Psychological And Ethnic Factors As Determinants Of Organizational Behviour Of Nigerian Workers In The Oil Refineries

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the relationship between psychosocial and ethnic factors on organizational behaviour of workers in the oil refineries The objectives of the research were to determine the differential impact of psychosocial and ethnic factors on organizational behaviour. The psychosocial factors addressed were personality variables and work groups within the organization. The organisational behaviour variables studied were job involvement, organizational commitment and job satisfaction.

To achieve this objective data were collected from 400 workers sampled from Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna refineries using five standardized psychological instruments with appropriate psychometric properties. The instruments used we Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Work Group Functioning Scale, Job Involvement Questionnaire, Organisational Commitment Scale and Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire. The participants consisted of 200 males and 200 females with age ranging between 21 and 55 years.

They were randomly (3.4 study population) selected from four Nigerian ethnic groups, namely, Has, Igbo, Yoruba and Others working in the organization. The sample consisted of senior and junior workers evenly distributed row the ethnic groups. The workers responded to the five testing instruments used for the study and their responses were subjected to statistical analysis using the SPSS statistical package. Means and standard deviations were calculated to obtain descriptive results. Analysis of variance, Scheffe test and t-tests were carried out to obtain inferential results.

The major findings showed that correlations between the following variables are positive and significant neuroticism and psychoticism, organizational commitment and job satisfaction, cohesiveness and job satisfaction, job involvement and psychoticism. House workers were more involved with their jobs than Yoruba, Igbo, and minority ethnic groups. Also, Yoruba workers were more committed to their organisation than Hausa Igbo and other ethnic groups. Workers belonging to other ethnic group were more satisfied with their job than workers of Hausa Igbo, and Yoruba ethnic groups.

Female workers possessed higher psychoticism personality trait than male workers and that female workers as a group were more cohesive in their group then males. Male workers were more satisfied with their jobs than female workers Finally, senior workers possessed higher psychoticism and neuroticism personality traits than junior workers and senior workers were also more involved with their job than junior workers The results obtained and stated above partially confirmed the hypotheses tested and documented the differential impact of personality traits, ethnic affiliation and social grouping within the organization on organizational behaviour of workers in the oil refineries

In conclusion, cohesive conducive inter group relationship which has been found to be an essential determinant of productivity in Nigerian organizations is lacking in the corporation studied. The implications of these results were discussed and recommendations were made.