dc.description.abstract |
Affective commitment drives employees to willingly work in the organization.
Studies show that affective commitment has direct influence on reducing absenteeism
and employee turnover intentions. To achieve affective commitment, the workplace
environment should be free from aggressive behaviours which affect employees’
morale. The purpose of this study was to establish the relationship between employee
aggression and affective commitment in selected five star rated hotels in Nairobi
Central Business District, Kenya. The specific objectives were to determine the
relationship between proactive relational, reactive expressive, reactive in-expressive
aggression and affective commitment and to explore the forms of aggression and
strategies employed to prevent aggression. The study was anchored on Allen and
Meyer’s three-component model and Theory of planned behaviour. The target
population comprised 513 employees and 12 managers from 3 Five star rated hotels
out of which 220 employees and 7 managers formed the sample size. Purposive
sampling was used to select the hotels and the managers, stratified sampling with
departments as stratas and systematic random sampling were used to identify the
participants for the study. Instruments for collecting data included questionnaires for
employees and interview schedules for managers. Bivariate Pearson correlation was
used to analyse quantitative data whereas thematic analysis analysed qualitative data.
Correlation results revealed that proactive relational (r=-0.587, P=0.000), reactive
expressive (r=-0.711, P=0.000) and reactive in-expressive (r=-0.643, P=0.000), had a
significant negative relationship with affective commitment. Interviews found the
common forms of aggression experienced were insults, sarcasm, nasty teasing and
mockery between employees’, customers and managers and the strategies put in place
to address aggression were teamwork, transformational leadership, information
sharing and team building. In conclusion, aggression has a significant relationship
with employee affective commitment. Reactive expressive emerged as highest form
of aggression that was being experienced, then reactive in expressive and lastly
proactive relational. It is recommended that management of the hotels should address
incidences of proactive relational and reactive expressive aggression which were
manifested through bullying, mockery and sarcasm by treating aggressors as
individuals and working out on why they are behaving the way they do. It is also
recommended that management identify reasons for reactive in-expressive
aggressions in form of harassment and discrimination by implementing
communication channels for employees to report for appropriate action to be taken
against the perpetrators. |
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