Examining the link between HRM Practices and Employees ’ Performance in Nigerian public sector

Article history: Received February 5, 2016 Received in revised format April 15, 2016 Accepted April 20, 2016 Available online April 25, 2016 Improving employee and organizational performance has been the main concern of many organizations for decades and several factors have also been studied as predictors of employee performance in organizations. However, studies that comprehensively measured all the dimensions of employee performance that enhance organizational effectiveness are limited. This paper explored the influence of HRM practices on the employee performance in the Nigerian public sector. Using cross sectional method on 265 participants from local government areas, the findings revealed that HRM practices such as job rotation, job autonomy and career planning had a significant and positive influence on all the three dimensions of employee performance (task, contextual and adaptive performance). © 2016 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.


Introduction
In order to successfully attain their goals and achieve competitive advantage, organizations required the contributions of highly performing individuals (employees), so as to deliver the products and services they specialized in (Sonnentag & Frese, 2002).However, the performance of public sector employees in the developing country like Nigeria is characterized by poor attitude to work (Suleiman, 2013), inefficiency (Obasanjo, 2003), declining standard on the provision of public goods and services both in terms of quality and quantities (Salisu, 2001).These problems led to public outcry that made government to establish several public service reform measures such as public service reform of 1997-2007 and 2010-2013 among others.These reforms introduces SERVICOM (An agency established to ensure that citizens enjoyed efficient and effective goods and service delivery), reviewing the public service organizational structures, rationalizing ministries and departments with the aim of improving the performance of employees for optimum service delivery and enhance their efficiency and effectiveness.But still, as recently argued by Inyang and Akaegbu (2014), designing and implementing effective human resource management (HRM) strategies and practices is highly needed to facilitate the development of effective, competent and highly performing workforce in the public sector.
Nevertheless, majority of these studies operationalized employee performance as unidimensional construct.Despite, the arguments of both earlier scholars (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993;Campbell, 1990;Murphy, 1989;Tsui et al., 1997) and recent scholars (Demortier et al., 2014;Fluegge, 2008;Koopmans et al., 2011), that performance at individual level is multi-dimensional construct.This clearly indicated that studies that operationalized employee performance as unidimensional construct had not comprehensively captured the real measurement of employee performance.In this regard, Borman, Klimoski, and Ilgen (2003) argued that each of these three aspect of employee performance (task, contextual and adaptive performance) provided unique contribution toward enhancing organizational effectiveness.For instance, if an employee in a given organization exhibit exceptional regard on task performance but fail to exhibit contextual performance (like cooperating with or assisting other employees) the organizational effectiveness will suffer.Similarly, higher level of task related performance alone without adaptive performance may likely cause stagnation over a period of time or may led to inability to coup with changes thereby leading to deterioration of the overall performance and organizational effectiveness.To address this, the present study attempted to fill this gap by looking at the multi-dimensional nature of employee performance comprehensively.Drawing upon social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), the present study use empirical data from public sectors.The sector that received less attention compared to private sector (Safdar, 2011).

Employee performance
Employee performance simply refers to behaviors of an individual (employee) that can make a significant difference to the organizational goal accomplishment (Motowidlo, 2003).This indicated that employee performance is the expected value of what people do in organizations which are relevant towards enhancing organizational effectiveness.For the purpose of this study, three dimensions of employee performance that enhance organizational effectiveness are considered.They include: task performance, contextual performance and adaptive performance (Allworth & Hesketh, 1999;Borman & Motowidlo, 1993;Koopmans et al., 2012).Task performance is defined by Borman and Motowidlo, (1993) 'as the effectiveness with which employee (job incumbents) perform activities or behaviors that contribute towards achieving the organization's technical core (objectives) either directly by carrying out a part of its technological process, or through indirect ways by providing the needed services or materials.For instance, when fire fighter performs a rescue operation he/she had performed task performance (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993;Borman & Motowidlo, 1997).Similarly, Borman and Motowidlo (1993) conceptualized contextual performance "as individual behaviors that support the organizational, social, and psychological environment in which the technical core must function".Contextual performance encompassed behaviors of employees that are not within the required job description but still promotes organizational effectiveness.On the other hand, adaptive performance as the third dimension of employee performance refers to the level to which an individual employee(s) adapts to changes in the work environment (Griffin, Neal, & Parker, 2007).Thus, it is an aspect of employee performance that reflects acquiring and enhancing competencies in response to different changes in organization.

HRM Practices
HRM practices as a concept have been defined by different scholars in many ways.Schuler and Jackson (1987), defined HRM practices as the organizational activities directed at managing the employees and ensuring that these resources (employees) are utilized towards the attaining organizational goals.Similarly, Delery and Doty (1996) conceptualized HRM practices as set of policies and practices specifically designed and executed to ensure that organizations' employees (human capital) contribute toward the attainment of organizational objectives.Simply put, building on the above definitions, HRM practices comprises set of specific practices, philosophies and formal policies, designed by organizations to attract, motivate, develop, and retain human resource (employees) for effective functioning of the organization.

