THE EFFECT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN EMPOWERMENT PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYEES: A FIELD STUDY

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1 THE EFFECT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN EMPOWERMENT PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYEES: A FIELD STUDY MANSOUR NASER ALRAJA ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS, JERASH UNIVERSITY-JORDAN POST CODE JORDAN NAYEF RAGE ALOMIAM ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, JERASH UNIVERSITY-JORDAN Abstract This study aimed to investigate the Effect of Information Technology in the Empowerment public sector employees (Participation, Performance Improvement), for the Jordanian public sector employees. To achieve the objectives and testing of hypotheses a questionnaire was developed especially for the collection of data from a study sample, which consisting of (100) employee at Amman Municipality, the number of questionnaires analyzed are (78), representing (78%) of the questionnaires distributed. By using appropriate statistical tests, results of the study showed that Amman Municipality used the Information Technology in high percentages, also it found that there is a significant relationship between Information Technology and Empowerment public sector employees, and it has a significant impact on Empowerment public sector employees. Keywords: Information Technology, Empowerment, public sector, Jordan 1. Introduction In the digital economy the transform of public organizations from traditional modes of operation to e-government, will depend on how well they can adapt their structure and processes to take advantage of emerging information technology and what architecture and infrastructure they use, and how it will success in empower their employees on using suitable information technology. So the Jordanian government has assured its commitment to promote penetration of information technology to realize higher economic gains for Jordan, that gave important role to information technology to enhance productivity by using and empowering public sector employees on information technology. 2. Study objectives This research focuses the current information technology tools and their effect in empowerment Jordanian public sector employees COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 805

2 3. Literature Review 3.1. Information Technology Infrastructure Information technology (IT) refers to the products, methods, inventions, and standards that are used for the purpose of producing information. IT pertains to the hardware, software, and data components(kroenke, 2011). So Information Technology Infrastructure consists of a set of physical devices and software applications that are required to operate the entire organization. But Information Technology Infrastructure is also a set of firm wide services budgeted by management and comprising both human and technical capabilities, these services include the following(laudon, 2010): - Computing platforms used to provide computing services. - Telecommunications services; - Data management services; - Application software services; - Physical facilities management services; - Information Technology management services; - Information Technology standards services; - Information Technology education services; - Information Technology research and development services. Without these services the value of the employees to the organization might be reduced to half. But also in the organizations that use Information Technology there are a number of important factors affect the pace and effectiveness of progress in using Information Technology and in delivering business benefits, these factors include(ward & Peppard, 2002): - The capabilities of the technology; - The economics of deploying the technology; - The applications that are feasible; - The skills and abilities available to develop the applications; - The skills and abilities within the organization to use applications; - The pressures on the particular organization or its industry to improve performance Empowerment it is the process of enhancing an individual s or group s capacity to make purposive choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes (Alsop et al., 2005). empowerment refers to the way that people possess more authority and accept more responsibilities. (Assadzadeh & others 2012) defined empowerment as giving authority and responsibility to employees in their tasks, participating in decision making, and providing training and participation opportunities for the best use of their capabilities and personal skills to increase their loyalty against the organization. (Robbins, 2005) define the empowerment from functional view of empowerment as a participative management, delegation, and the granting power to lower-level employees to make and enforce decisions. COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 806

