Employee Perception Of Rightsizing On Survivors’ Attitude And Commitment In Corporate Organizations In Ghana

ABSTRACT A lot of companies and firms from all sectors have undergone rightsizing over the years. These organizations do so in order to reduce their workforce for multiple reasons, including efforts to gain a more competitive advantage, to manage or reduce cost expenditures, and to streamline the way in which work is conducted. Management more often carried out these exercises with little attention to adequately and effectively address the ―people factor‖ throughout the process. This is evidenced by the numerous demonstrations and court actions during these periods. These actions called the attention of scholars to study the reactions of these employees but have mostly focused on those who have been dismissed. The perception of these layoffs undoubtedly would have enormous effect on the survivors‘ level of commitment and attitude towards work in general. Since the reactions of those who survive the rightsizing, couple with management challenge, an issue that remains unexplored in the Ghanaian industrial environment, determine the future success of the organization, this research sought to examine survivors‘ perception, attitude and level of commitment to their work roles after organizational rightsizing to fill this knowledge gap. One hundred and fourteen respondents (114) were conveniently sampled from three companies. A 60-item questionnaire was adopted and slightly modified with the assistance of the supervisor and used in the data collection. The data were analyzed and tested using Chi Square Test, the OneWay ANOVA and the Independent t Test. Of the four hypotheses that were formulated and tested, only one was supported by the data. The results indicate that 79.8% of the respondents showed negative perception of their organizations after the rightsizing process but that the process has no significant influence on survivors‘ attitudes toward their work roles after the rightsizing exercise. It was also found that among the respondents from the three companies, those from one company had a better attitude towards their work roles than those from the other companies but the attitude of survivors from the two companies did not differ from each other. The results also show that majority of the respondents (46.5%) were not sure management could remain trustworthy after the rightsizing process and that 57.0% were not sure they would maintain their jobs. Finally, no significant difference existed in the perception, attitudes and level of commitment to their companies/organizations between survivors who were in managerial position and those who were not in managerial position. The results therefore suggested that management of companies should fully involve all employees in all the processes of rightsizing and survivors should undergo rigorous debriefing after the process.