HRM practices and employee performance
This section provides the link between all the six HRM practices (job rotation, training, compensation, job autonomy, communication and career planning) and employee task, adaptive and contextual performance.

Job rotation and employee performance
The HRM practice of moving employees to work at different tasks or positions within the organization for a given periods of time in a planned ways through lateral transfers that allowed employees to acquire a range of knowledge skills, and competencies is called Job rotation (Jorgensen et al., & Dunning, 2005).Job rotation provided employees with the opportunities to learn multiple skills, knowledge and outlooks (Eguchi, 2005).Previous studies indicates a positive link between job rotation and employee performance in private sector organizations (Hosseini et al., 2015;Khan et al., 2014).They argued that adoption of effective job rotation practice in organization brings positive employee performance.In addition, Rashki et al. (2014) revealed that lateral transfer of employee from one duty post to another within the organization significantly promote high employee performance.The above findings gave rise to our first hypothesis: H1a: Job rotation positively relates to task performance, H1b: Job rotation positively relates to contextual performance, H1c: Job rotation positively relates to adaptive performance.

Training and Employee Performance
Latham (1988) defined training & development as "the systematic process of acquiring and development of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are required by the employees to adequately perform a given task or job or to improve performance in their job environment".Training allows employees to initiates the development of new skills and behaviors coupled with the motivation to apply those skills and behaviors in their task and contextual activities at work (Sels, 2002;Way, 2002).Prior research has demonstrated the influence of training on employee performance (Jagero, Komba, & Mlingi, 2012;Nadarasa, 2013;Tabiu & Nura, 2013;Tiwari, 2011).Extant empirical research has shown that training had a significant positive relation with employee performance (Amin et al., 2013;Khan & Jabbar, 2013;Sultana et al., 2012).In addition, the study conducted by Dysvik and Kuvaas (2008), established that training opportunities is positively significant with both task performance and contextual performance in Norwegian service organizations.Based on these arguments and empirical evidences above the following hypotheses are advanced.
H2a: Training is positively related to task performance.

H2b:
Training is positively related to contextual performance.

H2c: Training is positively related to adaptive performance 2.3.3 Compensation and Employee Performance
Compensation simply refers to total amount of rewards (both the financial and the nonfinancial) that organizations/companies give employees in return for work performed (Williams, 2008).Management and employee always views both financial and the nonfinancial rewards as motivator of performance improvement (Nadarajah et al., 2012).Shahzad et al. (2008) supported that good compensation scheme that comprises both financial and non financial rewards motivate employees to work harder and show high competencies towards achieving organizational objectives.Compensation is also considered to be one of the key factors that could influence the performance of employee (Vlachos, 2009).Empirical studies on the relationship between compensation and employee performance revealed that compensation positively relates with employee performance (Baloch et al., 2010;Marwat et al., 2006;Shahzad et al., 2008).They supported that adequate compensation package encourage employees towards higher task, contextual and adaptive performance.This led to our third hypotheses: H3a: Compensation is positively related to task performance.
H3b: Compensation is positively related to contextual performance.

H3c: Compensation is positively related to adaptive performance 2.3.4 Job autonomy and Employee Performance
Job autonomy as HRM practice allows employees substantial discretion and freedom in the determination of ways and procedure to be followed in conducting their assigned job in organization (Hackman & Oldham, 1975).Langfred and Moye (2004) argued that job autonomy practice enhances employee performance as in make the employees to perceive that they are more capable of performing assigned task.In a similar way, Huang (2015) supported that employee performance increases when employees enjoyed more autonomy and discretion in organization.Findings from the study of Cho and Yoon (2009), supported positive influence of autonomy on employee performance in the context of Korean public service.Similarly, Gellatly and Irving (2001), found positive relationship between autonomy and contextual performance.Based on these the forth hypothesis is formulated: H4a: Job autonomy is positively related to task performance.
H4b: Job autonomy is positively related to contextual performance.
H4c: Job autonomy is positively related to adaptive performance

Communication and Employee Performance
Communication as HRM practice refers to the process of exchanging information in organization from one person (employee) to another, via understandable signals or symbols (Leković & Berber, 2014).Good communication practice (both upward and downward) increases employee confidence level and trust leading to more positive performance.Gray and Laidlaw (2002) opined that effective communication practice led to more positive work consequences in organization.For instance, when employees enjoyed appropriate communication in their organization like receiving timely and adequate feedback information, been kept well informed of changes etc., then favorable organizational outcomes from such employees would be expected.Moreover, empirical study from Muda, Rafiki, and Harahap (2014), revealed that communication practice significantly influence employee performance in Indonesian Islamic Banks.This was in line with the findings of Chen, Silverthorne, and Hung (2006), that also revealed communication led to higher levels of employee performance among accounting professional in America and Taiwan.Additionally, the recent study of Asamu (2014) established positive relationship between effective communication and employee performance in Nigeria.These led to the following hypotheses: H5a: Communication is positively related to task performance.

