Influence of negotiation conflict management strategy on teachers’ productivity in secondary schools in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya

Abstract

Conflicts are a common phenomenon in any given organization including the school system where there is human interaction. There has been persistent public concern on declining teachers’ productivity in public secondary schools in Uasin Gishu County. This is partly attributable to conflicts. The aim of this paper was to determine the influence of negotiation conflict management strategy on teachers’ productivity in public secondary schools in Uasin-Gishu County, Kenya. The study adopted correlational research design and targeted 156 principals and 1783 teachers from 156 public secondary schools. Krejcie and Morgan sample size determination formula was used to attain a sample size of 427 respondents. The study employed purposive sampling, stratified and simple random sampling approaches. Data was collected using questionnaires. The study used mean, standard deviation, frequencies and percentages and Pearson Correlation Analysis to analyze data which was presented in tables. The study found out that there was a significant positive correlation between negotiation and teachers’ productivity (r = .525; p = .000) in secondary schools in Uasin- Gishu County. The paper concluded that there was a significant positive correlation between negotiation as a conflict management strategy and teachers’ productivity in secondary schools in Uasin-Gishu County showing that negotiation conflict management strategy positively enhances teachers’ productivity in secondary schools. The paper recommends that principals of secondary schools need to adopt conflict management approaches that strongly advocate for negotiation of all arising issues to ensure that compromise is easily reachable. This could be helpful in guiding management decisions and choices as to the most effective conflict management strategies to apply to resolve existing workplace conflicts.