ESPOUSED ART OF CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STYLES AND ENGAGEMENT OF ACADEMIC STAFF OF SELECTED TECHNOLOGY-DRIVEN PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES IN NIGERIA

Conflict is ubiquitous irrespective of business, society and country. The nature of conflict management strategies followed by managers is partly influenced by the context, personal characteristics, cultural and family background. But conflict has different dimensions. With an objective of spreading higher education in Nigeria at present 75 private universities are working. Most of the universities try to follow a structured organizational system as competition is there. As a result, diagnostic process requires different approaches depending on context. It is against this that the study examined espoused art of conflict management styles and engagement of academic staff. For primary data, copies of questionnaire were distributed to various categories of academic staff of different private universities. Besides that, a structured questionnaire (see appendix-1) has been used. A scale of preference (1 to 5) has been used for the close-ended questions. The analyses were done through the use of the SMART Partial Least Square (PLS). In foremost cases the top management of the private universities is found to use the collaborating style with contingency leadership approach. The collaborative approach helps them to identify a common ground to solve the problem. This common ground helps to build an atmosphere where the parties involved in conflict gain a sense of victory. The emerging leaders and top managers in this sector should follow