A Thesis Submitted To The Department of Educational Leadership and Management
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Date
2020
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Publisher
AAU
Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to investigate the causes of work place conflict and its
management in government secondary schools of Arada Sub-City. It attempted to identify the
causes of work place conflict, teachers’ and principals’ view on conflict, the effect of conflict on
school performance and the strategies used to manage conflict. The study employed both mixed
research approach in concurrent design. The research design applied in this mixed approach
was descriptive survey. The study was carried out on four secondary schools that were selected
using random sampling technique. 155 teachers and 16 principal’s respondents were selected
through simple random sampling technique. Questionnaire, Interviews and document analysis
were the instrument of data collection. Frequencies, percentages, mean and significance were
used to analyze quantitative data. Based on the result of the analysis the findings were violation
of school rules and workplace ethics, workloads and unfair period allocation and distribution,
employee benefit related matters, and unreasonable absence from workplace were the major
causes of work place conflicts in the schools. In addition lack of trained conflict settlers,
absence of suitable conflict resolution guideline and lack of commitment to resolve conflicts
were challenges to the practices of conflict resolution. Based on the analysis of the data the
following conclusions were made; the causes of work place conflict between school principals
and teachers were, communication problems, bad working conditions, lack of participative
decision making, lack of commitment and lack of collaborative problem solving were among the
major causes of conflict. The effects of conflicts were poor organizational achievement, lack of
motivation, low performance and hostility of the teachers and even the students. The points that
suggested as recommendations were: School principals should know the causes of work place
conflict and possible means of handling them for smooth operation of school. They should have
the necessary knowledge, competence and basic conflict management skills with sufficient
experience of principal ship position and also use better mechanisms for the exchange to
information concerning the general situation of the school and particular conditioned should be
devised in the schools; higher educational officials such as FDRE MOE, Addis Ababa
Educational Bureau, Sub cities ,Woredas educational bureau should have to make policies,
guidelines, rules and directives clear and workable in order to avoid barriers for effective
implementation of educational programs.