The effectiveness of grievance settlement practices of apperal industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper empirically investigates the effectiveness of systematic use of Grievance Settlement Practices (GSP) and identifies the impact of the size of the firm on effectiveness of systematic use of GSP in apparel industry in Sri Lanka. The study was conducted relating to large and medium size apparel manufacturing firms in Colombo District. The unit of analysis of this study was at firm level. The sample of the study consist of four (04) large garment manufacturing firms and three (03) medium size garment manufacturing firms. A structured 7-point likert scale questionnaire was administered to collect data from a randomly selected sample of 70 executive level employees representing all firms. The effectiveness of the grievance settlement procedure was analyzed using seven characteristics: formal procedure, speedy settlement, acceptance, settlement at lower level, perceived justice, simplicity and training. The effectiveness of GSP was measured using arithmetic mean and effectiveness was at satisfactory level in both large as well as medium firms. Mean for the effectiveness of GSP was 5.3375 of large apparel firms and 5.1318 of medium size apparel firms. Independent Sample t test was performed to compare means to identify impact of the size of the firm on effectiveness of systematic use of GSP. Results indicate that there was no statistical evidence to claim that the effectiveness of systematic use of GSP related with the size of the firm.