Talent Management and Workers’ Commitment to Oil & Gas Firms in Nigeria

Purpose: This investigates the relationship between talent management and workers’ commitment to oil and gas firms in Nigeria using a cross-sectional survey. Ten oil and gas servicing firms were surveyed using simple random sampling. Design/Methodology: A population of 125 managers and supervisors were surveyed from ten oil and gas firms in Rivers state while a sample of 95 was ascertained from the population using Krejcie and Morgan sample size determination table. Reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha. Face and content validity was employed. 95 copies of the questionnaire were administered to managers and supervisors but 74 copies were correctly filled and returned. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (rs) was used to analyze the hypotheses with the aid of statistical package for social sciences (SPSS 20.0) while respondents’ characteristics were analyzed using frequency distribution. Findings: The study found that talent management has a positive significant relationship with workers commitment. It concluded that talent management measured in terms of talent attraction, talent development and talent retention promotes workers commitment in oil and gas firms in Nigeria. Practical Implications: This study recommends that managers of oil and gas firms should endeavor to employ all compensation plans necessary to retain talents in the industry as this will enhance their commitment towards achieving organizational goals.


Introduction
Workers' are the lubricants that stimulate oil and gas industries in Nigeria through the applications of their talents in off-shore and off-shore operations. Thus, without their commitment, the industry will not in existence by now. On the other hand, the workers' commitment has been the major reasons why Nigeria oil and gas industries are still feasible until today. Since oil and gas industries are very important to the Nigerian economy, it, therefore, means that managers, stakeholders, operators as well as other practitioners in the industry must attract the right worker, develop them through training and retain them by providing the compensation packages needed for them to stay. It is at this point that such workers will be willing to be effectively and continuance commitment to the organization in one way or the other. Workers' commitment has contributed to firms' profitability, growth, diversification, and stability. In line with the above argument, Robbins and Judge (2018) accentuate that workers who are committed are usually less likely to engage in work withdrawal even if they are not satisfied; but due to the sense of organizational loyalty, they have. In addition, McShane and Von Glinow (2015) asserted that workers commitment improves customer satisfaction because workers that have long-tenure have better knowledge and understanding of work practices hence customers prefer doing business with such workers. Jones, George, and Langton (2013) asserted that workers commitment can be strong when workers and their superiors believe in firm values which also lead to strong and positive enterprise culture.
From the foregoing, human resource management scholars attest that talent management is the key for survivability and sustainability of every firm (Ahmadi, Ahmadi, & Abbaspalangi, 2012). It has been shown that talent management influences the performance of employees positively in many firms especially when the firm attracts, develop and retain potential talents (Mangusho, Murei, & Nelima, 2015). Scholars such as Onwuka, Ugwu, and Kekeocha (2015) accentuates that; as a result of talent scarcity, most firms around the globe are in serious competition to attract potential talents quite apart from retaining them so as to overtake their rivals in terms of service and profitability. Talent management in the oil and gas industry is driven by a shortage of relevant skills such as pipeline electronic security systems, offshore electronic monitoring systems, and computerized drilling mechanisms. However, since the oil and gas industry contributes majorly for Nigeria's economic growth, attracting potential talents becomes crucial to their survival and sustainability. It is for this reason that the Federal Government of Nigeria in the year 2000 introduced the local content policy which was aimed at bridging the talent gaps between foreign firms and indigenous firms (Ocheni, 2015). Talents are usually attracted through the formal recruitment process which translates to selection and placement. The second phase of talent management is talent development which is training attracted talents in areas that they are not familiar with or is needed urgently by the firm. This is usually done by either on-thejob training or off-the-job training. Once they have been developed, firms are expected to roll out various compensation packages that will keep them (talent retention). It is at this stage that potential talents plan for their final career paths.
Drawing from the above, the predictor variable in this study has been empirically investigated with various workplace attitudinal determinants by researchers around the world applying different methodologies but failed to address the relationship that exists with the criterion variable (Eketu, 2015;Hajikaimisari, Ghalambor, & Hajikarimi, 2010;Hanif & Yunfei, 2013;James Sunday Kehinde PhD, 2012;Khan, Ayub, & Baloch, 2013;Kimani & Waithaka, 2013;Rana & Abbasi, 2013;Shirkhani & Nazari, 2014;Vivas-López, 2014). It against this backdrop that this study tends to investigate the relationship between talent management and workers' commitment of oil and gas firms in Nigeria by employing the dimensions of talent management as well as the measures of workers commitment.

