Person-work Environment Fit Perceptions on employee performance in Civil Service Sector employees in Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa

Scholars of organizational behaviour have long been interested in understanding the interactions between employees and their environments, and how these interactions can influence employee work engagement and performance. This study aims to explore factors affecting work engagement and job performance based on person-environment (PE) theory and to examine the extent how PE fit in civil service sectors. The study analysed the responses from 942 sample employees of the two city administrations (Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa) and the collected data was analysed using descriptive statistics, factor analysis, correlation and structural equation analysis. The finding of this study shows that mean perceived score of all the PE fit dimensions -person-job fit (PJ), person-organization (PO) fit, person-group (PG) fit and person-supervisor (PS) fit are above the average score for the seven-point Likert scale measurement. The spearman correlation result shows the all the PE fit dimensions have a significant (p-value<0.05) and positive relationship with employee work engagement and job performance. The Structural Equation Model analysis shows that employees with a higher person-job fit, Person-group fit and Person-supervisor fit have a higher work engagement and higher job performance and it is significant (p-value<0.05).  The study suggests that leaders should retort when important issues arise, made decisions, prompt responding to urgent questions and they should avail when needed. Civil service sector managers should take actions to effectively promote employee’s PJ fit, PG fit and PS fit to improve their work engagement and job performance.