Employee engagement in strategy execution at the South African Army Infantry Formation

[摘要] The primary purpose of this study is to determine how employees in the South African Army Infantry Formation (SAAIF) can be engaged in the execution of organisational strategies. The problem is that employees in the SAAIF are not adequately engaged in strategy execution processes, and as a result have trouble in understanding strategic plans, objectives, accepting strategic roles and focusing their actions on being committed to the execution of organisational strategies.This study was conducted at SAAIF headquarters in Pretoria. The empirical part of the study was conducted in July 2015. Data for this research were collected from a sample of 140 respondents. Additionally, the subjects of this study were randomly selected from a population of SAAIF employees at the headquarters in Pretoria. A questionnaire was distributed to respondents in the presence of the researcher and responses were made on a 5-point Likert scales ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree.The results suggest that employee engagement levels of the SAAIF are significantly higher when compared to the global and national workforce engagement results, however, as a military organisation, the level of disengaged employees in the SAAIF is a cause for concern. In addition, the study identified a number of barriers and hindrances towards employee engagement and the successful execution of strategies in the SAAIF.Furthermore, the study shows that there is a significant positive correlation between employee engagement and strategy execution. Based on the results of this research, it can be concluded that, employee engagement affects how organisations are able to execute strategic plans, which ultimately affects the performance of organisations.

[发布机构] University of the Free State