Objectives of the Study
The main objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between talent management and workers' commitment to oil and gas firms in Nigeria. Specifically, the study sought to:  Investigate the relationship between talent attraction and continuance commitment of workers in oil and gas firms in Nigeria  Examine the relationship between talent attraction and affective commitment of workers in oil and gas firms in Nigeria  Ascertain the relationship between talent development and continuance commitment of workers in oil and gas firms in Nigeria  Investigate the relationship between talent development and affective commitment of workers in oil and gas firms in Nigeria  Investigate the relationship between talent retention and affective commitment of workers in oil and gas firms in Nigeria  Investigate the relationship between talent retention and continuance commitment of workers in oil and gas firms in Nigeria

Hypotheses
Based on the specific objectives the following null hypotheses were formulated.

HO1:
There is no significant relationship between talent attraction and continuance commitment of workers in oil and gas firms in Nigeria.

HO2:
There is no significant relationship between talent attraction and affective commitment of workers in oil and gas firms in Nigeria.

HO3:
There is no significant relationship between talent development and continuance commitment of workers in oil and gas firms in Nigeria.

HO4:
There is no significant relationship between talent development and affective commitment of workers in oil and gas firms in Nigeria.

HO5:
There is no significant relationship between talent retention and affective commitment of workers in oil and gas firms in Nigeria.

HO6:
There is no significant relationship between talent retention and continuance commitment of workers in oil and gas firms in Nigeria.

