ORGANISATIONAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICES, CONFLICT RESOLUTION STRATEGIES AND ACADEMIC STAFF PRODUCTIVITY IN LAGOS STATE TERTIARY EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study focused on organisational communication practices, conflict resolution strategies and Academic 
staff productivity in Lagos State Tertiary Education Institutions. Six research hypotheses were tested at 0.05 
level of significance. Hypotheses 1-3, 5 and 6 were analysed using Pearson product moment correlation 
analysis, while hypothesis 4 was analysed using multiple regression analysis using the Statistical Package 
for Social Science (SPSS) version 24.0. The population of the study was 1664 Academic Staff from Lagos 
State Tertiary Education Institutions. The sample of this study was selected using the multistage sampling 
procedure. In the first stage, five faculties\schools were selected from each Institution using simple random 
sampling technique. Then, from each of the selected faculties \schools, the simple random sampling 
technique was used to select three Heads of department, hence, the total of respondents were 45 HODs. 
Thirdly, purposive sampling technique was used to select 21 academic staff from each of the selected 
Faculties. Thus, the respondents from these faculties\schools were 315 Lecturers, making a total of 373 
respondents selected, however, 346 administered questionnaires were retrieved and used for the study. Three 
main instruments titled: Organisational Communication Practices questionnaire for Lecturers (OCPQ), 
Conflict Resolution Strategies questionnaire for Lecturers(CRSQ) and Academic Staff Productivity 
questionnaire for Heads of department and Deans(ASPQ) were used to collect data, after ensuring their 
validity and the reliability with a coefficient of (r= 0.8) , (r= 0.9) and (r=0.89) respectively. The findings 
indicate that there is a very weak, positive and non-significant relationship between organisational 
communication practices and academic staff productivity in Lagos State Tertiary Educational Institutions (r 
= 0.015, N = 346, ρ > 0.05) and also that there is a negative and non-significant relationship between 
conflict resolution strategies and academic staff productivity in Lagos State Tertiary Educational Institutions 
(r = -0.242, N=346, ρ > 0.05). The study therefore recommended that there should be adequate and proper 
flow of communication and dialogue between management, Government and academic staff, for conflict to 
be resolved, thereby curbing incessant strike or industrial actions.