Assessment of employee productivity as a determinant of stock performance of Kenyan listed companies offering Employee Share Ownership Plans
Date
2019
Authors
Kiura, Kenneth Kinyua
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Strathmore University
Abstract
The study sought to assess whether Employee Productivity is a determinant of stock performance of Kenyan listed companies offering employee share ownership plans. The premise of the study is that, to be economically viable, an ESOP should be able to, through enhanced employee involvement and satisfaction and morale boosting to improve productivity. This should in turn lead to improved firm performance and thus benefitting both shareholders and employee owners by increasing their holdings value. This study used stock performance to avoid results that could be occasioned by manipulation of financial data. It employed a mixed research design that included both descriptive and quantitative research designs and purposive sampling was used to pick nine listed companies with approved ESOPs and another nine companies without ESOPs, which acted as the control sample. Secondary data was obtained from the financial reports of the firms for the study period as well as the stock market and was used in running the regression model. The key variable tested was employee productivity while the moderating variable was the presence or absence of ESOPs and several controlling variables were added to the model to improve its predictability. A t-test was used to check whether there is a significant difference in stock performance between companies with ESOPs and those without ESOPs listed at the NSE. The results showed that there is no significant difference between the stock performance of companies offering ESOPS and those not offering ESOPs listed at the NSE. Panel data was used to examine the effect of employee productivity in the presence of moderating variable (ESOP) on stock performance of companies offering ESOPs at the NSE. To begin with, presence or absence of ESOP was added as a moderating variable to see if Employee Productivity in the midst of ESOP was a significant determinant of Stock performance of companies listed in the NSE. Secondly, to further investigate the effect of employee productivity on stock performance, control variables were added to the model to see how all the variables interact together to explain stock performance of listed companies with ESOPS at the NSE. A pooled OLS was adopted and a stepwise regression carried out to check the significance of the key variable alone and in the presence of the moderating variable and control variables. At 5% significance, the only significant variable was found to be Ln Profits. Although this was the only variable found to be statistically significant, the overall model was found not to be significant in that the key study variable in the model, Employee Productivity and the moderating variable, ESOP, were not significant Primary data was collected using questionnaires both for the management and the employees to supplement the results from the secondary data regression analysis. To check whether management satisfaction with employee productivity is stimulated by the adoption of ESOPs, a t-test was used to check the mean difference and from the results, it appears that the means of the management satisfaction between firms with ESOPs and those without ESOPs listed at the NSE are not statistically significantly different. The study also sought to find out whether employee satisfaction is stimulated by adoption of ESOPs and a t-test was used to check the mean difference and from the results, it appears that the means of the employee satisfaction between firms with ESOPs and those without ESOPs listed at the NSE are statistically significantly different. This now elucidates that although the questionnaire findings had both shown that employees were generally satisfied both in companies with and without ESOPs, the employees in firms with ESOP seem to enjoy significantly more satisfaction.
Description
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Commerce at Strathmore University
Keywords
Employee productivity, Stock performance, Kenyan listed companies, Employee Share Ownership Plans (ESOPs)