Influence of Employee Empowerment on Employee Commitment in Oil Producing Firms in Rivers State

This study was conducted to examine the influence of employee empowerment on employee commitment in Oil Producing firms in Rivers State. The study was based on a survey research design and made use of questionnaire in obtaining data from office resident employees serving in five Oil Producing firms in Rivers State of Nigeria. The population of study was 20,116 while its sample size determined through Taro Yamane sample size determination formular was 1793. The analysis of data was done with descriptive and inferential statistics. The former used percentage method while the latter used simple regression. The test of hypotheses in the study indicated that employee empowerment had a positive and significant influence on employee commitment in Oil Producing firms in Rivers State. The generalized model summary showed an R2 of 0.445. The model also showed a goodness of fit at 95 percent (p-value <0.05. With this result, it was concluded that employee empowerment can reliably predict employee commitment in Oil Producing firms particularly those of Rivers State of Nigeria. It was recommended that Oil Producing firms in Rivers State should empower its employees for them to have some level of control over their work, deploy delegation of responsibility and also encourage employees to participate in decision making in order to influence employee commitment