The exploration of employee involvement model


The exploration of employee involvement model

W.-B. Lin *

Department of Business Administration, National Formosa University, Huwei County Wen-Hua Rd., No. 64, Yunlin, Taiwan, ROC

Abstract

This research explores the cause variables, which affect employee involvement via diverse orientations. That is to say, it studies the relationship

and effect of individual characteristic of personality traits, organizational climate of perspective of Chinese society relationship orientation, and

internal marketing upon employee involvement. The population is based upon five companies from the top five Taiwan financial holding groups in

Taiwan. The research distributed 200 copies of questionnaire to each company. The number of valid returns was 342, the valid return rate was

34.2%. According to the empirical research finding, high-intensity internal marketing generates positive impact upon employee involvement and

low-intensity internal marketing results in negative impact upon employee involvement; the effect of sentiment relationship upon employee

involvement is prominent and positive; employees with personality traits of internal control reveal higher level of involvement than those with

external control.

q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Employee involvement; Organizational climate; Internal marketing; Personality traits

1. Introduction

When most of the mature industries, particularly the

industries which mainly offer service, enter the situation of

small benefit, in order to upgrade the competitiveness of the

enterprise, one would stress creativity, exporting speed and on-

time feedback with regard to internal situation. Besides, from

the perspective of internal marketing, stimulating the employ-

ees and the establishment of reasonable and effective system

are also the important means one can employ in the enterprise.

The effective operation and the employment of democratiza-

tion within the enterprise is one of the current or prospective

tendencies in many publicly operated and private enterprises.

Employee involvement is the means to examine the operation

of democratization in the enterprises, which not only

diminishes the obstacle of the operation of the system, but

also is the way to collect common consensus and pursue the

benefits of most of the people. For the industries which

gradually pay attention to additional values, apart from

upgrading the service standard and content toward the

customers, they should also explore how to establish a

complete working surrounding, which is not only considerably

valued by the employees, but also the basis of the stability of

the enterprise and sustainable operation. In other words, the

degree of ‘employee involvement’ affects the achievements of

the organization, and it is also the extended demand while the

enterprises are pursuing additional values since the employees’

active participation in the process of decision will enhance

their centripetal force in the organization as well as upgrade

their working satisfaction (Locke & Schweiger, 1979; Miller &

Monge, 1986; Schuler, 1980).

The previous researches with respect to the related issues of

employee involvement explore the study from the following

directions: (1) elaborating the impact of employee involvement

upon personal behavior and achievements of the organization

by means of different theories or perspectives. For example,

through the questionnaire survey with regard to the planners of

information system in 105 companies, Basu, Hartono, Lederer,

and Sethi (2002) believed that the commitment of the

organization, the involvement of middle level managers and

the group involvement prominently affected the accomplish-

ment of the objective of strategic information system planning.

That is to say, the higher the degree of commitment and

involvement is, the more possibility that one will accomplish

the strategic objective. Mitchell (1973) integrated the theories

of cognition and expectation and further pointed out that

employee involvement enhanced the employees’ working

objectives, their identification toward the organization and

the upgrading of working achievements. Based upon the survey

with respect to strategic business units of the enterprises of

various countries, Judge and Stahl (1995) believed that the

personality traits of middle level managers would affect their

Expert Systems with Applications 31 (2006) 69–82

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doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2005.09.035

* Tel.: C886 5631 5775; fax: C886 5631 3842.

E-mail address: e2667@ms23.hinet.net.

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perceptive capacity. National culture plays the intermediary

