Influence of conflict management strategies on performance of youth projects - a case of Amani Kibera Youth Communitybased Organization, Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

Historically, conflict at the workplace was viewed as unwelcome and to be avoided, the most recent data though shows that this thinking has shifted to an increased willingness to address the conflict early and in more informal ways. There will always be conflict between the different participants within the project phases, being able to handle disputes and solve them has slowly and surely become one of the skills required of project staff and program managers. When conflicts in the workplace remain unresolved, project performance is influenced which might lead to poor project deliverables, and loss or high turnover of staff. This study was seeking to explore the influence of conflict management strategies on the performance of youth projects: A case of Amani Kibera which is a community-based youth organization. Similar studies have been done in public companies with many employees and complex hierarchical structures such as universities and breweries. This specific study focused on a youth-led community-based development organization, staff 36, in Nairobi County and was specific to the case of conflict strategies and their influence the performance of youth projects at Amani kibera. The precise objectives of this study were to find out the influence of integrating, dominating, compromising, and accommodating strategy of conflict management on youth project performance in Amani Kibera. The management theories that guided this study were the Human Relations Theory which centers on worker fulfillment or the importance of the individual. This theory was further supported by the Contingency Theory which says that in any situation the best practices depend solely on the contingencies of the specific situation. The target population was the 36 staff members of the Amani Kibera Community-based organization. They include 6 board members, 1 project manager, 5 project officers, and 23 youth group leaders. The sampling method used was the entire population for the case study. Data was collected using an online questionnaire which had both open and closed questions for triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data. The gathered data was analyzed using descriptive, thematic, and inferential statistics with the data being presented descriptively using frequencies and percentages. Pearson’s correlation was used to analyze the inferential statistic data and the results presented. In this study Spearman was used to measure the level of association between the independent and dependent variables. On the influence of integrating strategy and performance of youth projects a Composite Mean of 4.00 and a strong correlation value of 0.770 were found. On the influence of Dominating strategy on youth project performance, a Composite Mean of 3.44 and a moderately positive correlation value of 0.454 were found. On the influence of comprising strategy and youth project performance, a Composite Mean of 3.68 and a moderate positive correlation value of 0.500 were found. On the influence influence of accommodating strategy of conflict management on youth project performance, a Composite Mean of 3.81 and a moderately positive correlation value of 0.509 were achieved. The study came to the conclusion that the performance of youth projects was affected positively by the independent variables at Amani Kibera.