Literature Review Talent Management
Talent management has been a major discourse within management, engineering, and management, social and to some extent pure sciences. This is because most firm owners have started paying adequate attention to how to attract talents that will drive the goals of their enterprise to another level. It, therefore, means that employers are now focusing on mental abilities rather than physical abilities which McKinsey and Company in 1997 described as "The War for Talent". It is against this backdrop that Shirkhani and Nazari (2014) contended that this description revealed that firms that are more successful in attracting and retaining talented workers record more profits than those that do not. What then is talent? Tansley (2011) cited in Onwuka et al. (2015) affirmed that talent is an inborn gift. Zikmund (2000) cited in Mutinda (2017) opined that talent refers to those workers who can make a difference to organizational performance either through their immediate contribution or, in the longer-term, by demonstrating the highest levels of potential. CIPD (2006) added that talent comprises of those workers who can make a difference when it comes to organizational performance, either through their immediate contribution or in the longer term by demonstrating the highest levels of potential. It has been shown that firms that are very successful around the globe maintain proper talent management attributes (Brewster, Vernon, Sparrow, & Houldsworth, 2016).
Drawing from the above understanding on what talent is all about; it becomes very necessary for us to link it with management which gives us "talent management". Scholars from different fields of study have perplexed talent management with a different perception of what it entails or meant. This is not far from the trouble that has infected management concepts and theories as advocated by (Koontz) in his management theory jungle. "But what is rather upsetting to the practitioner and the observer, who sees great potential from improved management, is that the variety of approaches to management theory has led to a kind of confused and destructive jungle warfare" (Koontz, 1961). In order to disentangle these anomalies, Koontz (1961) submitted that "In order to cut this jungle and bring to light some of the issues and problems involved in the present management theory so that the tremendous interest, intelligence, and research results may become more meaningful, it is my purpose here to classify the various "schools" of management theory, to identify briefly what I believe to be the major source of differences, and to offer some suggestions for disentangling the jungle". Since Koontz submission to date, management concepts have been conceptualized by different authors in the way they conceived them to be.
What then is talent management? (ManagementStudyGuide, 2019) posited that talent management in firms is not just limited to attracting the best people from the industry but it is a continuous process that involves sourcing, hiring, developing, retaining and promoting them while meeting the organization's requirements simultaneously. (PersonalToday, 2019) describes talent management as the processes used by employers to attract applicants, identify them, develop them, engage them and retain those that add value to their firm. Meanwhile, (PersonalToday, 2019) opined that successful talent management leads to an increased ability to attract people that are performers, reduce recruitment costs. Supporting the above argument, CIPD (2018) added that one of the aims of talent management is to attract talented individuals, identify them, develop them, engage them, retain them and deploy them to their respective job areas. Mwanzi, Wamitu, and Kiama (2017) contended that talent management comprises of mechanisms that firms put in place for identification, attraction, retention, and development of talented ones. Mangusho et al. (2015) accentuate that talent management refers to the science of using the strategic human resource to improve business value and make it possible for firms to reach their goals. Arguing further, Mangusho et al. (2015) contended that talent management is a process of attraction, identification, development, engagement, retention, and deployment of workers who are of particular value to an organization, either in view of their 'high potential' for the future or because they are fulfilling business/operation-critical roles".
Chitsaz-Isfahani and Boustani (2014) perceived talent management as a systematic and dynamic process of discovering, developing and sustaining talent. Bhatnagar as cited in Ahmadi et al. (2012) contended that "talent management includes such areas as recruiting employees, sorting out employees, mentoring, performance management, career path management, and succession diagnostic reward. Blass (2007) elucidated that talent management is the additional management processes and opportunities that are made available to people in the organization who are considered to be 'talent'. Macaulay (2009) submitted that talent management is about sowing seeds for the future and, sooner or later, retention will return yet again as a pressing issue, and the talent that has been nurtured now will be relied upon to take the organization forward. Talent management is the basis for keeping the organization healthy and innovative (Macaulay, 2009). This study, however, sees talent management as a process of attracting talents, developing talents, utilizing talents and retaining talents by the human resource department in the organization. Mäkelä, Björkman, and Ehrnrooth (2010) in their view contended that talent management is the firm's effort to attract people, select them, develop them and retain them. Cascio (2006) contended that talent management is concerned with the practices of human resource management such as recruitment, retention, development, rewarding, motivation as and strategic workforce planning. But Vance (2006) has another view. Vance stressed that talent management is the anticipation of actual required human capital the firm needs at and then set plans to meet the needs. On another hand, Armstrong and Taylor (2014) elucidated that talent management is the process of identifying, developing, recruiting, retaining and deploying those talented people.
Nonetheless, talent management has undergone various examinations in both private and public workplaces as a case study. Hajikaimisari et al. (2010) examined talent management an effective key to managing knowledge workers to fabricate safer steel structure in the Iranian construction firm. The study found that the work environment and balance are two important factors that affect talent management. James Sunday Kehinde PhD (2012) examined the impact of talent management on organizational performance. The finding of the study shows that there is a positive impact of talent management on the performance of the organization. Kimani and Waithaka (2013) examined the factors affecting the implementation of talent management in Kenya broadcasting corporation. The findings of their study revealed that reward system, organization culture, career development, and workplace environment affected the implementation of talent management in the state corporations. Khan et al. (2013) reviewed the importance of talent management in business strategy. The study found that talent management has its share in modern organizational strategies. Khoram and Samadi (2013) examined the relationship between talent management and organizational creativity in Maskan bank of Hamedan, Iran. The results of their study showed that talent management and organizational creativity have a significant relationship.
Hanif and Yunfei (2013) examined the role of talent management and human resource generic strategies for talent retention. The result of the study showed that talent management techniques are an integral part of human resource generic strategies. Rana and Abbasi (2013) examined the impact of talent management and employee turnover intention on organizational efficiency-a case of the telecommunication sector of Pakistan. The findings of the study revealed that talent management dimensions reflect a negative relationship with organizational efficiency in the telecommunication sector of Pakistan. Shirkhani and Nazari (2014) examined the effect of talent management on organizational entrepreneurship, a case study: Oil Products Company of the province of Ilam in Iran. Pearson test was used for measuring the relationship. The findings of their study show that talent management and its dimensions have a significant effect on organizational entrepreneurship in the oil products company of Ilam in Iran. Vivas-López (2014) carried out a study on talent management and teamwork interaction in Spanish companies. The result of the study shows that there is a significant relationship between autonomous and creative team dynamics and individual-team learning processes. (Eketu, 2015) examined talent management and sustainable enterprise resilience among travel agencies in Port Harcourt. The study found that travel agencies' resilient capacity is largely associated with their talent management practices. Onwuka et al. (2015) examined the association between talent management and employees performance in selected public sector firms in Delta State, Nigeria and found that there is an existence of a strong relationship between talent management and employees performance in selected private sector organization.
Talent Attraction: Armstrong and Taylor (2014) affirmed that talent attraction covers recruitment, selection, employer branding, and employee value proposition. Firms recruit talent from internal and external sources. David, Hall, and Toole (2000) contended that the best way to pool potential talent is through internal sources because the workers already have the required knowledge on how business activities operate. On another hand, Mangusho et al. (2015) argued that if the enterprises want to embark on radical changes or organizational culture renewal, external sources of recruitment are recommended.
Talent development: (Noe, 2016) affirmed that development is concerned with formal education, experiences on the job, relationships, and assessments of personality as well as abilities that help workers perform effectively in their current or future job and enterprise. He admitted that development activities help firms reduce turnover by showing employees that the firm is investing in their skill development, and also enhancing managers skills that can create a conducive work environment that makes workers want to come to work and contribute to firm goals. However, in this study talent development refers to all the approaches of improving, enhancing talent skills, abilities and knowledge.
Talent Retention: Talent retention refers to all the human resource management policies that encourage workers to stay and discourage them from leaving to another firm. Vaiman and Vance (2010) added that one of the essential tool used in retaining talent is a monetary reward. Lockwood (2006) also affirmed that compensation packages such as life insurance, disability insurance, holiday allowance, medical allowance are very significant in retaining talents. The aim of talent retention is to encourage workers to stay in the firm for a maximum period of time (Lyria, Namusonge, & Karanja, 2017). Direct compensation such as salaries, weekly cosmetics allowances, transport allowance, accommodation allowance, and safety allowances engineered talents to stay with their employers. Oil and gas industry is known for compensating workers very well especially when it comes to financial incentives. Therefore, for potential talents to remain, human resource managers need to be abreast with the changing compensation strategies available in the same industry to avoid incessant strike and turnover. Survey carried by CIPD (2015) revealed that firms retain talented employees through; improving pay by 50 percent); increasing learning and development opportunities by 49 per cent; improving line management people skills by 45 per cent; improving selection techniques by 40 per cent; improving induction process by 39 per cent; improving employee involvement by 38 per cent; improving benefits by 38 per cent; and improving work-life balance by 36 per cent.

