EFFECT OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION STRATEGIES ON WORKERS’ RETENTION IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Abstract

The climatic condition of any organisation is usually toxic whenever two or more parties fail to reach a consensus with regard to allocation of rewards or benefits. Such disagreement breeds a dysfunctional conflict that affect both the performance of the warrying parties as well as other colleagues in the workplace. However, in order to bring orderliness to the organisation, administrators and managers need to discover the best conflict resolution strategies that would be used to resolve the disputes. This is the basis for which this study investigated the effect of conflict resolution strategies on workers’ retention in the public sector. The sample frame for this study comprises of two hundred and eleven workers drawn from five government parastatals in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. Questionnaire was used as instrument for data collection. Linear regression was used to analyse the research hypotheses. Result of the study revealed that conflict resolution strategies have significant effect on workers’ retention. The study concludes that conflict resolution strategies such as compromising and avoidance strategies improves the retention of workers in the public sector. One of the implications of the research is that managers, administrators and supervisors should do everything possible to avoid conflict in the workplace to encourage the retention of workers in the organisation.

Keywords

• conflict
• conflict resolution strategies
• retention
• workers
• government parastatals