THE INFLUENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE IN WORKPLACE
: CASE STUDY, UNIVERSITY OF BENIN, BENIN CITY, EDO STATE
CHAPTER ONE
                    INTRODUCTION
1.1    Background to the Study
In the past, critical organization studies have been characterized by increasingly textured and insightful analyses of workplace and organizational culture (Mumby, 2005). Organizational culture has come of age. Being part of an organization entails being part of its culture and organization’ culture is made up of relatively stable characteristics (Schein, 2004). These characteristics include norms, values, attitudes and beliefs, shared by organizational members.Schein (2004) emphasized that organizational culture is developed over many years and is rooted in deeply held values to which employees are strongly committed. In addition, there are a number of forces continually operating to maintain a given culture.
In the past 25 years, the concept of organizational culture has had a checkered history and gained wide acceptance as a way to understand human systems (Hills & Jones, 2001). However, managers speak of developing the “right kind of culture,” a “culture of total quality” or a “culture of customer service,” suggesting that culture has to do with certain values that managers are trying to inculcate in their organizations. Culture, therefore, seems an essential feature of organizations. Basically organizational culture is defined as the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization (Hills & Jones, 2001). This definition explains the fact that organizationalvalues, also known as "beliefs and ideas about what kinds of goals members of an organization should pursue and ideas about the appropriate standards of behaviour organizational members should use to achieve these goals. From organizational values develop organizational norms, guidelines, or expectations that prescribe appropriate kinds of behaviour by employees in particular situations and control the behaviour of organizational members towards one another."  
 But whilst we may all plan, organize, lead and control our own activities in order to achieve organizational goals, employees seem to have the special status of being legitimately allowed balancing their workplace activities with these functions over the activities of others. In which case, we might say that management is essentially about culture, that culture is the primary managerial “hidden” function to organizational performance in the workplace.  
From the foregoing, organizational culture is a framework that guides day-to-day behavior and decision making for employees and directs their actions toward completion of organizational goals. However, in the views of Stoner, Gilbert and Freeman (1999), culture is what gives birth to personality profile, standards of behaviour, quality of performance, and established values, expectations of organizational membersand defines the organizational goals. Culture must be aligned with the other parts of organizational actions, such as planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. These tasks are geared towards organizational performance in the workplace; indeed, if culture is not aligned with these tasks, then the organization is in for difficult times
1.2    Statement of the Research Problem
The fact that management seeks to inculcate the right organizational culture to extract the maximum surplus from the employee and that the employee seeks to obtain maximum benefits from his labour under the conditions of freedom and agency suggest that performance will be a permanent feature of employee behaviour while the effort to retain appropriate culture will also be a permanent feature of the behaviour of the employer. Although this fact has been acknowledged by several studies (Ackroyd& Thompson, 1999; Thomas & Davies, 2005), it has yet to form the subject of substantive studies in Nigeria. Moreover, existing studies have been interested in forms of employee performance and in how management responds to these forms of performance (Gouldner, 1954) without a consideration of the impact of culture. Yet, it should be obvious given the acknowledged impact of culture upon all aspects of organisational life that culture will be significant in predicting forms of employee performance. This study specifically aims to examine this dimension of employee performance in the Nigerian setting as it relates to organizational culture.
To this end, the study seeks to provide answers to the following research questions:
1.    What is the impact of power distance on employee performance in the workplace?
2.    What is the impact of individualism/collectivism on employee performance in the workplace?
1.4    Objectives of the Study
The main objective of the study is to ascertain the impact of organizational culture on employee performance in the workplace. The specific objectives are to:
1.    determine the impact of power distance on employees performance in the workplace; and to
2.    find out the impact of individualism/collectivism on employees performance in the workplace.
1.5    Hypothesis of the Study
1. H0: There is no significant difference between power distance and employee performance.
2. H0: There is no significant difference between individualism/collectivism and employee performance.
1.6    The Scope of the Study
The study seeks to investigate the influence of organizational culture using two of the four dimensions mentioned by Hofstede, individualism/collectivism and power distance on employee performance in workplace. For the purpose of this study, the employees of the University of Benin, Benin City, Edo State will be understudied. This company was chosen because of proximity, availability and accessibility of much staff. A cross sectional study will be carried out for this study.
1.7    Significance of the Study
In broad terms the proposed study is aimed at examining the influence of organizational culture on employee performance in the workplace. Employee performance with respect to organizational culture cannot be overemphasized in modern day organizations owing to the role organizational culture play in the performance of employees in the workplace.  If organizational culture is not well integrated and well managed could precipitate a level of disharmony that could hinder the right atmosphere required to enhance productivity and thus facilitate the attainment of organizational goals. This underscores the need for management to have adequate awareness of the factors that enhance employee performance to organizational culture so that they can map out strategies to manage employees integrating into the culture of the organization. To this end results of this study will be of great significance to various stakeholders such as policy makers in government owned institutions, strategic managers in corporate entities, employees and researchers and other stakeholders of the Federal institutions.
Policy makers in government will be informed about the extent to which organizational culture influences employee performance in the workplace. Such awareness will predispose them to study cross-cultural management to enable them acquire cross cultural management skills. Such cross cultural management skills will prove useful to them in the enhancement of employee performance in the workplace.
By the same token, the knowledge gained from the awareness created by the results of this study will stimulate strategic managers in corporate entities to focus on cross cultural management skills to ensure that they are able to manage employees across cultures and thus maximize employee performance in the workplace.
Adequate cross cultural management skills will also acquaint the strategic managers with the various issues that are likely to go against the interest of employees from different cultures and thus prove resistible under such circumstances.     Furthermore, adequate cross cultural management skills will also enhance management approach to communication and such improvement in communication will, no doubt, minimize the gap between management and employees and thus improve industrial relations which will ultimately increase employee performance in the workplace.
Researchers will be acquainted with empirical data on the impact of organizational culture on employee performance in the workplace. Such awareness will stimulate researchers’ interest in the subject matter and thus necessitate further studies which may seek to test, evaluate and validate the results of this study and thus enhance the quality of inference.
1.8    Limitations of the Study
The study aims to examining the influence of organizational culture on employee performance in the workplace. This is a view to ascertaining the impact of organizational culture on employee’s performance in the workplace. The independent variable is the organizational culture using mediating variables such as race, ethnicity, nationality, and gender. There may be other cultural variables that can explain employees’ performance in the workplace but are not captured in this study for the obvious reason that the study cannot exhaust all the relevant variables; the exclusion of such variables from this study constitutes a limitation to the results of this study.
Secondly, the study seeks to ascertain respondents’ opinion about the subject matter. The instrument with which the relevant data will be gathered from the respondents is the questionnaire which is self-reporting. Consequently, the tendency that some of the respondents will exaggerate their opinion about the impact of some of the predictive variables on employees’ performance to organizational culture cannot be ruled out. Thus employee bias about their perception of the impact of some of the predictive variables is a limitation to this study.
The study will employ the random sampling technique to select respondents for the study. However, it is difficult to obtain a completely random sample which is a prerequisite for the sample to be adequately representative of the population from which it is selected. The reason is that some employees may be on leave or may be absent from work on the day of sampling for other reasons. Their absence will definitely jeopardize their inclusion in the sample and thus cause the Researcher to make do with only those people who are around. This probability of non-inclusion of some of the respondents in the population is a limitation to the outcome of this study since it infringes on obtaining a completely random sample.