao et al. (2011) investigated the role of leader trust and employee voice using the moderating impact of empowering leader behaviors.
Ahangari and Amirzadeh (2011) used a database of 360 corrective feedback moves where two EFL teachers provided to their learners at three levels of proficiency.Eight types of corrective feedback were detected and their distribution in relation to proficiency levels of learners was investigated.They reported that recast was the most frequently implemented kind of corrective feedback by the teachers at all three levels of proficiency.Atwater and Brett (2005) investigated the factors, which influence leaders' reactions to 360° feedback and the relationship of feedback reactions to subsequent development activities and changes in leader behavior.Atwater and Brett (2005) stated that leaders with low ratings and the people who agreed with others about their ratings were less motivated than the people who received low ratings and over rated themselves.In addition, for leaders with high ratings, agreement between self and other did not impact their motivation.
Vakil Alroaia and Najafi (2012) investigated a 360° feedback approach for performance measurement of all employees who worked for municipality of the city of Tabas located in east part of Iran.The proposed model of this paper also used hierarchical method to cluster various attributes based on different characteristics and implementd AHP to find out the relative importance of all items.The survey implemented five personal characteristics including cognitive, technical, personal and human skills and for each major item, the proposed model considers various sub-criteria.They reported that technical and cognitive skills were the most important personal characteristics followed by human and personal characteristics.The results of this survey also indicated that responsibility and quality of work are the most important employee characteristics.Wood et al. (2004) examined the feasibility of a 360-degree evaluation to measure radiology resident competence in professionalism and communication skills.They implemented an evaluation form with 10 Likert-type items related to professionalism and communication skills was filled by a resident, supervising radiologist and patient after resident-patient interactions associated with breast biopsy procedures.They were also assessed by faculty, using an end-of-rotation global rating form.They studied 56 completed 360-degree data sets and seven rotational evaluations for seven residents.The results of this pilot study suggested that self, faculty, and patient evaluations of resident performance constituted a reliable evaluation of resident competence.However, they reported that more investigation were necessary to determine whether the 360-degree assessment could be incorporated into residency programs and how frequently the assessment could be performed.
The purpose of this study is to learn more about the barriers on having suggestion system in educational environment.The organization of this paper first present details of survey in section 2, section 3 presents the ranking system and concluding remarks are given in the last to summarize the contribution of the paper.

The proposed study
The proposed study of this paper uses a standard questionnaire and plan to distribute it among a randomly selected population from 1294 people who work for educational services in province of Golestan, Iran.The sample size is calculated as follows, where N is the population size, represents the yes/no categories, and N=1294, the number of sample size is calculated as n=297.In order to verify whether the data are normally distributed or not we use Kolmogorev-smirnov test (Peacock, 1983) where the null hypothesis is that data are normally distributed and Table 1 summarizes the results.

Table 1
The summary of Kolmogorev-smirnov test (KS) for data Degree of freedom KS P-Value 264 0.133 0.098 As we can observe from the results of Table 1, P-value is well more than 0.05 and we cannot reject the null hypothesis and the distribution is normal.Next, we present details of the hypotheses along with the results of our statistical tests.

The results
In this section, we present details of our survey on testing various hypotheses of this survey.

Management effectiveness perspective
The first hypothesis is associated with management perspectives on suggestion systems.
H 0 : The existing suggestion system is neither efficient nor effective in management's perspective.
H 1 : The existing suggestion system is both efficient and effective in management's perspective.
In terms of effectiveness, the questionnaire consists of 13 questions in two groups of measuring the effectiveness of human resources and management team.

Measuring the effectiveness of human resources
In our survey for measuring the effectiveness of human resources, there were 265 observations with mean of 3.5132.As we can observe from the results of Table 2, t-student is calculated as 18.846, which is well greater than 1.96 and we can reject the null hypothesis leading us to conclude that the existing suggestion system is both efficient and effective in management's perspective.

Measuring the effectiveness of organization
In our survey for measuring the effectiveness of organization, there were 265 observations with mean of 3.0189.Table 3 demonstrates the results of our survey, As we can observe from the results of Table 3, t-student is calculated as 12.348, which is well greater than 1.96 and we can reject the null hypothesis leading us to conclude that the existing suggestion system is both efficient and effective in management's perspective.

