Microsoft Word - IGWEBUIKE JOURNAL VOL. 5. NO 3.docx IGWEBUIKE: An African Journal of Arts and Humanities Vol. 5 No 3, June 2019. ISSN: 2488-9210(Online) 2504-9038(Print) (A Publication of Tansian University, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies) 1 HUMAN CAPITAL SELECTION PROCESS AS CORRELATES OF ACADEMIC STAFF PRODUCTIVITY IN NIGERIA UNIVERSITIES Omojola I. O. PhD Department of Business Administration and Management Villanova Polytechnic, Imesi Ile Osun State omojolassma@yahoo.co.uk; +2348057946853 Abstract The study examined human capital selection process as correlates of academic staff productivity in Nigeria universities. It looked at how human capital selection process is related to productivity of academic staff in southwest Nigeria Universities. The descriptive survey design was used for this study. The population of this study consisted of 154 Deans, 849 Heads of Department and 11,828 academic staff in Southwest Nigeria Universities. The sample was one thousand eight hundred (1,800) respondents, comprising 20 Deans, 70 Heads of Department and 1,710 academic staff. Multistage sampling procedure which involves simple random sampling, stratified random sampling and proportional stratified random sampling technique were used to select them. Two self-designed instruments were used, Questionnaire on Human Capital Selection (QHCS) for academic staff and Productivity of Academic Staff Questionnaire (PASQ) for Deans and Heads of Departments. To establish the reliability of the instruments, the test-retest method was used. They were found to be 0.74 and 0.71 for QHRM and PASQ respectively. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics such as percentage; mean and standard deviation and Pearson’s product moment correlation. The hypothesis was tested at 0. 05 level of significance. The study revealed that human capital selection process is significantly related to productivity of academic staff. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that the managers should pay attention to the quality of the personnel to be hired into university system so that they will be able to do effective research and be more productive. The managers should also endearvour to select the best candidate during recruitment and have orientation for the staff so that they will adapt easily into the system. Managers should also encourage the selected candidates and guide them well during the probation period so that they will be productive. It was recommended that managers should evaluate the ability of the academic staff regularly and give them feedback after evaluation. Human resource IGWEBUIKE: An African Journal of Arts and Humanities Vol. 5 No 3, June 2019. ISSN: 2488-9210(Online) 2504-9038(Print) (A Publication of Tansian University, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies) 2 managers should also motivate the academic staff through regular payment of salary and promotion. Key Words: Human Capital, Academic Staff and Productivity. Introduction The influence of human capital selection process on the productivity of employee in any organization cannot be over emphasized. Human capital selection, also known as recruitment is the process of attracting qualified people to apply for the job openings in the organization. It is the first step in the process of filling a vacancy in an organization. One of the factors that may be responsible for low productivity of the academic staff could be human capital selection. In the past, personnel were brought to Nigeria Universities from outside the county during the time of the missionaries. Also, those who have first class at the first degree level were retained to do proper academic work in the universities. These candidates worked in the universities and rose to the level of professors. Then, those in academia were simply the best. Brewster and Mayrhofer (2012) assert that recruitment and selection processes are crucial as they ensure that the right staff joins the organization thereby helping the institution to meet its short-and long term objectives. Recruitment and selection are totally different from one another. Recruitment is a way of gathering qualified candidates as much as possible for a vacant position, while selection means choosing the best candidate out of the majority. In the Universities, human resource managers such as Deans and Heads of Department may not pay attention to steps in human resource recruitment, which is the key to productivity. The quality of the human resource will reflect in the school productivity. Recruitment is a process of bringing in new members to a system. It is expected that such a personnel has the required certificates and perform excellently well in the written and oral interviews. Proper orientation or integration is required from the human resource managers to enable the newly employed members fit in to the system with ease. In the universities today, it appears that staff are employed out of sympathy or because of one connection or the other. This type of personnel may not be able to do serious teaching, research and community services for lack of competency. This may make productivity to be low. IGWEBUIKE: An African Journal of Arts and Humanities Vol. 5 No 3, June 2019. ISSN: 2488-9210(Online) 2504-9038(Print) (A Publication of Tansian University, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies) 3 Mathis and Jackson (2008) are of the opinion that performance of organizations could be adversely affected if human capital selection practices are poorly executed. The absence of good human capital selection practices could lead to dysfunctional or negative organizational outcomes. Based on practical insights, selecting wrong people for the organization can produce long-term negative effects like high training costs, loss of goodwill or reputation, increased labour turnover and loss of profitability and productivity. Lawrence and Robert (1989) are of the opinion that recruitment process involves identifying and attracting candidates for current and future jobs: it is a process of developing