Crisis Management and Conflict Resolution Strategies in Business Organizations in Rivers State

Abstract

The study examined crisis management and conflict resolution strategies in business organizations in Rivers State.  Two research questions were posed to guide the study and one hypothesis was formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance.  The entire population of 7,610 was not studied by the researchers and so sample/sampling techniques was considered necessary.  Data for this study were collected by means of questionnaire developed by the researchers and titled “Crisis Management and Conflict Resolution Strategy in Business Organizations in Rivers State (CMACRSBORS)”. Sample for the study was 50 percent of the total population, given a total of 3,805 as sample size.  A total of 3,200 academic and non-academic staff who returned their instrument amounting to 84 percent return rate were studied.  The questionnaire adopted a modified four point Likert scale of strongly agreed to strongly disagree.  Validity was done by 25 academic and non-academic staff, other than those used for the study and a reliability co-efficient of 0.78 was obtained.  Mean rating and standard deviation was used to analyse the research questions while Z-test was used to test the hypothesis.  Findings revealed that crisis and conflict affects business organizations in Rivers State as compromise, dominance and suppression, mobilization of members, restructuring the organization and so on are solutions to crisis management and conflict resolution strategies in business organizations.  Recommendations made amongst others were that managers and administrators should try as not to be autocratic but should be neutral in handling crisis or conflict issues in business organizations and university administrators should be able to handle issues that arise in business organizations constructively and objectively as the consequences of crisis or conflict in business organizations may be very severe.

Keywords: Crisis, Management, Conflict, Resolution, Strategies, Business Organizations, Rivers State,