Cohered emergent theory for evaluating and designing employees' reward practices: An interpretive study of Nigerian commercial banks

  

This research employs Cohered Emergent Theory to propose how selected commercial banks in Nigeria might design their total reward practices to address employees' daily and evolving reward needs and improve their performance. Existing research that explains how to motivate employees in the banking industry needs to address the changing requirements of employees. It focuses more on achieving corporate goals than satisfying employees' everyday expectations and intrinsic needs. 

The research applies an interpretive approach and uses qualitative methods to collect data from five selected commercial banks in Nigeria. Thirty semi-structured interviews would be conducted with ten managers, two from each of the five selected banks, and 20 employees, four from each bank. Augmented by document analysis, the data were inductively and thematically analysed to extract new insights and categorisation on Cohered Emergent Theory. The findings suggest that the Nigerian commercial banking industry does not adequately customise their total reward practices to align with the requirements of their employees, with little recognition and promotion opportunities, no employee involvement in the decision-making processes of the banks, limited training opportunities, a lack of feedback from management, absence of remuneration and compensation review, and limited health and wellbeing reward incentives for employees.  

Through the application of Cohered Emergent Theory, the findings identified the need for coherence between employees and managers as an essential requirement for designing total reward practices flexibly to improve employee performance and increase the banks' productivity. These insights contributed to developing the Cohered Emergent Reward Package (CERP) model based on the Cohered Emergent Theory, which explains how commercial banks in Nigeria can design and evaluate their total reward practices to satisfy employees' reward needs. This new theoretical model offers a practical guide for the Nigerian commercial banking industry to design and implement total reward practices to meet employees' changing reward needs.