3 Benefits of empowerment There are two types of empowerment benefits (Sumukadas & Sawhney, 2004): 1- The tangible benefits: - It is much easier to find the best solution to a business problem, - The diverse ideas are shared and implemented, - The decisions are made at lowest level of the organization, - The workgroup is recognized for its efforts and performance, - The individual have the opportunity to influence the goals of the workgroup, - The acquisition of new skills and knowledge are encouraged and facilitated, - The organization structure becomes flattened and The Employee Empowerment 12 less hierarchical, - The managers have more time to lead and not to micro-manage employees activities, - The provides meaningful, measurable positive business impact. 2- The intangible benefits: - It allows leveraging the collective strengths of all group members, - The group takes the ownership of the statement of work and results, - It helps to create a culture of trust and collaboration, - It enhances the individual self-esteem, - It improves the communication among the mangers and the employees, - It provides a more enjoyable working environment Related Works: (Lee & Whitley, 2002) They presented temporal impacts of information technology at three levels individual, organizational, and social. (Boudrias et al, 2010) this study showed that SEMPs were more positively related to behavioral empowerment when perceptions of organizational supportive climate and justice were higher. (Fernandez & Moldogaziev, 2011) They note that empowerment practices aimed at providing employees with access to job-related knowledge and skills and at granting them discretion to change work processes have a positive and substantively significant influence on perceived performance. Other empowerment practices geared toward providing employees with information about goals and performance and offering them rewards based on performance are found, however, to have little bearing on perceptions of performance. (Rivard & Lapointe, 2012) focused on implementers responses to user resistance and the effects of these responses on user resistance, the study offered a theoretical explanation of how implementers responses may affect the antecedents that earlier research found to be associated with user resistance behaviors. 4. Study Questions We can summarize the main problem of the study by asking: what is the effect of Information Technology in Empowerment Jordanian public sector employees? We will subdivide this main question into following questions: - what is the effect of Information Technology in Participation ( ideas, decision making, dialog, and Using information)? - what is the effect of Information Technology in Performance Improvement? 5. Hypothesis and Study Model To answer the questions, the research depend on the following main hypothesis : There is a significant effect at level (P 0.01) of Information Technology in COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 807

4 Empowerment Jordanian public sector employees. Which subdivided by the following hypothesis: Hypothesis1:. There is a significant effect at level (P 0.01) of Information Technology in Participation ( ideas, decision making, dialog, and Using information). Hypothesis2:. There is a significant effect at level (P 0.01) of Information Technology in Performance Improvement. Information Technology Empowerment public sector employees - Participation - Performance Improvement 6. Methodology 6.1. Population and Sample: The target population for this study Consists of all employees of the Amman Municipality, A sample of (100) employees were chosen randomly from the targeted population, so 100 questionnaires were distributed, the response rate was about 78% (78 usable responses) Data Collection Secondary data was collected based on the findings of published papers, articles, books, prior studies, and the World Wide Web. The primary data collection was carried out using a self-designed questionnaire, Five Likert-type scales were used to score the responses Instrument Reliability The reliability of data collected instrument was measured using Cronbach's alpha coefficient; the reliability test was conducted to check for inter-item correlation in each of the variables in the questionnaire. The closer Cronbach's alpha is to one, the higher the internal consistency reliability (Sekaran, 2003). The test results are as follows: Cronbach alpha for Independent Variable = 0.644, Cronbach alpha for dependent Variable = 0.672, Cronbach alpha for over all instruments = which approached to the acceptable limit Data Analysis Methods Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data. Descriptive techniques such as; frequencies, percentages, means, standard deviation (Std.) and coefficient of variation were used to describe the variables. Pearson correlation and multiple regression analysis were used to test hypothesis of the study. 7. Statistics Analysis and Hypothesis Testing 7.1. Analysis of Personal and Functional Characteristics We used several questions to find out the distribution of the study sample, according to personal and functional characteristics, such as gender, age, Period of working at Amman Municipality, and Education. Table (1) shows these properties. COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 808

