Communication Patterns and Leadership Styles of Administrators as Correlates of Organizational Climate in South East, Universities, Nigeria.

Abstract

The study investigated communication patterns and leadership styles of administrators as correlates of organizational climate in South East, Universities, Nigeria. Five research questions guided the study and five null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Correlation research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised 749 administrators in public universities in South East, Nigeria. A sample size of 300 administrators was drawn for the study using proportionate stratified sampling techniques. A researcher developed questionnaires titled ‘‘Communication Patterns Questionnaire (CPQ)’’, ‘‘Leadership Styles Questionnaire (LSQ)’’ and ‘‘Organizational Climate Scale (QCS)’’ were used for data collection. The instruments were validated by three experts, two from the Department of Educational Management and Policy, and one from the Department of Educational Foundations, Nnamdi Azikiwe University. Cronbach alpha was used for a test of internal consistency of the instruments which yielded overall co-efficient values of 0.80, 0.82 and 0.82 for CPQ, LSQ and OCS respectively. The researcher together with four research assistants collected data for the study using the direct approach method and 97% return was recorded. Pearson Product Moment Correlational Coefficient was used to answer the research questions 1-4 and t-test of correlation to test hypotheses 1-4, while multiple regression was used to answer research question 5 and test hypothesis 5. The findings of the study revealed among others that downward and horizontal communication patterns of administrators have strong positive relationship with organization climate. Further results indicted that democratic leadership style of administrators has strong positive relationship with organizational climate in public universities South East, Nigeria. It was also revealed that all dimensions of communication patterns and leadership styles of administrators have significant relationship with organizational climate in South East, Universities, Nigeria. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that university management should organize training programmes in forms of annually or quarterly conferences, seminars, short-courses and workshops to enable administrators acquire skills and knowledge of applying communication patterns and leadership styles to create positive organizational climate.