H5b: Communication is positively related to contextual performance.
H5c: Communication is positively related to adaptive performance.

Career planning and Employee Performance
Career planning refers to the HRM practice of aligning the employee's interests, skills and knowledge with the organizational needs with aim of attaining proper individual and organizational goals.Previous empirical studies of Tiwari (2011) and Marwat et al. (2006) revealed that career planning is an important predictor of employee performance in organization.Additionally, Khalid et al. (2014) and Cho and Yoon (2009) supported that employee mostly seek employment and give their best in organizations that offer good career planning and opportunities for advancement.This implied that employees prefer to remain and work in organizations that care and plan for their careers and in return perform optimally in terms of task, contextual and adaptive behaviours.Based on the above arguments, our last hypotheses are formulated: H6a: Career planning is positively related to task performance.
H6b: Career planning is positively related to contextual performance.
H6c: Career planning is positively related to adaptive performance.

Research Framework
Based on the hypotheses developed and the theoretical explanation, a research framework was developed.As shown in Fig. 1, it is expected that the six HRM practices can significantly influence positive employee task, contextual and adaptive performance.

Research Design
This study employed a quantitative research design as the study is interested in exploring the relationships between employees' perception of HRM practices and self-report employee performance.Data was analyzed using SPSS and Smart PLS method (Ringle, Wende, & Will, 2005).Questionnaires were personally administered by the researcher to local government employees in northern Nigeria.Additionally, employees were selected in collaboration with the HR staff so as to ensure that the sample truly represent the whole workforce.Employees were also informed about the objective of the study and its confidentiality.Participants are encouraged to participate in the survey and two weeks was given to them to complete and submit back the questionnaires.

Measures/Instruments
In this study, employee performance was measured by task performance, contextual performance and adaptive performance.Task performance is operationalized as the behavior of employees in relation to the quality, quantity and efficiency of the core activities he/she is assigned to perform.Task performance was measured by 11 items adapted from (Tsui et al., 1997).Contextual performance is operationalized as the behavior of employees that are outside job description but enhances the organizational effectiveness.We measured contextual performance with 16 items adapted from Motowidlo and Van Scotter (1994), To measure adaptive performance, 8 items developed by Koopmans et al. (2012) were adapted.Adaptive performance is operationalized as the extent to which an individual employee behavior adapt to the different changes in the work environment (Koopmans et al., 2012).HRM practices were measured by six independent practices including job rotation, training, compensation, job autonomy, communication and career planning.Job rotation was measured using 11 items from Tarus (2014); Training was measured with 6 items from Lam, Chen, and Takeuchi (2009); Compensation was measured by 6 items from Amin, Ismail, Abdul Rasid, and Selemani (2014); job autonomy was measured using 9 items from Breaugh (1999); communication was measured with 6 items from Den Hartog, Boon, Verburg, and Croon (2013); Career planning was measured with 8 items from Amin et al. (2014).

Results
Table 1 provides the reliability results of all the study constructs, the average variance extracted (AVE) and the values of R 2 .  1 showed that all of the constructs had a composite reliability above minimum threshold of 0.70 (Hair Jr, Hult, Ringle, & Sarstedt, 2014).The reliability ranged from 0.80 to 0.87.Additionally, all the latent construct had attained AVE above 0.50 as recommended by Hair Jr et al. (2014).Table 1 also showed that R 2 for all the three dependent variables had a substantial values based on Cohen (1988) criterion for assessing coefficient of determination (see Fig 2 .1 for the PLS algorithm results).
Results of correlations and square roots of AVE of all the latent variables are shown in Table 2.This empirical finding gives support to H2a.Similar finding was also obtained when compensation was tested against employee performance.Significant positive relationship was only found between compensation and task performance (β= 0.172; t= 1.976; p< 0.05).Thus, support hypothesis H3a.
Finally, the current findings show significant positive relationship between career planning and all three employee performance dimensions: career planning and task performance (β= 0.222; t= 3.068; p <0.01), career planning and contextual performance (β= 0.253; t= 3.533; p < 0.01), and career planning and adaptive performance (β= 0.263; t= 4.084; p <0.01).These findings provide support for hypotheses H6a, H6b and H6c.In summary, Table 3 and Figure 2.2 indicated that out of the 18 hypotheses tested, 13 were supported while the remaining 5 were not empirically supported.

