The Influence of Corporate Culture on Employees

The study adopted the survey research design since data were collected from the respondents without imposing any treatment on them. The participants for the study were made up of 134 employees from 18 selected small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) in Makurdi metropolis. The SMEs selected for the study cut across different industries, ranging from agro-allied to food and beverages industries. The small enterprise is an establishment with the total cost of capital of over One Million, Five Hundred Thousand Naira ($9375) but not more than Fifty Million Naira ($312500), excluding the cost of land and a labour size of 10 to 100 workers, while a medium enterprise is a business with a total capital base of above Fifty Million Naira ($9375) but not exceeding Two Hundred Million Naira ($125000), but excluding land and labour size of 100 to 300 workers. However, Ekpenyong and Nyong (1992) observed that in Nigeria, there is no clear cut definition that distinguishes small enterprises from medium enterprises. This is because of the fluid nature that reflects the characteristics of typical Nigerian small enterprises in terms of their capital base, number of employees and annual turnovers.

In order to enhance ethical standards in research, participation in the study was voluntarily, with the purpose of the study made known to participants. The SMEs sector was considered appropriate for the study due to its importance to the industrialization of the Nigerian economy. It is hoped that if SMEs maintain a positive corporate culture that will elicit employee commitment, they will be better placed to contribute to the attainment of vision 20:2020 of the federal government of Nigeria. By vision 20:2020, Nigeria hopes to be among the top 20 economies of the world by the year 2020. The performance of SMEs is therefore key to attaining this vision.

Out of the 134 participants for the study, 50.8% were male while 49.2% were female. The highest educational qualification of most of the respondents (53%) was the senior secondary certificate examination (SSCE). This is not surprising since most SMEs in Nigeria employ mostly unskilled labour due to the cheapness of this category of workforce. In the same vein, majority of the participants (60.3%) were junior staff in their organizations. Most of them (69.4%) had working experience of between 1 to 5 years with their organizations and were not married (58.2%), while majority of them (37.3%) were between the ages 18 and 25 years.