The Effect of Gender on Employee Commitment at Allpack Industries Limited

Abstract

This study was conducted to examine the effect of gender on employee commitment at Allpack Industries limited. The research study sought to answer the question, what is the effect of gender at Allpack Industries limited? The sample size of the study comprised 188 employees in the organization. Data was collected by administering the questionnaires to the 188 respondents and the response rate was 90 percent. Once the fieldwork was complete, the questionnaires were examined for completeness and then coded. It was established that 67 percent of the respondents were male while 33 percent were female. The data was then keyed in the computer and analyzed using descriptive statistics namely mean, standard deviation, frequency distributions and percentages. The effect of gender on employee commitment was tested using a T-test for independence. The data analysis was aided by the use of SPSS software. The results found that the composite mean for employee commitment at Allpack industries was 3.10 which meant that the employees were dedicated to a great extent. The results also found that the overall mean scores for the three scales of commitment were 2.44 for Affective commitment, 4.01 for Continuance commitment, and 2.86 for Normative commitment. The high mean score for Continuance commitment was explained by the presence of a relatively young workforce that is ready to bear with the working conditions at Allpack. The high continuance commitment mean could also be due to lack of greener pastures elsewhere due to the high unemployment rates in Kenya hence most of the respondents feel they have very few options and as a result remain in the organization.. Affective commitment had the lowest mean which indicated a relatively low degree of attachment to the company. This was explained by the fact that the employees did not feel as involved by management in the making of decisions especially when it came to issues that affected them in the company. Based on the T-test for independence the results show that there was an insignificant difference between the commitment of male and female employees (t = 1.006, p≥0.05). This means that at Allpack Industries, gender has no effect on employee commitment.