Workplace Conflict and Employees' Performance in Public Universities in Anambra State

Abstract

The continuous strike activity and the apparent discord between lecturers and other unions within the university system made it necessary for this study's main objective to investigate the connection between workplace conflict and employee performance at Anambra State's public universities. 3492 academic employees from the public universities that were chosen for the study made up the population, and the Krejcie and Morgan formula was used to determine the sample size, which came out to be 344. The data was collected using a standardized questionnaire that underwent reliability and validity testing. Simple regression analysis was used to examine the data, and tests of the hypotheses were done at the 5% significance level. The results showed that workplace conflict has a statistically significant and positive relationship with employees' performance in public universities in Anambra State, Nigeria, with (R =.989, R-Square =.978, F statistics = 13017.646, P-value.000 <.05). 98% of the variations in employees' performance are explained by workplace (interpersonal) conflict. Therefore, among others, it was recommended that the management of the universities need to go extra mile to find out lecturers that are having interpersonal issues in other to wade in and settle it and not just allowing the people involved to handle the issues themselves and there is need for a strong conflict resolution committee in various departments.