Does organizational culture influence employee productivity at the local level? A test of Denison's culture model in Ghana’s local government sector

Abstract

Abstract There is mixed evidence that low levels of productivity at the local government level are not common with organizations with strong cultures as these are less prone to any externalities. The paper investigated the link between organizational culture and employee productivity from the perspectives of employees of the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly (STMA) in Ghana. The study used the quantitative approach with descriptive and cross-sectional designs. The simple random and stratified sampling techniques were used to select 132 respondents from the STMA using a self-administered survey questionnaire between August 2020 and December 2020. Denison’s 1984 model of organizational culture was adopted to measure organizational culture while employee productivity was measured by target achievement, available resources and hours of work in a week. With the support of the “SPSS version 22,” the study used descriptive statistics, bivariate analysis and ANOVA tests with hypotheses using standard regression methods. The findings indicate a strong and positive culture of mission, involvement, adaptability and consistency in the STMA. Further, two hypotheses of the study were supported while one hypothesis failed to reject the null hypothesis. However, the relationship between the culture of adaptability and employee productivity was negative but statistically significant; hence, the research hypothesis on this variable was modified to reject the null. Denison’s culture model, which was used to measure organizational culture, was less effective in explaining the variance in the dependent variable as a combined variable.

Keywords

• Organizational culture
• Employee productivity
• Local authorities
• Ghana
• Theory X and Y