Employee on-Boarding and Sustainable Consumer Satisfaction: An Assessment of the Customer Responsiveness of the New Hires and the Transitioning Employees Inherited by the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (Ikeja Electric), Lagos From the Privatized Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN)

Abstract

Introduction One of the notable legacies of the Systems approach in organizational studies is that all the subsystems or elements that make up the organization, which are interrelated, function interdependently and synergistically for the survival of the whole. Where a subsystem or an element experiences malfunctioning, the entire system is bound to be affected; as that is capable of bringing it to a state of disequilibrium. In effect, the system would experience difficulty in attaining a state of homeostasis (equilibrium or a steady state). In an input-output or import-export relationship, between the organization and its environment, a deficiency in any of the input resources which are imported from the environment, would affect the processing or transformation stage, and concomitantly, the output, which are exported to the environment usually in form of finished goods and services, would be faulty (Mele, Pels, and Polese, 2010). In retrospect, looking at the works of classical management scholars like Taylor (1911) and his contemporaries Fayol (1917), and Weber (1919),the focus of management thought was on goal attainment, efficiency, increased productivity, and profit maximization which necessitated that emphasis be placed on "rationality" (goal specificity and high degree of structural formalization). As a result, the intellectual thinking and creative energies of the theorists were devoted to the generation of universally applicable laws either as "one best practice" of managing (Taylor), as "principles of management" (Fayol), or as "bureaucracies"(Weber). Their idea about the organization and its functions was mechanistic based on the principle of rationality; and, in their view, the ultimate goal of any business organization was how to achieve efficiency and increased productivity leading to high profits. Consequently, while emphasis was on structures and functions in the organization (structural-functionalism) as being suitable for achieving increased output with a high degree of efficiency to ensure profit maximization, the deficiency in their thought is that the human being, who should have been appropriately seen as the driver of the system, was seen merely as a productive tool in the same way as machines were regarded (Yalokwu, 2007).