Organisational Politics on Job Impetus Among Library Personnel in Selected Public Universities in South-West Nigeria

1. Introduction

An organisation’s effectiveness and productivity depend on its human resources as it influences the employee to engage in various organisational activities to have an increased competitive advantage over other employees. Organisational politics is an integral part of organisational life related to authority, influence, benefits, and power. In library and information centres, like other service organisati ons, politics is partially a natural phenomenon and common among the library employees in one form or the other. The assumption that employees in the library may not achieve common organisational goals or objectives in some settings cannot be undisputed, specifically where organisational politics tend to have a great root. However, these might happen because library personnel are a combination of different groups of people. The diversity of culture, background, training and educational qualifications may greatly influence employee relationships. This politics requires urgent understanding and management approaches by the head of library and information centres to prevent adverse effects on service delivery, job performance, job satisfaction, engagement, turnover, stress, burnout and job impetus.

According to Karen (2014), Organisational politics is the pursuit of personal agenda and self-interest without regard to their effect on the organisation’s efforts to achieve its goals, objectives, or organisational development and sustainability. Also involves those exercises or exertion put in place by the employees to acquire power, then the use of power and other means to obtain their preferred desire in a situation where there is doubt or mystification. Organisational politics is not a game involving rules, referees, judges or spectators but includes the use of power and influence to irrationally carry out selfish motives or needs at the expense of library goals. Organisational politics is a proxy for a deceitful attitude of employees in a workplace for personal interest, which may not be in harmony with the group and organisational objectives and subsequently affect its organisation development and job impetus (Olusegun, 2019).

Job impetus is various activities stimulating employees and library personnel to increase work satisfaction, performance, and service delivery. Job impetus includes motivation, recognition, appraisal, work tourism, additional skill development etc. Anthony (2011) believes motivation whirls within a person responsible for the comprehensive course and diligence efforts expended at work. Motivation involves an incentive, catalyst, stimulus, or a driving force that controls an individual’s behaviour towards achieving a given set of objectives to achieve organisational goals.

In recent times, studies have shown that research has been done testing organisational politics on job satisfaction and job performance, work engagement, organisation development and many more (Kartono, Hilmiana, Muizu, 2017; Malik, 2018; Olusegun, 2019) but few on job impetus especially among higher institution libraries personnel. While most on-job employees are demotivated simply because of the adverse effect of organisation politicking, as reported in the literature. It has been closely observed that library personnel use political power, whether at a superior level or lower level, to seek favour, promotion, recognition, reputation and some monetary incentives from the head of library and information centres and other top high-ranking allies as well as protection against late coming, absenteeism, disrespect, ingratiation and most of these are either rewarded in a way through promoting and showing favouritism to personnel and placement (Perrewe 2014 et al.). Therefore, this study delves into investigating the effect of organisational politics on job impetus in selected public university libraries in southwest Nigeria.

2. Literature Review

Organisational politics have received growing awareness and scholarly attention because of the consequences it has been shown to have on the behavioural outcomes of employees, such as performance, development, satisfaction, commitment, motivation and engagement, as well as the aftermath on the organisation as a whole (Vigoda-Gadot and Beeri, 2011). Bodla, Afza, and Danish (2014) and Nihat, Samet and Ozgur (2016) explained that organisational politics is the use of power to obtain results that are either not approved by the workplace or organisation and or the use of tools that are also not approved by the organisation while Olusegun (2019) agreed that organisational politics is a social influence process in which behaviour is strategically designed to maximise self-interest and personal goals.

Othman (2008), Drory and Vigoda-Gadot, (2010), Gotsis and Kortezi (2010) and Cacciattolo (2015) pointed out two different perceptions of organisational politics in the workplace, which are positive and negative organisation politicking. The negative side involves convenient and illegal behaviour, which has been disapproved because of ethical dilemmas. These conflicts are generated in the workplace, while the positive side is an important social function for organisations to survive, resulting in a mixture of shared goals and exciting collaboration. Olusegun (2019) posited that positive organisational politics could bring about competitiveness, efficient decision making, perception of conflicts, quality of leadership, and effective means of grapevine to an organisation, whilst negatives can bring out conflict, defective leadership, hatred and lack of trust, poor management, enhance mediocrity to the organisation as well. In their study, Vredenburgh and Shea-VanFossen, (2010) identified organisational conditions that cause employees to engage in workplace political behaviours. They contend that the origins of distinctive individual attributes and their interactions with organisational conditions bring about political policies in workplaces and the evolution of an individual’s hereditary genetic structure.

More importantly, Gotsis and Kortezi (2010) and Vredenburgh and Shea VanFossen, (2010) emphasised that employees have tendencies to involve in organisation politicking and employees engaged in political behaviour because of unclear organisational objectives, goals and limited resources, which try to hinder formal procedures from carrying out activities in the organisation (Gotsis and Kortezi, 2010; Latif et al., 2011). Furthermore, Omisore and Nweke (2014) identified three groups of employees that can easily create political behaviour; the workgroup, interest group, and coalition group. Workgroup means the employee comes from the same department. In an organisation, there are many workgroups such as the accounting department, marketing department, and others; the interest group is the group with a common interest. They have the same goal with the organisation and rely on each other whilst coalition groups work together to achieve the goal.