Recommendation efficiency
This part of the survey includes measuring the impact of efficiency in terms of organization, management and human resources.

Organizational efficiency
In terms of measuring the efficiency of organization, we have had 265 observations with mean of 3.0189.Table 4 shows details of our survey, As we can observe from the results of Table 4, t-student is calculated as 7.591, which is well greater than 1.96 and we can reject the null hypothesis leading us to conclude that the existing suggestion system has efficiently managed in terms of management's perspective.

Efficiency organization
In terms of measuring the efficiency of organization, we have had 265 observations with mean of 2.7660.Table 5 shows details of our survey, As we can observe from the results of Table 5, t-student is calculated as 3.830, which is well greater than 1.96 and we can reject the null hypothesis leading us to conclude that the existing suggestion system maintains efficient organization in management's point of view.

Efficiency of human resources
In terms of measuring the efficiency of human resources, we have had 265 observations with mean of 2.6566.Table 6 shows details of our survey, As we can observe from the results of Table 6, t-student is calculated as 2.131, which is well greater than 1.96 and we can reject the null hypothesis leading us to conclude that the existing suggestion system maintains efficient human resources in management's perspective.

Strength of recommendation system
Another aspect of this survey is to find the strength of recommendation system, which is measured in terms of management and organization.

Strength of Management
In terms of measuring the strength of management, we have measured 265 observations with mean of 2.6528.Table 7 shows details of our survey,  7 that t-student is equal to 2.460, which is well greater than 1.96 and we can reject the null hypothesis leading us to conclude that the existing suggestion system maintains good management strength in terms of management's perspective.

Strength of Organization
In terms of measuring the strength of organization, we have considered 265 observations with mean of 2.3094.Table 8 shows details of our survey, As we can observe from the results of Table 8, t-student is calculated as 3.134, which is well greater than 1.96 and we can reject the null hypothesis leading us to conclude that the existing suggestion system maintains good organizational strength in management's perspective.

Analysis of suggestion system committee
The other question of this survey investigates whether the current committee members are performing their jobs, efficiently and effectively.Table 9 shows details of our survey, As we can observe from the results of Table 9, t-student is calculated as 2.199, which is greater than 1.96 and we can reject the null hypothesis leading us to conclude that the existing committee has been efficient in management's perspective.

Analyzing the effects of different factors
The second part of our survey investigates whether the effects of different factors are equal or not.In other words, we study the following hypothesis, H 0 : There are some differences on the effects of different factors on suggestion systems.
H 1 : There is no difference on the effects of different factors on suggestion systems.
Table 10 shows details of our findings on this survey, As we can observe from the results of Table 10, F-statistics is meaningful and we can conclude that there are some differences on the effects of various factors on suggestion system.Table 11 summarizes details of the ranking of different factors in suggestion system.As we can see, three factors including continuous and periodic reporting of system performance recommendations, creating a positive attitude towards the staff recommendations as well as a good working environment for all employees with respect are the most important components in our survey.In order to have a successful recommendation system, it is very important that people believe in suggestion system.In addition, expanding the suggestion system to contractors, clients and families as well as creating competition among employee to offer suggestions and emphasis on group proposals are among the other important factors in our survey.There is no doubt that offering tracking facilities, mechanized review could contribute the system, significantly, and having a full-time executive secretary, interested, active and efficient are among other factors, which could contribute the suggestion system, substantially.

Conclusion
In this paper, we have presented an empirical study to measure the impact of various factors on having a successful suggestion system in one of the biggest oil industries in Middle East.Based on the results of the survey, continuous and periodic reporting of system performance recommendations, creating a positive attitude towards the staff recommendations as well as a good working environment for all employees with respect are the most important components in our survey.In order to have a successful recommendation system, it is very important that people believe in suggestion system.In addition, expanding the suggestion system to contractors, clients and families as well as creating competition among employee to offer suggestions and emphasis on group proposals are among the other important factors in our survey.
Table 2 demonstrates the results of our survey,

Table 3
Details of statistical observations on measuring the effectiveness of organization

Table 8
Details of statistical observations on measuring the strength of management