WALE-OSHINOWO, Bamidele A.
Department of Business Administration,
University of Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria
and
OGUNBUFUNMI, Oluwaseyi
Department of Business Administration,
University of Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria
ABSTRACT
Employee productivity is crucial for organisational success and growth. In the modern world of work, employee diversity in culture is inevitable. While existing literature shows that a lot of studies have been done on the influence of cultural diversity on performance and other important outcomes within various industries, there are still subtle gaps identified which are vital to our holistic understanding of workforce diversity in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country like Nigeria. It has become imperative for progressive research on cultural diversity to pay attention to specific dimensions within that construct, especially as it affects employee performance and productivity, since employees are central to the attainment of organisational goals. Consequently, the focus of this study is to assess how ethnicity and religion (as dimensions of cultural diversity) influence employee productivity in selected Oil Servicing Companies in Lagos State, Nigeria. The assumption is that when individuals from different ethnic and religious backgrounds are brought together to work in an organisation, their sensemaking of the dominant culture of that organisation would be guided by a variety of underlying factors, which could subsequently impact on the way they discharge their duties. In an attempt to examine some of these dimensions of culture within the oil and gas industry, we employed a multi-paradigm approach to assess how cultural diversity affects employee productivity. Using structured questionnaire and purposive sampling technique, data was collected from 100 respondents in the oil and gas industry. Our findings suggest that ethnicity and religion influences employee productivity within the workplace with important implications for future research and practice
Keywords: Ethnicity, Religion, Employee Productivity, Cultural Diversity, Oil & Gas