Discussions
The purpose of this study is to develop and test a model on how certain HRM practices can influence employee task, contextual and adaptive performance in the context of public sector organizations.
Task performance is operationalized as the behaviors of employee that are within their job description.
The results indicated that all the six HRM practices with exception of communication had significant positive influence on task performance.This clearly supported that when employees perceived that their organization implemented objective lateral transfers from one duty post to another (job rotation), good training opportunities, adequate compensation packages, good career planning and freedom to decide on when and how to do their assigned task (job autonomy), then the employees tend to exhibits higher task performance.This finding supported the argument of social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) which is based on reciprocal relationship in social relationships.It is argued that HRM practices in organizational setting serve as signals to employees that their organization recognizes and value them (Alfes et al., 2013;Crossman & Abou-Zaki, 2003;Kuvaas & Dysvik, 2010).When organization provided training opportunities, adequate compensation, autonomy, objective rotation of employees, good career planning to its employee, then employees tend to reciprocate with high task performance (Gong et al., 2010;Sun, Aryee, & Law, 2007).On the contrary, communication was not a predictor of task performance.The possible reason for insignificant relationship is that communication is more of interaction and conveying information among individuals in organization, while task performance required the employees' technical competencies and abilities (Motowidlo & Van Scotter, 1994).
Another possible reason may be related to oath of secrecy (a law that prohibit employees to disclose official information without permission), which control the flow of information among employees.
Furthermore, contextual performance which is conceptualized as the activities of employees that are not within their job description but still enhances organizational effectiveness.Whiles adaptive performance relate to the degree to which an employee adapts to the different changes in his/her work place.In relation to contextual performance and adaptive performance the study supported that four HRM practices including job rotation, job autonomy, communication and career planning are good predictors of contextual performance and adaptive performance respectively.Thus, suggesting that employee's perception on the presence of these practices (job rotation, job autonomy, communication and career planning) provides them with adequate opportunities to demonstrate more positive contextual and adaptive behaviors.For this reason, it is recommended that for organization to attain positive contextual and adaptive performance, these HRM practices should be given the desired attention.As according less attention to these practices may results in less or even poor contextual and adaptive performance which will ultimately led to poor organizational performance.Contrary to expectations, compensation and training practices are not statistically significant with contextual and adaptive performance in this sample.This is an indication that presence of training and compensation practices may not necessarily influence more contextual and adaptive performance.The most likely reason is that in most public organization in Nigeria, the focus of training and compensation is on task performance rather than based on adaptability and training needs (Onah, 2012).Also, most compensation packages do not cover contextual and adaptive activities because they are outside job descriptions (Obisi et al., 2010).
In spite of the fact that, all the HRM practices studied indicated positive relationship with different dimensions of employee performance, interestingly only job rotation, job autonomy and career planning practices demonstrated significant positive influence on all the three dimensions of employee performance (task, contextual and adaptive).Consequently, this established that management should pay more attention particularly on these practices as neglecting them or inability to adopt and pay more attention to them might be among the major reasons for poor performance of employees.

Implications of the study
The current research findings have several implications for both theory and practice.On the theoretical side, this study extends the current literature on HRM practice and employee performance by providing empirical evidence on the relationship between HRM practices and employee task, contextual and adaptive performance.Additionally, the study extends the understanding and influence of social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) in explaining the relationship between HRM practices and employee task, contextual and adaptive performance.
To the managers and practitioners in the public sectors, the application of this model will provide managers with good understanding of which HRM practice to include in order to enhance optimum employee performance.For instance, the findings revealed that all the practice with exception of communication need to be considered if the intention of organization is higher task performance.Similarly, job rotation, job autonomy, communication and career planning are the best practice in promoting contextual and adaptive performance.To sum up, the study suggested that management are encourage to embrace HRM practices in order to boost their employees' task, contextual and adaptive performance.

Limitations and direction for future study
Although, this research provided additional supports for understanding the influence of HRM practices in improving and proper management of employee task, contextual and adaptive performance in the context of Nigerian public sector, nevertheless, the study had some limitations.Firstly, the study used only job rotation, training, compensation, job autonomy, communication and career planning.Therefore, the need for further research that will incorporate other HRM practices like recruitment & selection and employee involvement may be fruitful.As recruitment & selection practice will allow the organization to employ the best candidates with required skills and expertise.While, the employee involvement practice may integrates and motivate employees towards positive behaviours and performance.Secondly, in this study the participants were senior staff from various local governments located in the North-Western zone of Nigeria.Therefore, in order to generalize the findings, future research that will comprise participants from both federal, state governments and beyond is desirable.

Table 1
Constructs validity and reliability

Table 2
Correlations and square roots of AVE of latent variables Note:The diagonals in bold is the square root of the average variance extracted (AVE), while the other entries are the correlations between variables.

Table 3
Test of hypotheses