5 No Table (1) Personal and Functional Characteristics (N=78) Percent Frequency Variable GENDER COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 809 Male Female less than 30 years and more pre bachelor Bachelor High studies 6 years and less from 6 to and more AGE EDUCATION Period of working at Amman Municipality 7.2. Study variables Description To determine the availability of the study variables, we measured the main independent, and the dependent variable, with a set of indicators shown in the table(2). Table (2) variables Description Characteristics (N=78) Questions Amman Municipality owns equipment (instruments input, output and storage) sophisticated and are constantly updated. Amman Municipality uses its Website to view its services Amman Municipality has sophisticated internal communications network to connect devices with each other Amman Municipality is working on evaluation of information technology and the budget allocated to it. Amman Municipality has specialist human resources in the field of information technology Amman Municipality is working continuously to train its employees on the use of information technology Amman Municipality is Keeping pace of developments in the field of information technology Available communications network allows sharing of information and knowledge among employees Amman Municipality has software applications make it easier to deal with public. Information Technology Through information technology, it is possible to exchange and sharing of information between administration and employees I could through information technology to get the information that I need to perform my work IT help in increasing my participation in the decision-making process by Using information technology I have an opportunity to provide practical suggestions about my work Information Technology enables me to exchange creative ideas with colleagues to develop work Through appropriate information technology, I can get help from officials Participation Use of information technology increases the accuracy of the work performed Use of information technology increases the quality of service provided by the Amman Municipality The use of information technology lead to simplify the procedures of implementing mean Std

6 work Use of information technology reduces work errors The use of information technology lead to speed completion the work The use of information technology lead to achieve career goals the use of information technology, facilitates the self-development of my abilities The provision of information through appropriate information technology, increases my powers to completion the work use information technology Increases my ability to accomplish the tasks entrusted to me providing information by using Information technology increases flexibility in the performance of my duties Performance Improvement Empowerment Information Technology As we see in the table (2) the total mean of independent variable is (3.8291), and the answers of the study sample on these dimensions were close, the standard deviation was ( ), which reflects the perception of respondents about the reality of Information Technology and its applications at Royal Amman Municipality Empowerment public sector employees Also from the table (2) we can see the total mean of Empowerment public sector employees is (3.8718), and the answers of the study sample on these dimensions were close, the standard deviation ( ), the arrangement of these dimensions according to the sample members opinion, as follows: Participation in (ideas, decision making, dialog, and Using information) with mean (3.9209) and a standard deviation ( ), second place Performance Improvement with mean (3.8423) and a standard deviation ( ) Hypothesis Testing We use Pearson s test to identify if there is relationship between Information Technology(IT) and Empowerment public sector employees, As it seen in Table (3), the output indicates that there is a positive significant correlation at (P 0.01) between Information Technology and Empowerment public sector employees (R= 0.716). IT Pearson Correlation Sig. (2-tailed) N Table (3) Correlations (N=78) Empowerment **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). Participation Performance Improvement ** o.625 ** ** Multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses. Multiple regression identifies how much of the variance in the dependent variable will be explained when a set of variables are able to predict a particular outcome. Using multiple regression analysis is subject to normality of the data. COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 810

7 Hypothesis 1: Table (4) Model Summary Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate a Table (5) ANOVA b Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Regression a 1 Residual Total b. Dependent Variable: Participation Table (6) Coefficients a Standardized Unstandardized Coefficients Coefficients Model B Std. Error Beta t Sig. 1 (Constant) IT a. Dependent Variable: Participation adopt to the results of regression analysis, the Information Technology as it seen in table (6) effected directly (β = 0.625, P 0.01) on Participation in ideas, decision making, dialog, and Using information, as it shown from table (4) (R 2 = ) This means that Information Technology has been interpreted (39%) of the variance Participation, and also we noted from table (5) that the value of the statistical test (F = ) is statistically significant at (P 0.01). this analysis lead us to accept the first sub hypothesis which said: There is a significant effect at level (P 0.01) of Information Technology in Participation in ideas, decision making, dialog, and Using information. COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 811

8 Hypothesis 2: Table (7) Model Summary Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate a Table (8) ANOVA b Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. 1 Regression a Residual Total b. Dependent Variable: Performance Improvement Table (9) Coefficients a Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients t Sig. B Std. Error Beta 1 (Constant) X a. Dependent Variable: Performance Improvement depending on the results of regression analysis, the Information Technology as it seen in table (9) effected directly (β = 0.616, P 0.01) on Performance Improvement, as it shown from table (7) (R 2 = 0.379) This means that Information Technology has been interpreted (37.9%) of the variance Performance Improvement, and also we noted from table (8) that the value of the statistical test (F = ) is statistically significant at (P 0.01). this analysis lead us to accept the second sub hypothesis which said: There is a significant effect at level (P 0.01) of Information Technology in Performance Improvement. COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 812

