Influence of Principals’ Conflict Management Techniques on Teacher Job Satisfaction in Selected Secondary Schools in Uriri and Nyatike Sub Counties, Kenya

According to a survey by the American Management Association, managers spend 24% of their time managing conflicts. This is a waste of time as a resource, reducing this time wastage would mean improving the quality of management. Conflict is inevitable and a natural phenomenon, the secondary school principals in Uriri and Nyatike sub-counties have not been spared of the challenges of conflict management on teacher job satisfaction. Therefore, the study aimed to determine the principals’ conflict management techniques on teacher job satisfaction in public secondary schools in Uriri and Nyatike sub-counties, Kenya. It was guided by Engle& Kane, M. J. (2004 Herzberg's two-factor theory and a conceptual framework used to show the interplay between the principals’ conflict management techniques and teacher job satisfaction. The research employed a descriptive survey design to obtain information. The target study population consisted of 1960 teachers, 87 principals in 87 secondary schools in Uriri and Nyatike sub-counties. Stratified simple random sampling was used to obtain a sample of 29 principals and 319 teachers. Data was collected using questionnaires. Face and content validity of the instruments was determined by experts in educational management and policy studies. In order to enhance the reliability of the instrument, a pilot study was conducted in 6 secondary schools in the sub-counties, which were excluded from the main study. The reliability was tested using test-retest method and a Pearson’s r coefficient of 0.79 for principals’ and 0.83 for teachers’ questionnaires obtained. Quantitative data was analysed using frequency count, percentages and mean. The study established that integrating obliging had a strong and positive correlation with teacher job satisfaction, dominating and avoiding techniques had p>0.05 which is not statistically significant. The findings add to the existing body of knowledge and may be useful in developing guidelines for principals and other stakeholders to enable them to manage schools effectively. Also, help the Ministry of Education to formulate training materials for school managers to enable them to manage conflicts effectively and to enable teachers and educators to improve and manage conflicts in schools more effectively and efficiently.

Fostering Professional Competencies in Engineering Undergraduates with EPS@ISEP

Engineering education addresses the development of professional competencies in undergraduates. In this context, the core set of professional competencies includes critical thinking and problem solving, effective communication, collaboration and team building, and creativity and innovation—also known as the four Cs—as well as socio-professional ethics and sustainable development—referred in this paper as the two Ss. While the four Cs were identified by the associates of the American Management Association based on the needs of the society, professional associations, and businesses; this paper proposes the two S extension to ensure that future engineers contribute to the well-being of individuals and the preservation of life on Earth. It proposes a tangible framework—the 4C2S—and an application method to analyse the contributions made by engineering capstone programmes to the development of these core competencies in future engineering professionals. The method is applied to an engineering capstone programme—the European Project Semester (EPS) offered by the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP)—and a specific project case—EPS@ISEP Pet Tracker project developed in 2013, constituting, in addition, a road map for the application of the 4C2S framework to engineering capstone programmes. The results show that EPS@ISEP complies with the 4C2S framework.

Cultura Organizacional y Capacidad de Ejecución

Durante la última década, el tema de la ejecución de la estrategia ha tomado gran interés en los negocios. Este interés se refleja en la publicación de varios libros dedicados al tema, entre ellos Execution: The Discipline to Get Things Done (Bossidy y Charan 2002), Making Strategy Work:Leading Effective Execution and Change (Hrebiniak 2005) y The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage (Kaplan y Norton 2008). Una variedad de estudios recientes respaldan el interés en la ejecución. Por ejemplo, en una encuesta de la American Management Association del 2006, sólo el 3% respondió que sus empresas eran muy exitosas en la ejecución de la estrategia, mientras que el 62% calificó esta capacidad como mediocre o peor. Otra encuestas del Conference Board en 2007 y del Monitor Group en 2006 señalan que la prioridad número uno de los ejecutivos es la excelencia en la ejecución. Finalmente, en su encuesta internacional de 2008, la Society for Human Resource Management indica que las prioridades 1 y 2 de los ejecutivos encuestados eran el desarrollo organizacional y la gestión estratégica, respectivamente, ambos temas íntimamente relacionados con la ejecución de la estrategia.