WORKPLACE CIVILITY AS A PREDICTOR OF LECTURERS’ JOB PERFORMANCE IN COLLEGES OF EDUCATION IN SOUTH EAST, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study examined workplace civility as a predictor of lecturers’ job performance in Colleges of Education in the South-East, Nigeria. Two research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. A correlational research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised all lecturers from Colleges of Education in the South-East, Nigeria. The sample for this study consisted of 724 lecturers drawn using a multistage sampling procedure. Two sets of instruments, titled "Workplace Civility Questionnaire (WCQ)" and "Lecturers' Job Performance Questionnaire (LJPQ)" were used for data collection. The instruments were face-validated by three experts: two from the Department of Educational Management and Policy and one from the Department of Educational Foundations, Measurement and Evaluation Unit, Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University. Cronbach's alpha was used to assess the instruments' internal consistency, yielding overall coefficients of 0.79 and 0.77 for the two WCQ clusters, with an overall coefficient of 0.78, whereas 0.83 was obtained for LJPQ. The researchers, together with two research assistants, collected data for the study using the direct approach, achieving a 98% return rate. Simple regression was used to answer the research questions and test hypotheses. The study's findings revealed, among others, that Workplace professionalism and ethical behaviour are strong and significant predictors of lecturers’ job performance in Colleges of Education in South East, Nigeria. Based on the findings, it was recommended, among others, that the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union should organize periodic seminars and conferences for lecturers to update their knowledge of various ethical behaviour needed to improve their job performance.