9 Main Hypothesis: Table (10) Model Summary Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate a Table (11) ANOVA b Model Sum of Squares Df Mean Square F Sig. 1 Regression a Residual Total b. Dependent Variable: Empowerment Table (12) Coefficients a Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients t Sig. B Std. Error Beta 1 (Constant) X a. Dependent Variable: Empowerment As it clear from the results of regression analysis, the Information Technology as it seen in table (12) effected directly (β = 0.716, P 0.01) on Empowerment public sector employees(participation, and Performance Improvement), as it shown from table (10) (R 2 = ) This means that Information Technology has been interpreted (51.2%) of the variance in Empowerment public sector employees, and also we noted from table (11) that the value of the statistical test (F = ) is statistically significant at (P 0.01). this analysis lead us to accept the main hypothesis which said: There is a significant effect at level (P 0.01) of Information Technology in Empowerment Jordanian public sector employees. COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 813

10 8. Conclusions After analyzing the data and testing the hypotheses, the following major conclusions were reached: 1. Information Technology is provided in high percentages with a mean (3.829) compared with the expected mean which is (3). 2. There is significant statistical relationship between Information Technology and Empowerment public sector employees at the confidence level (P 0.01). 3. The study revealed that Information Technology has a significant statistical impact on Empowerment public sector employees and explains (51.2%) of the variation in Empowerment 9. Recommendations According to the findings of this study we can give some suggestions, might be they can help employees of Jordanian public sector if they use them effectively: - Amman Municipality should give more attention to information technology especially to use internal communications network to connect devices with each other s, which allows sharing of information and knowledge among employees, and train its employees on the use of information technology. - The Administration of Amman Municipality should support the participation between officials and their subordinates by using appropriate information technology. - Amman Municipality should Reconsider the use of information technology so that the focus is on simplify the procedures of implementing work, reduce work errors, achieve career goals, and increase powers to completion the work. COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 814

11 References - Kroenke, David (2011). Using MIS. Prentice Hall. - Laudon, Kenneth & Laudon, Jane. (2010). Management Information systems, (11 th ed). Prentice Hall Int. Inc. - Ward, John & Peppard, Joe.(2002). Strategic Planning for Information Systems, (Third Edition). By John Wiley & Sons Ltd. - Alsop, R. & Bertelsen, M. & Holland, J. (2005), Empowerment in Practice: From Analysis to Implementation, The World Bank, Washington, DC. - Assadzadeh, Ahmad & Chakherlouy, Farzam & Khajeamirlou, Roshanak. (2012). Investigating the Effect of Using E-government on Occupational Empowering of the Employees, Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research, 2(2) Robbins, S.P. (2005). Organizational behavior (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. - Sumukadas, N., & Sawhney, R. (2004). Workforce agility through employee involvement, IIE Transactions 36, Lee, Heejin & Whitley, Edgar A.(2002). Time and Information Technology: Temporal Impacts on Individuals, Organizations, and Society, The Information Society, 18: Boudrias, Jean-Se bastien & Brunet, Luc.& Morin, Alexandre J. S. & Savoie, Andre. & Plunier, Patrick & Cacciatore, Gerlanda. (2010). Empowering Employees:The Moderating Role of Perceived Organisational Climate and Justice, Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, Vol. 42, No. 4, Fernandez, Sergio & Moldogaziev, Tima.(2011) Empowering Public Sector Employees to Improve Performance: Does It Work?, The American Review of Public Administration 41(1) Rivard, Suzanne & Lapointe, Liette(2012). Information Technology Implementers Responses To User Resistance: Nature And Effects, MIS Quarterly Vol. 36 No. 3 pp Sekaran, Uma (2003), Research Methods For Business: Askill Buildings Approah. John Wilely & sons Inc., New York. COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 815