ABSTRACT

The importance of human capital as a key resource and driver of organizational effectiveness cannot be overemphasized. The study investigated the effect of human capital development strategies on organizational effectiveness of manufacturing firms in South Eastern Nigeria. The specific objectives are to; examine the effect of human capital investment on organizational effectiveness, investigate the effect of career development on organizational effectiveness, ascertain the effect of talent management on organizational effectiveness, assess the effect of knowledge management on organizational effectiveness, determine the effect of competency based assessment on organizational effectiveness, and determine the effect of employee engagement on organizational effectiveness of selected manufacturing firms in South Eastern Nigeria. The study adopted survey research design and used both primary and secondary sources of data. The population of the study comprises of 944 employees of the selected manufacturing firms and Taro Yamane formula was used to arrive at a sample size of 280. The study utilized descriptive and inferential statistics in the analysis of collected data and used regression analytical technique to determine the effect of human capital development strategies on organizational effectiveness of manufacturing firms. The results of analyses revealed that human capital investment has a positive statistically significant effect on organizational effectiveness of manufacturing firms at 5% level of significance (coefficient value 0.826>0.000 the p-value), career development has a positive statistically significant effect on organizational effectiveness at 5% level of significance (coefficient value 0.669>0.020 the p-value), talent management has a positive statistically significant effect on organizational effectiveness at 5% level of significance (coefficient value 0.621>0.004 the p-value), knowledge management has a positive statistically significant effect on organizational effectiveness at 5% level of significance (coefficient value 0.719>0.044 the p-value), competency based assessment has a positive statistically significant effect on organizational effectiveness at 5% level of significance (coefficient value 0.922>0.000 the p-value ), and employee engagement has a positive statistically significant effect on organizational effectiveness of manufacturing firms at 5% level of significance (coefficient value 0.657>0.000 the p-value). Therefore, based on the findings, the study concluded that human capital development strategies have positive significant effect on organizational effectiveness of manufacturing firms in South Eastern Nigeria. The study recommends that organizations should employ best strategies of human capital development as discovered by this study to enhance the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) of employees to enable higher productivity.