Organizational Conflict and Productivity Level of Academic Staff in Selected Universities in Nigeria.

Abstract:

The study specifically examined the effect of organizational conflict on quality assurance, students’ academic performances, and the reduced rate of plagiarism among academic staff of the University of Calabar and the Micheal Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State-Nigeria. The survey research design was used while data were collected from 282 academic staff of the selected universities. The simple regression and independent t-tests were used for hypotheses tests. It was discovered that organizational conflict significantly affects the quality assurance of academic activities of the universities [tcal = 42.730 > t 0.05 = 1.96] and organizational conflicts lead to a reduced rate of plagiarism among academic staff of the universities. Discovered also was that the performance of the academic staff members during the pre-conflict era was low (M=1.3298, SD=.47266) compared to the performance of staff in the post-conflict (M= 3.5765, SD=.56267). It was concluded that tertiary institutions should occasionally stimulate conflict by encouraging divergent views and rewarding staff and unit/department for outstanding performance.