and maintaining adequate sources for filling human resource needs. Sheikh (2003) agrees with Lawrence and Robert. To him, recruitment and selection are the two ways of hiring people for the organization as per need. It involves seeking out evaluating, obtaining acceptance from the prospective employee and places him to fill a vacant position in the organization. The extent of recruitment also depends on the wages and salary structure, benefits on the priviledges the job carries and the existing kind of environment prevailing in the organization, technological and labour management relations. Recruitment involves all prospective applicants for job positions in the organization. Chidi (2014) investigates the effect of selection practices on performance of unionised organizations in the Food, Beverage and Tobacco Industry in Lagos State. The study revealed that, selection practices exhibited positive and significant relationship with all measures of performance. The study of Abraham (1998) discloses that work experience has no effect on job performance in an organization. This implies that in recruiting personnel, work experience may not necessarily be a criterion. Willie (2010) opines that a good recruitment programme is one that is properly planned and well operated. Poor recruitment efforts could lead to the selection of poor applicants that can affect productivity. The research by Akhigbe (2013), investigated the relative influence of human resource planning on the effectiveness and efficiency of organization shows that, there is a shortage of intellectual human resource professionals in Nigerian organizations. Those who currently assumed the function of human resource managers know little or nothing about the function they currently occupied. However, the research of Ofori and Aryeetey (2011) reveals that human resources managers and officers still do not consider recruitment and selection as IGWEBUIKE: An African Journal of Arts and Humanities Vol. 5 No 3, June 2019. ISSN: 2488-9210(Online) 2504-9038(Print) (A Publication of Tansian University, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies) 4 important tasks within the human resource department. Perhaps this is the reason why institutions complain that it is difficult to find a suitable candidate for job openings. Willie (2010) proposes a proper manpower planning as the first step to be taken before any recruitment and selection can take place. If this is carefully attended to, it has a lot of advantages. To him, manpower planning is a two-phased process because manpower planning not only analyzes the current human resources but also makes manpower forecasts and thereby draws employment programs. Manpower Planning is advantageous to firm in following manner: Shortages and surpluses can be identified so that quick action can be taken wherever required. The study of Lavigna (1992) reveales that it is better to base employee screening/selection decisions on specific job-related knowledge like skills and abilities, instead of relying primarily on background characteristic "signals." However, Arvey (2006), exhibites that major field of specialization is highly related to employees’ performance. According to Aswathappa, (2009) human resource practitioners do not follow their institution’s recruitment and selection processes in the appropriate manner. Hence, institutions experience high labour turnover, high staff absenteeism, job reworks, high training expenses, labour unrest and low productivity. The study conducted by Lavigna (1996) on Innovation in Recruiting and Hiring: Attracting the Best and Brightest to Wisconsin State Government aimed at using computer based text to select the best candidates. He finds out that even in this era of public sector reorganization and downsizing, hiring the best and the brightest candidate is critical. He concluded that, when hiring is limited, it is more important than ever to ensure that when government does recruit, it attracts and hires talented people to improve productivity. Nevertheless, Kanyemba, Gervase and Iwu (2015) are of the opinion that recruitment and selection processes impact productivity; hence management must adopt best practice for these crucial human resource functions. The study of Ariss and Timmins (2009) on employee education and job performance found that educational level is positively related to job performance. Purpose of the Study IGWEBUIKE: An African Journal of Arts and Humanities Vol. 5 No 3, June 2019. ISSN: 2488-9210(Online) 2504-9038(Print) (A Publication of Tansian University, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies) 5 The purpose of this study was to examine how human capital selection process correlates with productivity of academic staff in Nigeria Universities. This means that the study examined how human capital selection process and productivity of academic staff in Nigeria Universities are related. The study made recommendation Reserch Hypotheses The following hypotheses were generated for the purpose of the study: 1. There is no significant relationship between human selection process and productivity of academic staff. Methodology The study made use of descriptive research of survey design. The population of this study consisted of 154 Deans, 849 Heads of Department and 11,828 academic staff in Southwest Nigeria Universities. The sample of this study was (1,800) respondents, comprising 20 Deans, 70 Heads of Department and 1,710 academic staff. Multistage sampling procedure which involves simple random sampling, stratified random sampling and proportional stratified random sampling techniques were used to select the states, universities and individuals that were used for the study. Two sets of self-designed instruments were used for this study. The first instrument was Questionnaire on Human Resource Management (QHRM). The second instrument was Productivity of Academic Staff Questionnaire (PASQ). These were used to collect relevant data from the subjects. The instruments were validated based on the judgments of experts in Educational Management and tests and Measurement s in Ekiti State University. Reliability coefficients of 0.74 and 0. 