ABSTRACT
The study investigated the
relationship between job rotation, motivation, demographic variables and job
performance among career administrators of Public Universities in South East,
Nigeria. Nine research questions and four hypotheses guided the study. The
study employed the correlational survey design. The population of the study
comprised 1, 029 Career administrators in public (Federal and State)
universities. Purposive sampling was employed to select four states out of five
states, with the total of eight universities (four federal and four states)
universities from Abia, Anambra, Enugu and Imo States. 595career administrators
within the ranks of Senior Assistant Registrar, Assistant Registrar and
Administrative Officers were purposively selected from these universities. Two
sets of instruments namely: University Career Administrators Job Performance
Scale (UCAJPS), University Career Administrators Motivation Questionnaire
(UCAMQ) and Interview Schedule for Unit Heads ISUH (Deputy Registrars and
Principal Assistant Registrars) were used for data collection. The instruments
were face validated by five experts: Four in the Department of Educational
Foundations and one in the Department of Social Science Education, all from
University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The reliability coefficients of the job
performance rating scale obtained through Cronbach Alpha method were 0.62,
0.77, 0.76, 0.62 and 0.88 for clusters A, B, C, D and the whole respectively.
The reliability coefficients of the motivation questionnaire were 0.55, 0.85,
0.74, 0.70, 0.75 and 0.2 for clusters A, B, C, D, E and the whole respectively.
A direct delivery and retrieval method was employed in the administration of
the instruments to the respondents. Data were analyzed using frequencies,
percentages, mean and standard deviation; Pearson Product Moment Correlation
Coefficient for research questions and multiple regressions was used to test
the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study
among others showed that the career administrators are effective in their job.
Job itself, public relations and administration and supervision constituted
their motivational factors while they are not motivated by salary and good
working conditions. The study also revealed that job rotation, motivation and
demographic variables had significant relationship (P<0.05) with job performance
of career administrators in the following administrative areas; communication,
decision-making and public relation and showed no significant relationship
(P>0.05) in coordination. However, the variable that really predicted
performance was designation. Based on these findings, it was recommended among
others that the Government, in collaboration with the supervising agency of
universities should continually initiate, implement and evaluate realistic
policies or decisions necessary for sustainable effective service delivery or
job performance of career administrators in universities. Government should
ensure regular/prompt payment of salaries and also that the general working
conditions are favorable to adequately motivate career administrators to work.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Education is widely accepted as a major instrument for promoting
socio-economic, political and cultural development of a nation. This explains
the reason the developed countries of the world have always guarded their
educational affairs with strictness and most deserved sense of commitment. In
view of the importance of education to both individual and national life, the
(Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN), 2004) in her National Policy on Education
categorized the education system into four levels namely: pre-primary, primary,
secondary, and tertiary levels which include polytechnic, colleges of education
and universities.
University is the highest educational institution for teaching and research
in various disciplines for the acquisition of knowledge and the production of
workforce and materials for personal and societal growth and development
(Obeki, 2012). Universities make optimum contribution to national development
through relevant higher level manpower training. The primary goal of university
education is to satisfy specific or general educational needs of the nation
through teaching of students, conducting research and dissemination of
knowledge, together with other community service activities (FRN, 2004). The
achievement of this noble objective requires an effective management of the
system through proper utilization of human and material resources. This,
according to Eze (1994) entails adhering to high standards in recruitment, continuous
training and retraining based on identified needs, offering competitive schemes
of remuneration and incentives in all the units of the university.
In any university system, Registry is one of the units which carries out
substantial non-academic duties with the Registrar as the administrative head.
The Registry department is the administrative heart of the university
responsible for the routine administration of the university except those
bothering on financial matters, accounts and academics. It is responsible for
the secretarial services, analysis and storage of relevant statistics and
information to name a few. In achieving these tasks, the role of university
career administrators becomes indispensable.
University career administrators are full-time professional staff who
implement minor routine policies and decisions in the university and is headed
by the Registrar (Adamji, 2013). Career administrators in this study are those
personnel employed to work in the administrative arm of the university. The
structure of university career administrators in descending order is as
follows: Administrative Assistant, Administrative Officer, Assistant Registrar,
Senior Assistant Registrar, Principal Assistant Registrar, Deputy Registrar and
Registrar. Career administrators perform different functions under the
supervision of Deputy Registrars who by virtue of their ranks constitute the
Unit Heads. The major functions of university career administrators are to
ensure proper interpretation and implementation of policies and decisions of
the university which could be achieved through effective job performance.
Performance is an act of accomplishing or executing a given task (Mulins,
2005). Performance is the ability of a person assigned to specific duties to
carry out such duties efficiently. Job performance therefore, is the
achievement of specific tasks measured against predetermined or identified
standards of accuracy, completeness, cost and speed (Saka & Haruna, 2012).
In this study, job performance is the extent to which the career administrators are
able to accomplish the task assigned to them and how the accomplished task
contribute to the realization of the overall university goals.
Job performance has some indices. These indices as noted by Obeki (2012)
include scheduling and coordinating meetings and appointments, maintaining
office supplies, decision-making, recruiting, training and supervising junior
staff and communication. Similarly, The National Skill Standard Board (2000)
states the following as the indices of job performance: gathering and analyzing
information, communication comprising listening, speaking, using information
and communication technology, social relations coordination among others.
However, the above mentioned duties are performed by career administrators but
most generally and commonly done amongst them includes communication,
decision-making, public relations and coordination which the researcher dwelt
on.
It has been observed that the overall performance of staff in most of the
public establishments seems to be deteriorating. Buttressing this, (Ndu &
Anabogu, 2007) noted that the most common term used in Nigeria today to
describe the general standard of performance in the public service is inefficiency.
It is a popular consensus among many observers that public institutions in
Nigeria have not measured up to the desired level of performance. These
therefore, pose serious challenges to both employers and employees in pursuance
of set goals particularly in the universities in developing nations. Afolakemi
(2006) reiterates that the Nigerian educational system, particularly at the
tertiary level, in the recent times, has been in crises and the situation has
recently been made worse by frequent strikes staged by staff resulting in low
morale, poor attendance to work, apathy, absenteeism, corruption of all types
among others. Nigeria seems to be facing immense challenges in terms of poor
quality of
products of higher educational institutions. It has been observed that a good
number of graduates can neither express themselves nor write good official
letters.
In the same vein, World Bank (2000) reports that the standards of
education have fallen considerably over the past decades with low levels of
competences in the work environment and that a university degree is no longer a
guarantee of communication skills or technical competences. The World Bank
further states that as a result of the above, Nigerian university graduates are
commonly viewed as “half baked” and one cannot get five correctly crafted
sentences in one paragraph from recent university graduates. According to World
Bank reports on quality deterioration, some university graduates recruited as
senior administrators cannot write a memo of three paragraphs, some of these
half-baked products of higher educational institutions do find themselves in
the labour market, including appointments as career administrators in
universities.
Observations show that most appointments, promotions and job placements
in the public sector in Nigeria including the university system, are based on
paper qualification, political affiliation, ethnicity and religious inclination
or on the connection and reference of the appointee to the people that matter
and not necessarily through competitive interview (Akpakwu, 2013). Seniority
and quota system could equally be considered as a criterion for appointment and
promotion in the public sector. Most of those employees so appointed or
promoted, including university career administrators may lack the basic
knowledge and skills and may not be competent on the job. This could cause a
lot of distortions and low performance in the system. This situation
compromises the quality of services in tertiary institutions, thus derailing
the achievement of the university goals. Personal observation by the researcher
show that this trend has really affected public tertiary institutions in
Nigeria in.....
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