Workers' Commitment
Workers' commitment emanated from organizational commitment through the later is talking about the organization as a whole while the former focuses on workers. In the quest to disentangle these concepts, scholars affirmation need to be examined in this section. Jones and George (2017) affirmed that organizational commitment is the collection of feelings and beliefs that managers have about their organization as a whole. McShane and Von Glinow (2015) added that organizational commitment represents the other half (with job satisfaction) of what some experts call "overall job attitude. For Meyer and Herscovitch (2001), organizational commitment is the force that binds an employee to a course of action of relevance to one or more targets or goals. Ruokolainen (2011) contended that it is the degree to which employee internalizes or adopts the characteristics or perspectives of the organization, whereas Luthans (2011) perceived it as a strong desire to remain a member of a particular organization; be willing to exert high levels of effort on behalf of the organization; and with a definite belief in, and acceptance of organizational philosophies. On another dimension, Sinding and Waldstrøm (2014) argued that organizational commitment is the extent to which an employee identifies him/herself with a firm and its goals. But organizational behaviorist, Mullins and Christy (2013), it refers to employee's identification with an attachment to the firm. Akpan (2013) perceived organizational commitment as the extent to which a worker associated with his/her firm, its goals and the willingness to remain in the firm. Another scholar Singh and Pandey (2004) argued that it showcases workers believe in the philosophies and targets of employer establishment as well as his/her willingness to expend attempt in their achievement with the intention to remain working with the same firm. For Ketchand and Strawser (2001), it can be described as the bond that employees form with their employing enterprises. In another perception, (Levy, 2006) contended that organizational commitment is the strength of an employee's identification with and involvement in the organizational day to day activities. Organizational commitment is a work attitude associated with workers' willingness to be actively engaged in the work as well as firms life and subsequently remain employed in the same firm (Lok & Crawford, 2004). Organizational commitment, on the other hand, represents the degree to which workers identify with the firm they are working for, how involved they are in the firm and whether they are prepared to leave it (Fu & Deshpande, 2014;Greenberg & Baron, 2009).