71 were obtained for QHRM and PASQ respectively using test re-test method. Two hypotheses were postulated. The data were analyzed using frequency counts, percentage, mean, standard deviation and Pearson Moment Correlation Coefficient. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Results Hypothesis 1: IGWEBUIKE: An African Journal of Arts and Humanities Vol. 5 No 3, June 2019. ISSN: 2488-9210(Online) 2504-9038(Print) (A Publication of Tansian University, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies) 6 1. There is no significant relationship between human selection process and productivity of academic staff. In testing the hypothesis, scores relating to recruitment were computed using items 1-7 of QHRM while productivity of academic staff scores were computed using items 1-27 of PASQ. The scores (Human selection Process and productivity of academic staff) were subjected to statistical analysis using Pearson Product Moment Correlation at 0.05 level of significance. The result is presented in table 1. Table 1: Pearsons Product Correlation of Human Capital Selection Process and Productivity of Academic Staff Variable N Mean SD r-cal r-table Human capital selection process 1495 21.30 3.945 0.589* 0.195 Productivity of Academic Staff 1495 113.00 9.061 *P<0.05 Table 1 revealed that the relationship between human resource recruitment and productivity of academic staff is statistically significant at 0.05 level. (r= 0.589; p<0.05). Thus the null hypothesis is rejected. This implies that there is significant relationship between human resource recruitment and productivity of academic staff. Therefore, there was a positive relationship. Discussion The finding of this study showed that there was significant relationship between human capital selection process and productivity of academic staff. The finding showed that there was significant relationship between productivity of academic staff and human capital selection process. This by implication means that the nature of staff recruited must determine their productivity. What could be responsible for this finding may be the fact that personnel recruitment is a foundation of all other human resource activities in the universities. The finding is in agreement with the views of Chidi (2014) and that of Arvey (2006) that selection practices exhibited positive and significant relationship with all IGWEBUIKE: An African Journal of Arts and Humanities Vol. 5 No 3, June 2019. ISSN: 2488-9210(Online) 2504-9038(Print) (A Publication of Tansian University, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies) 7 measures of performance. Also, that of Lavigna (1996) and Ariss and Timmins (2009) that educational level is positively related to job performance. However, the finding is in disparity with the study of Abraham (1998) that arrived at the fact that in recruiting personnel, work experience may not necessarily be a criterion for productivity. Conclusion Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that Human capital selection process is an important factors in lecturers productivity in Nigerian Universities. Recommendations In view of the fact that human resource recruitment is significantly related to academic staff productivity, the managers should pay attention to the quality of the personnel to be hired into university system so that they will be able to do effective research and be more productive. The managers should also endearvour to select the best candidate during recruitment and have orientation for the staff so that they will adapt easily into the system. Managers should also encourage the selected candidates and guide them well during the probation period so that they will be productive. References Abraham, K.G. (1998). Experience, Performance, and Earnings. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 65 (17): 703-736. Akhigbe, O.J. (2013). Human resource planning: A key factor in ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency of organization. Journal of Emerging Trends in Economics and Management Sciences, 4 (4): 64-99. Arvey, R.D. (2006). General Ability in Employment: A Discussion. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 29 (3): 415-420. Aswathappa, K, (2009). Human resources management: text and cases, Tata McGraw-Hill, New Delhi. Brewster, C. & Mayrhofer, W, (2012). Handbook of research on comparative human resources management. Northampton, M.A. Edward Elgar Publishing. IGWEBUIKE: An African Journal of Arts and Humanities Vol. 5 No 3, June 2019. ISSN: 2488-9210(Online) 2504-9038(Print) (A Publication of Tansian University, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies) 8 Chidi, O.C. (2014). Human capital selection practices and performance of unionized organisations in the food, beverage and tobacco industry in Lagos State, Nigeria. 22(1): 614-636. Kanyemba M., Gervase C., & Iwu, C. (2015. Impact of Recruitment and Selection on Organizational Productivity: Evidence from Staff of a University in South Africa. http://www.researchgate.net/publication/272349720 Lavigna, R .J. (1992). Predicting job performance from background characteristics more evidence from the public sector. Journal of Public Personnel Management. 21(3): 54-76. Lavigna R.J. (1996). Innovation in recruiting and hiring: Attracting the best and brightest to Wisconsin State Government. Journal of Public Personnel Management. 25 (4): 67-81. Lawrence, A.K, Robert G. M & Fredrick E.S. (1989). Human Resource Management. Charles E. Merrill Company. USA. Mathis, R.L., & Jackson, J.H. (2008). Human resource management (12th ed.). USA: South-Western Cengage Learning. Ofori, D. & Aryeetey, M. (2011). Recruitment and selection practices in small and medium enterprises: perspectives from Ghana. International Journal of Business Administration. (2) 3: 45-60. Sheikh, A.M (2003). Human Resource Development and Management. Ram Nagar, New Delhi-110 005. Willie R. (2010): http://wikieducator.org/User:Satarupa/Temp/BasicConceptof Personnel_