Relationship between employee aggression and affective commitment in selected five star rated hotels in Nairobi central business district, Kenya

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.