Measures of Workers Commitment
Measures of workers' commitment were drawn from the work of Allen and Meyer (1990) which include affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment.
Affective commitment: Affective commitment refers to worker's emotional attachment to, involvement in, and identification with the firm they are working with (McShane & Von Glinow, 2015). It is also known as a psychological bond whereby an employee or worker chooses to be dedicated to and responsible for the firm (Klein, Molloy, & Brinsfield, 2012;Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001;Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 2013;Solinger, Van Olffen, & Roe, 2008). Affective commitment simplifies the affection workers have for the organization they are working with. This may arise as a result of how their supervisors and managers treat them, prompt payment of compensation packages and so forth. It may also be as a result of the firm's image on the society or positive social responsibility of the firm on the society.

Continuance commitment:
Continuance commitment refers to a calculative attachment to the firm (McShane & Von Glinow, 2015). There are two forms of calculative attachments (Taing, Granger, Groff, Jackson, & Johnson, 2011;Vandenberghe & Panaccio, 2012). One form occurs where a worker has no other alternative employment opportunities; for instance "I dislike working here but there are no other jobs available". McShane and Von Glinow (2015) argued that this situation occurs where unemployment is high, workers lack relevant skills to be attractive to other firms, or the worker's skills are so specialized that there is limited demand for them within the same industry. McShane and Von Glinow (2015) contended that the second form of calculative commitment happens where leaving the firm would be a significant financial sacrifice; for instance "I hate this place but can't afford to quit!" This perceived sacrifice condition occurs when the firm offers a high salary, benefits, and other forms of compensation in the employment relationship, or where quitting forfeits a large deferred financial bonus (McShane & Von Glinow, 2015). He elucidates that workers with high levels of continuance commitment tend to possess lower performance and are less likely to engage in discretionary behaviors. Luthans (2011) added that this type of commitment is also based on the costs that the worker associated with leaving the firm and this may happen because of the worker loss his/her seniority for promotion or compensations.
Normative commitment: This refers to workers' feelings of obligation to stay with the firm because they feel it is the right thing to do (Luthans, 2011). Normative commitment is also known as moral commitment (Allen & Meyer, 1990). For instance, workers that have benefitted from specialized training may find it as a moral obligation to remain and contribute to the firm since the training was paid for by the organization. Thus, normative commitment is in tandem with compensation received for not working for the organization.

