Organisational Culture and Employee Engagement within the Ghanaian Public Sector

Abstract

The paper examines the relationship between corporate culture and employee engagement among employees in public sector organisations of Ghana. A review of the relevant literature indicates that corporate culture as a measure of employee engagement especially in the public sector of a developing country in Africa such as Ghana has been given limited research efforts. To address this, the study adopted Handy’s cultural framework as limited efforts have been geared toward investigating the effect each of Handy’s four pillars of culture has on employee engagement. The multiple regression technique was used to test the hypothesised relationships between the variables in the study. A sample of two hundred and sixty-seven (267) employees was randomly drawn from selected public-sector organisations in Ghana. Findings from the study established that, achievement and support cultures significantly cause employees to be engaged in the public sector of Ghana whilst power culture has a significant, but negative relationship with employee engagement. The relationship between role culture and employee engagement is not significant. The study recommends that, in order for the skilled employees in the Ghanaian public sector organisations to be highly engaged, management of such organisations should increase the extent of achievement and support cultures and minimize the extent of power culture while paying only a little attention to role culture.