role. The managers’ cognitive degree would affect the

operation of strategic projects. In addition, from the perspec-

tive of internationalization, Strauss (1982) also proceeded with

the comparative analysis with regard to the employee

involvement of the projects of different countries. For instance,

the most popular project of employee involvement in America

was ‘the quality of work life’: one improved the work life of the

employees of basic level via the discussion of the employees

and middle level managers. Rafiq and Ahmed (2000) believed

that internal marketing could be developed from different

levels and perspectives. The first level was based upon the

satisfaction of simulation with regard to the employees, i.e. to

treat the employees as the internal customers and upgrade their

satisfaction with the work. The second level was to integrate

the internal opinions via the means of interactive marketing of

customer orientation. The third level was to operate the

strategies with regard to the company or functions via the

conception of expanding internal marketing in order to respond

to the change of the environment. (2) Regarding the content

planned in the strategic project as the subject of exploration, for

instance, how does employee involvement project affects

production force, quality of work life, and commitment of

organization and group evaluated by various empirical

evidences (Griffin, 1988; Marks, Mirvis, Hackett, & Grady,

1986; Mellor, 1992)? Based upon the survey with respect to 69

Sweden companies, Ingelgard and Norvgren (2001) found out

that the strategy of learning how to respond to the change of the

surrounding was beneficial to the employees’ working

adjustment. Besides, the employees’ participation was not

only one of the factors which constructed the vision of the

organization, but also the aspect that influenced the objective of

reformation. Babin and Boles (1996) pointed out that the

perception of the employees toward their colleagues’ involve-

ment as well as the support of the chiefs could reduce the

pressure in the company and enhance the working satisfaction.

In other words, the researchers stressed how the working

surrounding of the employees or the cognition of the

organizational climate affect the production of the work. (3)

Exploring the relationship between the cause and outcome

variables from the perspective of human resources manage-

ment, for instance, McMahan, Bell, and Virick (1998) and

Schuler (1980) pointed out the cause variables, which affected

employee involvement such as character traits (character

expectation and conflict), the scale of organization, structure

traits and outcome variables (e.g. the effect of personal and

organizational achievements and working satisfaction).

Although in the past, there were rare studies with regard to

the issues related to employee involvement, one could still find

the following aspects useful for further explorations, which are

the objectives of this research. (1) The previous studies mostly

explored the issue of employee involvement from the

perspective of Western democratic decision and the said

studies rarely discussed the subject from the standpoint of

relationship orientation of Chinese society. (2) The information

analysis with respect to previous studies was mostly based

upon the qualitative case analysis or statistic method and rarely

employed the analytic method of non-linear Neuro Fuzzy

model. (3) This research explored the cause variables, which

affect employee involvement from the perspective of various

dimensions. In other words, the research studied the

relationship and effect of individual traits (personality traits),

organizational climate (the perspective of relationship orien-

tation) and internal marketing with regard to employee

involvement, which was different from the previous studies

that merely explored the cause and outcome variables from

single perspective.

2. Literature review

2.1. Internal marketing

The previous marketing treated the employees as the

internal customers and intended to fulfill the demand and

desire of internal customers under the condition of complying

with the operational objective of the company (Berry, 1981;

Tansuhaj, Randall, & McCullough, 1988). In the past, there

were many scholars who participated in the act of stimulating

the employees to approach the objectives, which resulted in the

orientation of customers and market (Gronroos, 1985; Johnson

& Seymour, 1985). In other words, they employed more

concrete project of stimulation. For example, via educational

training and measures of stimulation, they allowed the

employees to access to the mission and objective of the

enterprise and they would further expect that in order to

efficiently serve external customers, they must enhance the

employees’ internal common consensus and the employees’

identification with the enterprise, which allowed the internal

personnel of the company to efficiently convey the project of

external marketing and carry out the project (Piercy & Morgan,

1991). Rafiq and Ahmed (2000) further pointed out that

internal marketing included five elements, which were

employees’ stimulation and satisfaction, orientation of custo-

mer, customers’ satisfaction, the adjustment and integration of

internal functions and the strategy for executing specific

function of the company. George and Gronroos (1989) and

Gronroos (1990) redefined the meaning of internal marketing:

“via aggressive, active and nearly marketing act as well as the

means of integration and adjustment, the organization provides

the best encouragement and stimulation to the internal

employees with regard to developing service consciousness

and orientation of customers.” According to the previous

definitions related to internal marketing, one can find out that

the company paid attention to fulfill the demand of the

employees and regarded stimulating and remaining excellent

employees as the main developmental strategy (Berry, 1981;

Berry & Parasuraman, 1991; Gronroos, 1985).

Consequently, the perspective of internal marketing has

developed from the perspective of human resource or market-

ing into perspective of diverse dimensions. For instance, Rafiq

and Ahmed (1993) pointed out that in order to achieve the

objective of external market, the organization had to enhance

efficient operation with regard to the internal exchange

relationship between the organization and its employees.

W.-B. Lin / Expert Systems with Applications 31 (2006) 69–8270



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