Academic staff perception of the organizational climate in Universities in Edo state, Nigeria
PHILIPA O. IDOGHO
AUCHI POLYTECHNIC, AUCHI EDO STATE, NIGERIA
philipaidogho@yahoo.com
Keywords: academic staff; organization; climate; universities; perception
ABSTRACT
The study investigated academic staff perception of organizational climate in universities in Edo State, Nigeria. The sample for the study was made up of 1025 participants drawn from three universities in Edo State. From the data, it was found that academic staff in universities in Edo State perceived the organizational climate of their institutions as favaourable; that is a significant difference among academic staff in their perception and that academic staff do not differ in their perception or organizational climate in their institutions based on sex, age and status.
Introduction
In any organized set up, specific functions are assigned to each member in order to realize the basic goals and objectives of such an organization. Among other factors that facilitate the smooth realization of such organizational goals, is conductive climate. It can ensure the realization of the needs and organization.
Organizational climate encompasses all those behaviours that permit cordial interpersonal relationships among staff of an organization or institution. It permits cooperative human activities in which members of staff both academic and non-academic, interact fro the purpose of realizing set goals and objectives. Hence, the perception of academic staff in universities may depend on some external and internal factors.
Some of the external factors include location, size, student population, educational policies and socio-economic changes, while some of the internal factors include interactive behaviour between the school head and the staff, amongst the staff themselves and between staff and students. In this regard, the school can be regarded as a social system in which the school Head, staff students, interact to accomplish common goals.
In an organization like the university, the climate as perceived by those who work in it determines to a large extent their level of contribution and the degree of attainment of its set goals and objectives. This opinion is predicated on the understanding that whatever is the output of an individual an organization depends on those factors that encourage him/her to put in his/her best. Therefore, positive interactive behaviour, reinforced by effective leadership, motivation and communication could further accelerate the accomplishment of goals.
Studies by Holy and Tarter (1992) have shown that administrative organizational climate is an important factor that influences perception and performance of staff. They further stated that a healthy organizational climate is crucial for a good school. Consequently, the way the school head shapes such climate and its resultant effect on the entire organization and its goals have become issues of concern. The leadership style of the school Head, therefore, invariably affects his administrative pattern, which consequently influences the staff in the way they perceive the organization.
As stated earlier, motivation contributes to the perception of staff. It is a vital component of the operative functions of performance. Woolfolk (2001) defined motivation as an internal state that arouses, directs and maintains behaviour. Ochitwa (2002) collaborating this opinion pointed out that organizational climate can arouse employee’s natural motivations. He stated further that some climates could lead to frustration of staff, while others can energize the work environment. Those organizations with conductive work environment usually have a warm and friendlier climate than organizations with unconducive environment. This presupposes that staff who are satisfied with their job are more productive. Hence Cherniss (2001), stated that a teacher who is properly motivated is considerate, dependable, committed to work, induces trust and caring disposition in the organization.
Another component of organizational climate is the subordinate level of participation in the organization’s decision making process. Hannah’s (1967) study clearly stated that the role of a worker in decision making in an organization depends on the size of the such organization and the management system adopted. A participative management system for example, would create a great deal of interaction between the school head and his/her subordinates. In a study conducted by Hand, Richards and Slocum (1973), they found that employees who perceived the organization as participative had greater increases in their performance than employees who perceived it as autocratic.
Organizational climate has several critical dimensions. Most important of these dimensions in an educational setting are intimacy, morale, consideration, and thrust. Intimacy and morale are traits displayed by staff while consideration and thrust are traits exhibited by the school head. Based on the interplay of these dimension, organizational climate can be classified into open and closed climate typologies. The openness or closeness of any university depends on whether the dimensions of organizational climate are positively negatively demonstrated by the school head and the subordinates.
Certain objective criteria constitute the foci of both the organizational climate types and dimensions. They are namely: positive work motivation, enhanced performance, increased productivity and job satisfaction. What this means is that if the organizational climate of any institution is open and the dimensions are positively demonstrated, there is bound to be positive motivation, enhanced performance, increased productivity and job satisfaction. On the contrary, If the organizational climate is closed and the dimensions are negatively demonstrated, there is bound to be negative motivation, poor performance, low productivity and job dissatisfaction.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Education is important for national development. This is because skilled manpower is very vital to the process of national planning and implementation. For any educational plan to succeed, the teacher is required to be there to see to the full implementation of the programme. This is so because no educational system can rise above its teachers (Ukeje, 1986). Also, if education is to survive and continue to play a vital role in the promotion of cognitive, affective and practical competence in individuals and ensure the preservation of our cultural values, it is important that the teachers who are responsible for helping the students acquire the knowledge, skills and practical orientations essential for self as well as for national development, be effectively motivated. Inspite of their importance, they are not accorded the recognition they deserve. Hence Katz and Kahn (1996) say that the climate in an organization reflects the type of people who compose the organization, the work processes, means of communication and the exercise of authority within the individual organization. Further, they recognize that it is easy to detect differences in the climate of organizations but it is difficult to name the dimensions of these differences.
The investigation became necessary in view of the fact that the problem of lack of motivation and the negative effect it has on the perception of academic staff or organizational climate in universities in Edo State seems to be growing. The relatively attrition rate of academic staff from universities to other countries or to the private sector are indicators of low motivation (Onwuechkwa, 1996).