Methodology
The research design employed in this study is a cross-sectional survey. Ten oil and gas servicing firms were surveyed using simple random sampling. A total population of 125 managers and supervisors were surveyed from ten oil and gas firms in Rivers state while a sample of 95 was ascertained from the population using Krejcie and Morgan sample size determination table. Reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha. The most widely used method for estimating internal consistency reliability of an instrument is Cronbach's alpha (Bell, Bryman, & Harley, 2018;Cronbach, 1951;Kimberlin & Winterstein, 2008;Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). Results of instrument reliability fall within the benchmark of .70-.80 as elucidated by Nunnally and Bernstein (1994) that a reliability benchmark of .70 to .80 is acceptable in management and social sciences. Face and content validity was employed. 95 copies of the questionnaire were administered to managers and supervisors but 74 copies were correctly filled and returned. Dimensions of talent management and measures of workers commitment were measured with four items each on five-point Likert scale ranging from 5= Strongly agree; 4 = Agree; 3= Disagree; 2 = Strongly disagree 1= Neither agree nor disagree. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (rs) was used to analyze the hypotheses with the aid of statistical package for social sciences (SPSS 20.0) while respondents' characteristics (gender, educational qualifications, number of years in service) were analyzed using frequency distribution.     Table 3 above shows the respondents' number of years in service. 33 respondents' representing 44.6% have served their firm between 5-10 years; 29 respondents' representing 39.2% have served their firm between 11 years and above; 12 respondents' representing 16.2% have served their firm between 1-5 years.    -tailed) .000 N 74 74 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). Table 5 above shows the result of bivariate analysis between talent attraction and continuance commitment. From the table, talent attraction has a positive significant relationship with continuance commitment with a high correlation coefficient of .770** and a p-value of .000. Thus, the null hypothesis is hereby rejected and alternate hypothesis accepted.  -tailed) .000 N 74 74 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Analyses of Hypotheses
The above result shows the bivariate analysis between talent attraction and affective commitment. From the table, talent attraction has a positive significant relationship with affective commitment (p<0.05; .831**) which implies that; null hypothesis is rejected and alternated hypothesis accepted.  -tailed) .000 N 74 74 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). Table 7 above shows the result of the correlation between talent development and continuance commitment. It can be deduced from the result that talent development has a positive significant relationship (p<0.05; .828**) with continuance commitment. This implies that the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis accepted.  -tailed) .000 N 74 74 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
The result above shows the correlation analysis between talent development and affective commitment. From the result, talent development has a positive significant relationship with (p<0.05; .789**) affective commitment which implies that the null hypothesis is rejected and alternate hypothesis accepted.  -tailed) .000 N 74 74 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
The above result shows the correlation analysis result between talent retention and affective commitment. From the result, talent retention has a positive significant relationship with (p<0.05; .768**) affective commitment. This shows that the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis accepted.  (2-tailed) .000 N 74 74 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). Table 10 above shows the result of bivariate analysis between talent retention and continuance commitment. The result revealed that talent retention has a positive significant relationship with (p<0.05; .883**) continuance commitment. Thus, the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis accepted.

Discussion
Based on the results of hypotheses above, this study found that talent management dimensions were positively associated with the measures of workers' commitment. This is consistent with the findings of (Eketu, 2015;James Sunday Kehinde PhD, 2012;Onwuka et al., 2015;Shirkhani & Nazari, 2014). The finding of (Shirkhani & Nazari, 2014) revealed that talent management and its dimensions have a significant association with organizational entrepreneurship in the oil products company of Iran. Secondly, James Sunday Kehinde PhD (2012) result shows that talent management has a positive significant impact on the performance of enterprises. Thirdly, Eketu (2015) result indicates that travel agencies' resilient capacity was found to be associated with their talent management practices. Lastly, Onwuka et al. (2015) finding show that there is a strong association between talent management and employees performance in selected private sector organizations.

Conclusion
From the above discussion of finding, this study concludes that talent management that is measured in terms of talent attraction, talent development and talent retention promotes workers' commitment to oil and gas firms in Nigeria. Drawing from the conclusion, the following recommendations were made.
1. Managers of oil and gas firms should endeavor to employ all compensation plans necessary to retain talents in the industry as this will enhance their commitment towards achieving organizational goals.
2. Oil and gas practitioners should always improve talent skills to enable them to meet up with the changing dynamism in the industry as this will stimulate their commitment to achieving firms' objectives.