Influence of Headteachers’ Conflict Management Styles on Teachers’ Job Satisfaction in Public Secondary Schools in Homa Bay Sub-county, Kenya

Abstract

The manner in which conflict is handled in an education institution has potential to affect teacher‟s job satisfaction and organizational outcomes. Schools as organization are faced with conflicts which when not amicably resolved would result into school unrest, poor performance, high stuff turnover. The frequent unrest witnessed in most public secondary schools in Homa Bay Sub County is a clear indication of existing unresolved conflicts among the members of the school. Despite this, no studies have been carried on conflict management styles in public secondary schools in Homa bay. This study was conducted to investigate how the different conflict management styles employed by the head teachers influenced teachers‟ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in Homa Bay Sub-County, Kenya. The objectives were: influence of integrating, obliging, dominating, avoidance and compromising conflict management styles on teachers‟ job satisfaction. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. The respondents included the 32 head teachers and 164 teachers from public secondary schools in Homa Bay. Data collection instruments were head teachers and teachers' questionnaires which were developed to address specific objectives. The validity of the research instruments was evaluated using content validity to verify whether the content is appropriate and relevant to the study of objectives. The reliability of the research instruments was done using the test- retest technique whereby the instruments were administered twice within one week interval. Teachers were selected using simple random sampling procedure, and all the 32 head teachers were sampled using census method. The collected data was coded and analyzed both using the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS). Quantitative information was presented in percentages, bar graphs, pie charts and frequency distribution tables. Ethical consideration was also put in place as the research was issued with a letter of authority from both the university of Nairobi and NACOSTI and also from the Director of Education Homa Bay sub county. The respondents who participated in the study were also assured of the confidentiality of their responses. The findings were; the head teachers used the five conflict management styles examined. The most used conflict management style was integrating (mean of 2.32 out of 5) followed by compromising (2.47) conflict management style. The other three, dominating (3.0), avoidance (3.36) and obliging (2.60) conflict management styles were used to a smaller extent by few head teachers. The use of integrating conflict management style had a positive relationship with teacher‟s job satisfaction. The researcher recommend that head teachers should be trained on conflict management style so as to be aware which style to use at a particular situation.