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South African Journal of Business Management ISSN: (Online) 2078-5976, (Print) 2078-5585

Page 1 of 11 Original Research

http://www.sajbm.org Open Access

Authors: Kehinde G. Somoye1 ?erife Z. Eyupoglu1

Affiliations: 1Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Near East University, Nicosia, Turkey

Corresponding author: Kehinde Somoye, [email protected]

Dates: Received: 13 Nov. 2019 Accepted: 03 Apr. 2020 Published: 25 June 2020

How to cite this article: Somoye, K.G., & Eyupoglu, S.Z. (2020). The functionality of reward in influencing the reinforcement of performance evaluation criteria and organisational commitment among employees. South African Journal of Business Management, 51(1), a1848. https://doi.org/10.4102/ sajbm.v51i1.1848

Copyright: © 2020. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

Introduction Reward refers to a potent leverage to motivate employee behaviour, a particular monetary return or event that employees receive in exchange for performed tasks in the workplace and a precondition for achieving organisational goals (Cristofori, Salvi, Beeman, & Grafman, 2018; Gbande, 2016; Franco-Santos & Gomez-Mejia, 2015). There are sources for rewards. Among several sources for reward (such as job, skill, seniority), according to Hamukwaya and Yazdanifard (2014), a proper performance-based reward system is fundamental. Before an employee can be rewarded, there should be an objective yardstick to it which forms the bases upon what to be rewarded. These yardsticks are called criteria. Using appropriate criteria by an employing organisation to evaluate the employees can positively affect the organisational performance (Pettijohn, Pettijohn, & Taylor, 2000). In practice, what is evaluated are the certain behaviours required from employees to ensure that the services that bring forth performance are provided in the organisations. However, the efficiency of this evaluation mainly rests on the criteria for evaluation (Venclová, Salková, & Kolácková, 2013). For organisations to reinforce the desired behaviours and making these behaviours to be exhibited continuously, reward is one of the needed tools (Dad, Ali, Janjua, Shahzad, & Khan, 2010).

Organisational commitment (OC) is considered as one of the most important concepts in the area of organisational behaviour and human resource management (HRM) (Dhar, 2015). It refers to individuals’ loyalty or bond to their employing organisation (Demir, Sahin, Teke, Ucar, & Kursun, 2009). It has been a concept highly valued in every organisation that connects the employee to the

Purpose: The primary aim of this study was to provide empirical evidence on how reward can trigger employees to act in a way that is in tandem with an organisation’s performance evaluation criteria in the service delivery sector. In addition, it examines how organisations can use reward to influence organisational commitment.

Design/methodology/approach: A descriptive cross-sectional survey design was adopted. Primary data were collected using a structured questionnaire targeting the employees in the Nigerian public service sector. To test its hypotheses, the study used the data collected from 522 respondents in Nigeria Local Government (LG). Data were analysed on SPSS (version 20) using regression.

Findings/results: The analysis of this study identifies reward to influence performance evaluation criteria and organisational commitment in the public service sector. The results obtained demonstrate that reward has a significant influence on organisational commitment. In addition, the reward system of an organisation was found to be a significant channel to reinforce the desired behaviours that inform performance criteria.

Practical Implications: With the findings of this study it is concluded that reward is a key variable that can help the public service sector to become more effective and efficient. However, the use of reward by managers can make performance evaluation criteria worthy of appreciation by the employees, thereby increasing organisational commitment.

Originality/value: This study revealed the dual role reward can play to influence employees’ organisational commitment, and the behaviours that organisations desire to reinforce in performance evaluation criteria. This is the first study that examined this relationship.

Keywords: reward; performance evaluation criteria; organisational commitment; local government; public se