Full Project – EVALUATION OF MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN HIGHER INSTITUTIONS IN NIGERIA
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Learning is essential for man’s growth in order to become valuable to oneself, society, and mankind as a whole. University education, as the third level of education, is intended to be a system of planned and coordinated activities and programs, integrating students and faculty into the university environment. It is a bastion of learning, a haven for adult minds to study ideas, experiment with concepts, and devise answers to society’s problems. It facilitates quick growth and social change via a broad network of well-funded think tanks that provide economic and social policy breakthroughs. According to Ukwu (2002), university education prepares students to become specialists imbued with the spirit of creativity and the ability to develop science, practice technology, be good citizens, and promote culture for national unity and progress; to more thoroughly understand the fundamental theories and knowledge required by the branches of learning or specialized subjects offered; to grasp the fundamental skills, methods, and pertinent knowledge required by their specialization.
To ensure that Education and especially University Education accomplish all of its goals and objectives, management, including administrators of Federal and State Universities in South-East Nigeria, should develop activity plans and
They supervise and effectively regulate what occurs in the university environment. This will encompass the management of university assets, infrastructure, students, faculty, and staff, as well as the campus environment. According to Nwachukwu 2009, management is the act of coordinating all of an organization’s resources via the planning, organizing, directing, and regulating of those resources in order to accomplish organizational goals. It is the direction or guiding of individuals or groups toward organizational goals or objectives. It is the process of overseeing, managing, and coordinating operations in order to get the best outcomes possible within the constraints of available organizational resources. Peretomode (1991), an authority on educational management, defines management as the social or interactional process that entails a series of coordinated events – planning, organizing, coordinating, and controlling or leading in order to maximize the use of available resources to achieve a desired outcome. Our universities’ property and infrastructure must be adequately maintained to ensure their longevity, which is best accomplished by hiring someone to oversee the university’s diverse property.
McShane (2009) defines management as the art of accomplishing goals inside an organization via the use of people. The management and/or administration are unable to monitor or supervise all property on their own. There is a need to distribute and assign tasks to a large number of persons in order to assist university administrators in maintaining a pulse on what occurs inside the university environment. Oyodo (2001) defined management as the activity of combining all available resources via the planning, organizing, leading, and regulating activities in order to accomplish specified goals. Mgbodile (2004) defines management as “leadership” with the objective of influencing group behavior toward a common purpose. This concept emphasizes that good management of both people and material resources is necessary to guarantee an establishment’s objectives are met.
Nicholas (1992) defines conflict as a scenario in which two individuals or groups desire to engage in mutually incompatible behavior. Every individual has their own point of view on matters, making it very difficult to accept another’s. Conflict is a colloquial phrase that refers to a condition of contention, debate, or antagonism. Additionally, it might refer to the occurrence of a protracted conflict, struggle, or conflict between two or more sides (Obegi and Nyamboga, 2008).
Hornby (2005) defines conflict as “a state of substantial disagreement between individuals, organizations, or nations.” Additionally, it is a scenario in which competing ideas, beliefs, sentiments, or desires exist; a condition in which it is impossible to decide either way since the alternatives are mutually incompatible. Otite (2007) described conflict as a fight for values or claims to status, authority, and limited resources, in which disputing parties seek not only to acquire desired values and positions but also to neutralize, damage, or exterminate their adversaries. According to Travel (2009), conflict occurs when people or groups engage in open conflict; when tension or stress occurs and grows; and when particular demands are frustrated by equally appealing or repulsive desires. According to Otite (2007), conflict occurs when disputants act antagonistically against one another in order to accomplish a common objective. Organizations may be destabilized during the battles, and these fights are governed by a hierarchy of human wants, selfishness, possessiveness, and greed, as well as social, political, cultural, psychological, and religious motivations, as well as students’ legitimate and selfish desires. Thus, conflict is an act of disorder, a state of disorganization, discord, instability, open dispute, and a lack of peace for the parties concerned. Conflict destabilizes organizations, especially higher education institutions, most notably university systems.
Statement of the Problem
Conflicts at institutions of higher learning in South-East Nigeria, including Federal and State Universities, have reached an alarming level. Conflicts can have direct or indirect causes. Direct factors include expensive tuition, insufficient water and energy supply, insufficient lecture hall space, lack of student engagement in decision-making, staff strikes on a regular basis, and a lack of ICT facilities and a public address system, among others. Overpopulation is one of the most indirect causes of conflict in colleges.
