EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WORK LOCUS OF CONTROL AND JOB INVOLVEMENT OF EMPLOYEES IN COMMERCIAL BANKS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

 The bank reform act of 2005 in Nigeria gave rise to banking sector consolidation and completely changed the outlook of commercial banking operations in Nigeria The consolidation culminated into merger of some banks, while some ‘bigger’ ones acquired the smaller banks, and many other banks completely went into extinction. These undoubtedly changed the operational and structural outlook of the commercial banking template in Nigeria. Arising from these changes, many employees lost their jobs, while those who survive the consolidation had their salaries and allowances slashed and many of the employees had their promotion elongated. These no doubt affected the level of job involvement of the employees and subsequently the organisational performances. However, the degree of employees’ job involvement depends on a number of factors, one of which is employees’ attribution of work behaviour and its outcome (work locus of control). Using multistage sampling method, ten commercial banks in Nigeria, and 1,200 employees were randomly selected among the employees’ these ten banks selected for this study. As hypothesized, wok locus of control significantly predicted job involvement of employees of commercial banks in Nigeria. Result showed that, employees who have internal work locus of control were more involved in the jobs than employees with external work locus of control, and this affected employee’s job performance appreciably. Therefore, to improve the performance of commercial banks in Nigeria, employer of labour should re-sharpen recruitment tools in a way that can identify candidates with internal work locus of control for appointment. Management of Commercial Banks in Nigeria should equally organise training programs that can boost employees’ internal work locus of control for employees already on the job with a view to enhancing employees’ performances. Such training modules should also form part of the Staff orientation programmes for employees that are newly recruited with a view to enhancing development of internal work locus of control and by extension, boosting employees’ productivity.