Assessment of the relationship between modes of employment and productivity in the land surveying profession in Uganda

Abstract

Adjusting to changing environmental demands has been an ongoing pursuit of organizations for centuries, but the task has become even more perplexing over the last decade. In response to the accelerated pace of change worldwide, organizations are becoming flatter and more agile, and are manifesting more diverse forms of organizational cultures. Recent trends in the changing nature of the employment relationship (Tsui et al., 1997), and the growing use of “peripheral” or temporary employees, highlight the need to focus on the impact that various organization subcultures have on a firm’s ability to adapt and change. Moreover, the movement towards the externalization of the workplace (Tsui et al., 1995) has resulted in many subgroups within the same firm being subjected to different human resource (HR) practices. In this paper, we extend research exploring changing HR strategies and employment modes within an organization, and help integrate this body of literature with organizational culture and subcultures. We argue that subcultures and their supporting routines, habits, and norms within an organization enable, transform, or constrain the implementation of a firm’s HR strategies. In addition, changing employment modes convey different meanings to employees, and reinforce different attitudes, behaviors, feelings and actions conducive of a motivational analysis. These aspects relate to the energization of responses as well as to their selection and persistent implementation. The concept of motivation is used to explain the distinction between employees who have the same talents, abilities and opportunities to do their job in a similar and under the same employment conditions and with same facilities but demonstrate different performances. (Wilfred & Lamek, 2011)