Challenges in the Era of Globalization - iaabd

Challenges in the Era of Globalization
Edited by Emmanuel Obuah
states that there are numerous difficulties in measuring the returns of training of firms as it is often
difficult to obtain data on firm productivity, competitiveness and profitability. Redshaw (2000) says that
an assessment of training on organizational effectiveness and performance is really a difficult task to
determine because of the following reasons; Firstly, the impact of training may take a considerable time
before results are shown. Secondly, many other factors can also have both positive and negative influence
on T&D. Thirdly, results of T&D are very difficult to quantify as in employee satisfaction, commitment,
and change in behaviour and attitude. A major difficulty of evaluating T&D is that the cause and effect
relationships are not necessarily straightforward and hardly ever clearly defined (Yeo, 2003). Yet, other
researchers have conducted studies on T&D and have come out with findings that training courses for
staff development are positively related to organizational commitment (Birdi et al., 1997); result in
greater organizational effectiveness and increased personal growth and performance (Debrah and Ofori,
2005); result in organisational performance measurements, such as ROI, changes in productivity, quality
improvement, customer satisfaction and market share (Miller, 2002). Nevertheless, all these studies cited
above with the exception of Debrah and Ofori (2005) are Western based. The availability of theoretical
and practical gaps still persist in the literature of developing countries particularly in the Banking sector.
This paper therefore intends to fill the gap in the HR literature of financial institutions of emerging
economies, and in particular Ghanaian Banking institution by investigating the practices of training and
development and how these T&D programmes impact on the performances of the Banks in Ghana.
Therefore, we posed the research question below.
RQ 1: What are the factors that influence T&D of staff in Ghanaian Banks?
Literature Review
The continuous need for individual and organizational performance and development can be attributed to
the numerous organizational demands, including maintaining superiority in the marketplace, enhancing
employee skills and knowledge, and increasing productivity. Training and development (T&D) is one of
the most pervasive methods for enhancing the productivity of individuals and communicating
organizational goals to new personnel (Arthur et al., 2003)
According to Cole (1999), T&D for employees is an important issue that is faced by all organizations.
However, the amount and quality of T&D carried out by organizations vary enormously from one
organization to another. Factors such as degree of change in the external environment ( technological
change, new legislation), the degree of internal change (new processes or re-engineering), the availability
of suitable skills within the existing workforce, the extent to which the organization supports the idea of
internal career development, the commitment of senior management to training as an essential part of
economic success and finally, the extent to which management sees training as a motivating force in the
work place can seriously influence the quality of T&D activities (Cole, 1999).
Grober et al. (2002) identifies seven purposes of T&D, the first of which is to improve performance
where there are unsatisfactory performances by employees who are deficient in skills. Grober et al. (2002)
suggest that such employees are the main candidates for training thus, a sound training and development
programme is often instrumental in minimizing such problems. We therefore hypothesize that;
H1: There is a correlation between the Training of staff and improved work performance in the Banks.
The second purpose of T&D is to update employee skills; with rapid advancement in technology, it has
become essential that managers be well aware of changes not only in technology but also in jobs; and that
employees are updated on such changes and necessary action to be taken through Staff development so
that such advances are integrated into the organizational goals.
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