Influence of Participatory Decision Making of Junior Staff at the Retail Markets in Kenya. An Empirical Study of Uchumi Supermarket in Nairobi
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Date
2016
Authors
Oloo, Phylister Akoth
Bula, Hannah Orwar
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Contemporary Research Center
Abstract
In today’s turbulent environment and intense competition, firms are forced to seek ways to be more
flexible, adaptive and competitive as they are faced with competitive pressures and rapidly
changing markets. Above all, firms are discovering that people really are the most important assets.
Success depends on involving the workforce’s entire capacity to generate new ideas and ways of
working to outsmart the competitors. Junior employees must be involved if they are to understand
the need for creativity and they must be involved if they are to be committed to changing their
behaviors in work, in new and improved ways. Junior employee involvement is one important
aspect of organizational life to achieve increased organizational effectiveness and positive
employee perceptions. Junior employee participation in decision making is one of the many current
forms of employee involvement in the workplace decision making. Managers are encouraged to
allow a high degree of junior involvement, employee participation and autonomy, which are
intended to increase workforce commitment and to humanize the workplace with the intention of
improving work performance and good citizenship behavior. The current study will determine the
impact of junior employee participatory decision making on employee performance with the study
conducted on employees working in the retail markets in Nairobi. In carrying out the study,
stratified and random sampling technique were used to select 30 employees of the Uchumi
Supermarket in the Nairobi retail market who have worked for a period of at least 5 years.
Stratified sampling was used to group the employees into two; those in management positions and
those in lower positions. Random sampling was then be used to select 30 respondents from the
grouped strata. Relevant data was collected using structured questionnaire. The data was analyzed
using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics and presented by manual and computer aided
packages of Microsoft Excel. The results were presented through statistical figures such as tables,
graphs, and pie charts. The result from the study clearly indicated that participatory decision
making amongst the junior staff of the retail markets affects, capability development, cohesion and
trust, communication, staff retention and motivation by enhancing their performance. The four
factors had different indices of influencing participatory decision making by Communication being
influencing factor closely followed by capability development, staff retention. Motivation and
cohesion and trust were also found to be important in determining participatory decision making.
Most uchumi supermarket branches would not easily grow due to lack of junior staff involvement in
decision making, acceptance and appreciation. This study found the need for participatory decision
making studies in other retail markets to reach elaborate findings for this industry.
Description
Research Article
Keywords
Citation
International Journal of Education and Research Vol. 4 No. 2 February 2016