Managerial Competency: Putting the Missing Link to Employee Loyalty.

• Author: Abbasi, Sami M.

INTRODUCTION

Loyalty has been defined in numerous contexts ranging from family to love to the workplace. The following is a sample of definitions: "The level of solidarity, faithfulness or allegiance to a group or individual" (https://psychologydictionary.org/loyalty); "Loyalty is usually seen as a virtue, albeit a problematic one. It is constituted centrally by perseverance in an association to which a person has become intrinsically committed as a matter of his or her identity" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/loyalty); "General term that signifies a person's devotion or sentiment of attachment to a particular object, which may be another person or group of persons, an ideal, a duty, or a cause" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/loyalty); "The quality or state or an instance of being loyal... faithful in allegiance to one's lawful sovereign or government" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/loyalty).

Organizations today are changing and evolving faster than ever before. For example, the realities of today's workforce contradict traditional management views and assumptions. The authority of managers is undermined as the effects of global economy, different information technologies, and old and millennials entrants of employees are making it impossible to use any traditional methods of managing organizations. Instead, the key to continued success is how to manage people at work within rapidly changing organizations (Hannon, 2018; Pyrillis, 2016). Peter Drucker, one of the most influential figures in the business world, was quoted saying that "the most common cause of executive failure is unwillingness or inability to change with the demand of new position" (Tarrant, 1976).

Traditionally, American corporations have spent decades slashing jobs, cutting benefits, and putting shareholders before employees. Today, however, the 100 companies that pay and treat their workers well outperform those who do not. With unemployment near four percent, it appears that the pendulum is swinging back to workers (McGrath et al., 2017). For example, at IBM, employees are treated like customers by engaging them in the operation of the company. Specifically, the company found that employee engagement explained high client satisfaction scores. As a result, 45 percent of the revenue came from businesses, which was not the case five years ago (Burell, 2018). This suggests that an enthusiastic and loyal employee will nurture a productive working...