ORGANISATIONAL POLITICS AND UNIVERSITY GOVERNANCE: A STUDY OF STAFF PERCEPTIONS IN CROSS RIVER STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study investigated the impact of staff perception of organisational politics on the management of universities in Cross River State, Nigeria. The study was guided by the descriptive survey design. The population of the study consisted of 9,200 which comprised teaching and non-teaching staff members of three universities in Cross River State. The sample size of the study was 373 respondents drawn from the three universities using the multistage sampling technique and the Krecie and Morgan Table to select the sample size. Furthermore, a simple random sampling technique was used to select the actual respondents for the study. The instrument used for the collection of data for this study was a researcher-made questionnaire named “Perception of Organisational Politics on Management of University Questionnaire (POPMUQ)”. The validity index of the instrument was 0.77 while the reliability coefficient of 0.75 was obtained for the instrument using the Cronbach alpha method. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while one sample t-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study indicated that there was a positive significant impact of staff perception of appointment of heads of departments on the management of universities in Cross River State and there was a positive significant impact of staff perception of recruitment on the management of universities in Cross River State. Based on the findings, it was recommended for the purpose of enhancing the effective management of universities in Cross River State, the Vice-chancellors should appoint the heads of departments based and merit to avoid the appointment of mediocre staff that will not make useful contribution towards the efficient management of universities in the state.