Organizational Citizenship Behavior, employee commitment, talent management and employee performance in selected companies in electricity companies in Kenya

Abstract

There is expectation from citizens for quality goods and services particularly from public service employees who get remunerated by taxpayers. Instead there are numerous complaints, accusations and validated cases of poor service delivery resulting from alleged corruption, poor quality of service, delay in expected outputs, deliverables, exaggerated cost of goods and services, among others. The purpose of this study was to examine how organizational citizenship behavior, employee commitment, and talent management affects employees‘ performance at the electricity companies in Kenya. Specific objectives were to examine the effect of; organizational citizenship behavior on employee performance, the mediating effect of employee commitment and moderating role of talent management on employee performance, and to determine the moderated mediation effect of talent management. The study was guided by the Theory of Attribution, Side-Bet and Resource Base-View Theory. Positivism research philosophy and explanatory research design were adopted, employing stratified, simple random sampling techniques in collecting data from a sample size of 2887 employees of KenGen and Kenya Power in Nairobi Kenya, using a self-administered questionnaire. To test reliability and validity of research instrument, Cronbach Alpha and factor analysis were applied. Descriptive statistic was used for variability of datasets. Hierarchical and multiple regression models using Hayes Process macro were used to analyze data and to test the hypotheses. The study findings revealed that; total effect of organizational behavior (β =0.641, p=0.000), organizational citizenship behavior (β=0.511, p=0.000), employee commitment (β=0.302, p =0.000) and talent management (β=0.194, p=0.000) have positive and significant direct effects on employee performance. In addition, organizational citizenship behavior has direct effects on employee performance (β =0.493, p=0.000) employee commitment mediates the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior and employee performance (β=0.131, p=0.000), talent management moderates the link between; organizational citizenship behavior and employee performance through employee commitment (β=0.182, p=0.000), and there existed moderating mediation effect at three levels (below mean, β=0.170, at the mean,β=0.115 and above mean, β=0.060) respectively. It is concluded that organizational citizenship behavior, employee commitment and talent management, all have a positive and significant direct effect on employee performance, while, organizational citizenship behavior positively affect employee commitment. This study further reveals a complimentary mediation and concludes that employee commitment mediates the association organizational citizenship behavior and employee performance. Talent management moderates the strength of the indirect association of organizational citizenship behavior and employee performance via employee commitment by being high when employees‘ commitment is negative and lower when employee commitment is higher. Electricity company management and policy makers in public institutions at large, should formulate policies, develop strategies on organizational citizenship behavior and enforce human resource practices that attract potential employees, enhance their loyalty and foster high performance. The study used quantitative data; future studies may consider using mixed methods, further, the study used Hayes model 14 and simple mediation and moderation: future studies may employ Hayes model 15 to test multiple moderations for more insight on factors affecting employees‘ performance.