The lack of sponsorship or the long duration of time that lapses before it get to the turn of a lecturer in the case of universities, to attend a conference or seminar may be another problem that could affect academic staff perception of their organizational climate.
There are also allegations of ill preparedness among some academic staff for scholarly work and lack of commitment to work. The result is that these universities that ought to be centres of academic and social activities have remained dull and uninteresting (Atafo, 1986). Among the academic staff, there is also low level of mutual interaction leading to disharmony, suspicion and distrust, which have led to the formation of different camps and in fighting. Members of academic staff have also accused school heads of aloofness while school heads have complained of the uncooperative attitude of academic staff (Osia, 1993). There is also, the problem of inadequate working materials, which include reference journals, books, stationeries and office accommodation. Under such administrative and social climate, staff are bound to have feelings of self-pity, insecurity, uncertainty, frustration, withdrawal and low morale. The resultant effect of the above mentioned problems in universities are so grave that there exists the need to articulate the consequences. That is why it has become very pertinent that studies should be carried out on academic staff perception of organizational climate in universities with a view to recommending strategies to be adopted to create a conducive. Thus, the purpose of this study was to answer the following questions:
- How do academic staff in universities in Edo State, Nigeria perceive their institutions’ organizational climate?
- Is there any difference in the perception of organizational climate among academic staff of universities in Edo State?
- Is there any difference between the perception of male and female academic staff of organizational climate in universities in Edo State?
- Is there any difference between the perception of old and young academic staff of organizational climate in universities in Edo State?
- Is there any difference between the perception of senior and junior academic staff of organizational climate in universities in Edo State?
SIGNIFICANCE/DELIMITATION
The findings of this study would serve as a basis for fostering improved working relationships between heads of universities and academic staff, amongst academic staff and between academic staff and students. It would also help heads of universities to regulate their relationship towards their subordinates by providing job security, adequate working materials, training prospects and promotion opportunities.
Although the study covers all academic staff of the four universities in Edo state, it was however, delimited to three because the fourth university was used for the pilot study. Of the various subsets of organizational climate, only four, intimacy, morale, consideration and thrust were selected for the study. The study also focused on academic staff perception of organizational climate based on sex, age and status.
METHOD OF STUDY
The study was a descriptive survey, which involved the collection of information in a structured questionnaire. The population of this study comprised all academic staff in universities in Edo State, Nigeria. The ample of the study was one thousand and twenty-five. This was attained through the purposive sampling technique. To achieve this, academic staff lists of the sampled universities (University of Benin, Benin City, Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma and Igbinedion University, Okada) were obtained from the personnel unit. Although questionnaires were dropped according to the number of staff on the list, concerted efforts were made to retrieve at 50% of the academic staff of the sampled universities. The rationale for setting the sample size at 5% is predicated upon the fact that the population is relatively small.
Data for this study were obtained through the Academic Staff of Universities Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire (ASUOCDQ) . The researcher designed it after an exhaustive review of related literature and other scales that have been used in similar situations. The questionnaire was made up of two sections: section A sought personal information about the respondents such as name of institution, Sex, Age and status. While section B had 24 items grouped into different sub-scales, namely, intimacy, morals, consideration and thrust. The first two sub-scales measured staff and students’ behaviour while the other two sub-scales measured the school head’s behaviour. Each sub-scale contained six questions, which were designed to elicit responses. All the items in section B had five point Likert scale, with responses ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The instrument was content validated by three professors in the area of Educational Administration. The judgment of these experts were sought to ensure that the items in the questionnaire measured what they were expected to measure, and that the questions raised were clear understandable.
The reliability of the instrument was determined using the Split-half method. Responses were collected from a randomly selected sample of twenty academic staff of Benson Idahosa University, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria. These respondents were chosen because they would not constitute part of the sample to be used for the final study. The essence was to ensure that the respondents did not have privileged information about the instrument, which could cause biased response. The reliability yielded a split-half co-efficient of 0.88.
The data were analyzed by Two Way ANOVA. Fisher’s LSD was run ANOVA where it was significant. To establish whether academic staff perceived the organizational climate of their institutions as favourable, the responded means scores for the four dimensions on the ASUOCDQ were computed and compared with the arbitrarily set minimum point for favourable perception (which is given as 15.01).This minimum point for favourable perception was arrived at, bearing in mind the fact that on a five-point Likert scale with six items raised to measure a specific dimension organizational climate, the baseline for favourable perception would be any value beyond 15.01
RESULT
1. How do academic staff in universities in Edo State, Nigeria perceive their institutions’ organizational climate?
This was tested by comparing respondents’ mean score on each of the four dimensions of organizational climate with the minimum point for favourable perception, which was arbitrarily set at 15.01. the results is presented in table 1.
Based on the present survey, academic staff of universities in Edo State considered all the four dimensions of organizational climate investigated in this study as favourable.
- Is there any difference in the perception of organizational climate among academic staff in universities in Edo State?
The result of the Two-way ANOVA of academic staff perception of organizational climate indicated that a significant difference exist among academic staff (2, 4091) = 48.46, P
