Conflict Management Strategies for Effective Goal Attainment in Rivers State Owned Public Universities

Education provides the foundation for gaining the knowledge, skills, habits, and values required to make a constructive contribution to society. This study examined conflict management strategies for effective goal attainment in Rivers State owned public universities. Effective communication, win/lose and smoothing were used as the dimensions while effective goal attainment was used as the measure. This study adopted a descriptive survey design. The population of this study consist of the two public universities owned by Rivers State, namely: Rivers State University (RSU) and Ignatius Ajuru University of Education (IAUE). There were a total of 1519 lecturers from the two Rivers State owned public universities. This consists of 1046 staff from Rivers State University and 473 staff from Ignatius Ajuru University of Education (Source: University Digest, 2017). The sample for this study was 456 respondents which were drawn from the two Rivers State owned public universities. To achieve this, proportionate stratified sampling technique was use to select 271 lecturers from Rivers State University and 185 lecturers from Ignatius Ajuru University of Education. The instrument that was used for data collection was a self-constructed questionnaire. To ensure content validity of the instrument, the instrument was given to the lecturers and two experts in the specialty of measurement and evaluation for examination and scrutiny. The reliability of the instrument was ascertained using Cronbach Alpha method. Reliability index of 0.73 was considered adequate for the study. Among other the findings revealed that to a high extent effective communication can be used in managing conflict in school through allowing free flow of information. This study concluded that the tertiary institutions workforce can be adequately effective in the delivery of their services only when the proactive conflict management strategies are sincerely employed. This study recommended among others that staff of Rivers State owned public universities should develop proper channel and skills by maintaining cordial relations with their subordinate by providing proper communication and distributing circulars on changes to those concern