Evaluation of Conflict Management Styles and Employee Performance in the Academia: A Focus on Tertiary Institutions in Kwara State

Abstract

Conflict is an inevitable and integral part of the process of change in an organization which can be unhealthy and as well be problem-solving, and in both cases affect the performance of employees. Therefore, this study examined conflict management styles and employees’ performance in selected tertiary institutions in Kwara State. The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of conflict management styles on employee performance in the academia in Kwara State, Nigeria. The study employed survey research design with structured questionnaire to collect data from a population of 1,784 with a sample size of 317 from selected staff of the University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Kwara State Polytechnic Ilorin, and Imam Hamzat College of Education, Ilorin. About 255 copies of questionnaire were successfully returned and used for final analysis and this represent 80.44% rate of response, while 25 copies of questionnaire were unused and 37 were unreturned. Thereafter, Smart PLS-SEM version 4 was used to analyze the data collected. The result from the analysis signifies that all the null hypothesized relationships were rejected while the alternate hypothesized relationships were accepted. Hence, there are significant relationships between conflict management styles (i.e., accommodation strategy, collaboration strategy, compromising strategy, competing strategy) and employee performance. The study recommends that the management of the institutions should ensure that employees are promoted based on merit and not on sentiments because it will not only encourage the hard-work but also reduce the waves of industrial disputes in the institutions.