When these irritants are not handled and the resulting conflict occurs, teaching, learning, and research are disturbed. These clashes frequently endanger the lives and property of university faculty, staff, and students. The degree of the destruction and death is incredibly tremendous and devasting. Historically, authorities’ reactions to student demonstrations have been harsh, ranging from student rustication and expulsion to institution closure for varied periods of time. As a consequence, institution closures become too frequent, prolonged, and intolerable for parents and other stakeholders in education.
The cumulative impact is that the amount of time students spend with professors for effective learning is reduced, and colleges create half-baked and largely unemployed graduates. When they are employed, they are incompetent, ineffective, lacking in necessary skills, and thus unproductive. Unemployed idle graduates will be drawn to bad and clever persons, as the saying “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop” implies, and will therefore be persuaded into crime, presenting further hazards to lives and property. As a result, when violence emerges at our colleges, governments, parents, and the general public get concerned.
Conflict may be effectively managed if the underlying reasons are discovered, isolated, and addressed. The conventional strategies used by universities and governments to resolve conflicts between students and university administrations have been found to be inadequate and ineffective, as they only succeed in coercing students into silence, allowing the conflict to simmer underground, only to erupt again at the slightest provocation, each eruption becoming more violent than the previous one.
The purpose of this study was to ascertain the management strategies employed by the administrators or management of Federal and State Universities in Nigeria in resolving the conflicts plaguing our tertiary institutions, with a particular emphasis on the conflicts between administration and students.
Purpose of the Study
The general purpose of this study is to determine the Evaluation of Management Strategies for Conflict Resolution in Higher Institutions in Nigeria.
Specifically the study sought to:
- Examine the nature of conflicts manifestations in the Federal and State Universities in the South-East Nigeria.
- Identify how the academic, non-academic and students differ in their perception of the causes of conflict manifestations in the Federal and State Universities in the South-East Nigeria.
- Ascertain the management strategies employed by the management team of Federal and State Universities in the South-East Nigeria.
- Determine the management strategies to be adopted for conflict resolution in the Federal and State Universities in the South-East Nigeria.
Significance of the Study
This study has both theoretical and practical significance. The theoretical significance is anchored on the Social System theory. The Social Systems theory treats organizations, such as the university, as a system albeit a social system and tries to explain how the system works. Social systems function because of man’s ability to communicate, interact, and depend on each other. In Social Systems various relationships have meaning only in as much as the society assigns meanings to them. Norms develop in this way and tend to be society-specific, for instance the institution of marriage and who is allowed to marry who: so also the expectations of individual members of the society from each other and from the society as an entity. Even the concept of leadership has meaning only in relation to the society.
If the University is taken as a Social System, then the Social System theory could also be used to explain the working of its different components: students, different cadre of staff and management each with its different interests and roles but must coexist within the same space to achieve both individual and communal goals.
The needs, feelings, beliefs and attitudes of organizational members should be taken into account. Students and workers have needs to be fulfilled by the university authority and the university has functions to perform and rules to be obeyed. Students’ need the management for their survival and the management needs the students to succeed. Free flow of information from the management to the students is necessary. This research study is hinged on social system theory.
Research Questions
The following research questions guided the study:
- What is the nature of conflicts manifestations experienced in the Federal and State Universities in Nigeria?
- How do academics, non-academic and students differ in their perceptions of the causes of conflict experienced in the management of Federal and State Universities in Nigeria?
- What are the management strategies employed by the management team of Federal and State Universities in handling Conflicts?
- What are the management strategies to be adopted for conflict resolution in the Federal and State Universities in Nigeria?
Hypotheses
The following null hypotheses have been formulated for this study: was tested at 0.05 level of significance.
HO1: There is no significant difference in the mean ratings of the academic staff, non-academic staff, and students on the nature of conflict manifestations in the Federal and State Universities in Nigeria.
HO2: There is no significant difference in the mean ratings on the perceptions of academic staff, non-academic staff, and students differ on the causes of conflict experienced in the Federal and State Universities in Nigeria.
HO3: There is no significant difference in the mean ratings of the academic staff, non-academic staff, and students on the management strategies employed by the management team of Federal and State Universities in the South-East Nigeria.
HO4: There is no significant difference in the mean ratings of the academic staff, non-academic staff, and students on the management strategies to be adopted for conflict resolution by the management in the Federal and State Universities in Nigeria.
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Full Project – EVALUATION OF MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN HIGHER INSTITUTIONS IN NIGERIA