PERSONAL AND WORK- RELATED FACTORS AS PREDICTORS OF CAREER GROWTH OF JUNIOR ACADEMIC STAFF IN UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTHWESTERN, NIGERIA
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Date
2014
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Abstract
Academic and administrative responsibilities assigned to junior academic staff though crucial
to their career growth, are largely becoming challenging and inimical to their overall career
achievements in Nigeria. Previous studies on career growth in the Nigerian university system
have concentrated more on remunerations, job satisfaction and commitment, staff welfare
and incentives, funding and retention, organisational climate and career pathways
without adequate consideration for the combined predictive effects of personal and work-
related factors. Therefore, this study examined the combined prediction of personal
(emotional intelligence and gender) and work-related (work attitude, administrative
responsibility and mentoring) factors on junior academic staff career growth (Readiness for
Promotion (RP), Number of Publications (NoP), Regular Class Attendance (RCA), Teaching
Ability (TA) and Self-confidence (SC)) in universities in Southwestern Nigeria.
The descriptive survey research design was adopted. Equal allocation method and stratified
random sampling techniques were used to select 1200 junior academic staff from 12
purposively selected universities (four each from federal, state and private). Junior Academic
Career Growth Scale (r=0.78), Administrative Responsibility (AR) Inventory (r=0.81), Work
Attitude (WA) Scale (r=0.85), Emotional Intelligence (EI) Scale (r=0.82) and Mentoring
Scale (r=0.81) were used for data collection. These were complemented with four sessions of
in-depth interview with four randomly selected junior academic staff in each of the 12
institutions; making a total of 48 sessions. One research question was answered and six
hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data were subjected to Pearson product
movement correlation, multiple regression and content analysis.
Personal and work-related factors had a joint significant prediction on junior academic staff
career growth (JASCG) (F(5,1194) =116.47) and jointly accounted for 33.0% of its variance.
Emotional intelligence (β=0.355), gender (β=0.128), AR (β=0.074), WA (β=0.056) relatively
contributed to JASCG, while mentoring did not. Also, EI (r=0.531), gender (r=0.430),
mentoring (r=0.416), WA (r=0.326) and AR (r=0.224) positively correlated with JASCG.
Administrative responsibilities significantly correlated with the components of JASCG as
follows: TA (r=0.218), NoP (r=0.145), RCA (r=0.132), SC (r=0.130), and RP (r=0.115);
while work attitude correlated with the same components as ranked: NoP (r=0.338), SC
(r=0.369), RP (r=0.343), RCA (r=0.295) and TA (r=0.265). Further, EI correlated with
JASCG components in this order: NoP (r=0.047), SC (r=0.025), TA (r=0.025), RCA (r= -
0.56), RP (r=-0.34). Mentoring also correlated with JASCG as ranked: NoP (r=0.209), TA
(r=0.146), SC (r=0.143), RCA (r=0.135), RP (r=0.112). The junior academic staff can always
cope with the rigour of academics and constantly experience ease career growth without
much hindrance under good work environment, flexible work system, better mentoring
system and high level of intelligence.
Administrative responsibilities, work attitude, emotional intelligence and gender positively
predicted the career growth of junior academic staff in universities in Southwestern Nigeria.
There is, therefore, the need for the university management to provide enabling work
environment that can enhance the right work attitude and emotional stability of the junior
academic staff for them to perform optimally. In addition, there is the need to ensure an
effective formal mentoring system and reduction of excessive workload.