Kamar and Ferris (1991) proposed five dimensions to measure organisation politics. The five dimensions are Go Along to Get Ahead, Self-serving, co-workers; Cliques; and Pay and Promotion. Landells and Albrecht (2016), based on qualitative research, proposed five dimensions of organisational politics that could encompass both positive and negative perspectives: building and using relationships, building personal reputation, controlling decisions and resources, influencing decision-making, and the use of communication channels. These dimensions extend and overlap with previously validated measures of organisational politics by Kacmar and Ferris (1991). Further research was carried out on five dimensions which gave birth to the most accepted three dimensions of Perceived Organisational Politics. The factors are made up of pay and promotion policies (PPP), go-along-to-get-ahead (GATGA), and general political behaviour (GPB).

Perceptions of Organizational Politics (Pops) have been found to affect a lot of organisational outcomes; job performance (Stergiopoulou, 2014; Ferris et al., 2002); turnover intentions (Chang et al., 2012); OCB and Work Engagement (Judge & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2012). Stergiopoulou (2014) intimates that POPS involves the exchange of resources at the organisational level. Therefore, employees’ perception is about how the distributed resources will inadvertently affect the workplace behaviours they are likely to exhibit. Thus individuals who perceive fairness and justice in allocating resources and interrelations between superiors and colleagues are more likely to exhibit positive work outcomes. According to Parashar (2016), motivation is the force that moves employees towards performing a certain action; motivation will strengthen the willingness of employees to work, and in turn, it will increase the organisation’s effectiveness, competence and performance. Similarly, George and Jones (2012) asserted that work motivation is a psychological force that determines the direction of a person’s behaviour in an organisation, a person’s level of effort, and persistence in the face of obstacles. Motivated employees are more ambitious, innovative, creative, and persistent in achieving desired goals, which means that a motivated workforce will work more efficiently (Parashar, 2016).

Studies asserted that two factors could influence employee motivation at the workplace: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is energy from within oneself, .positive emotional experience resulting directly and naturally from the individual’s behaviour or results. These include the enjoyment of learning a new task and a feeling of achievement from performing a job well (Giancola, 2014). As literature established, intrinsic motivators are more productive and active than extrinsic motivators. These motivators include trust, fairness of treatment, training and development, total living space, meaningful work, task significance, responsibility and empowerment etc. In addition, intrinsic motivation gives interest, stimulation, challenges, and personal growth and achievement (Gichure, (2014).

Extrinsic motivation is driven by outside forces and external outcomes such as financial rewards or incentives Giancola, (2014). According to George and Jones (2012), extrinsically motivated employees are motivated when they get a positive appraisal or reinforcement provided by other people. They are often motivated by their salary at the end of the month or a bonus, raise, promotion, praise, work environment, job security, leadership, co-workers, good working condition, job enrichment, etc. Aworemi (2011); Gichure, (2014). . Extrinsic rewards occur artificially when someone introduces these rewards to get the best out of the employee. The good thing about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is that they are not mutually exclusive; employees can be intrinsically, extrinsically motivated, or both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated simultaneously (Digman, 1990: cited in George & Jones, 2012). In their study, Shaikh, Pathan and Khoso (2018) found that extrinsic factors such as company policy, supervision, working conditions, and peer relationships positively and significantly affect employees’ performance. He concluded that extrinsic factors are key tools within the organisation. Motivation is important for an organisation because of the benefits that come with it, including building friendly relationships, achieving organisational goals, improving the level of efficiency of employees, stability of the workforce, and many more Aworemi et al. (2011).

Evidence from research shows toxic work environment significantly impacts motivation when an employee feels negative about the organisation; they tend to compromise and engage in organisational politics, making the environment toxic and tense for non-politically skilled employees when rewards tend to be tied to more subjective factors such as relationship and power thereby leading to decrease in motivation. Carlock (2013) alluded that a toxic work environment operates in a way that permits workplace stressors to reach a critical close and, hence, has detrimental effects on workers’ well-being. The workplace is toxic when powerful individuals are greedy and selfish or use unfair means to bully, harass, threaten, and humiliate others. This can cause anxiety, stress, depression, health problems, absenteeism, job burnout, counterproductive work behaviour and ultimately degrade productivity and motivation (Ho 2014).

Moreover, non-politically skilled employees’ feels weaker relationship to achieve desired goals. For instance, politically skilled personnel that use ingratiation and relationship, i.e. from the same ethnic group, religion, state etc., to seek pay raises, grants, and promotion ahead of other colleagues who are equally qualified, will tend to be demotivated, thus leading to poor performance, satisfaction, commitment, motivation etc. which have a massive effect on organisational goal. Consequently, affects the quality of the exchange relationship between employees and the organisation. Korner et al. (2015) asserted that effective leadership could drive improvements in team motivation and greatly benefit the dynamics of organisational structures in library practices. Leadership style and motivation are active processes in management Rukhman (2010) and are important factors associated with organisational politics.

Literature established that leadership style could be associated with organisational politics, impacting motivation, performance, and job satisfaction. Therefore, leadership style is an important perception that influences and motivates individuals. Appropriate styles such as transformational, authentic, dynamic, transactional, and servant have been adopted to run the organisation. Al Rahbi, Khalid and Khan (2017) said Transformational, authentic and servant leadership styles are positively correlated with motivation, while transactional leadership style is negatively correlated. The result agrees with Alghazo and Al-Anazi (2016) that leadership style and employee motivation have a strong relationship. The correlation was positive with transformational style and negative with transactional style. Thus, an organisation that chooses the wrong leadership style or behaviour bound by outdated management concepts may likely become politicking among employees.

Also, Ram and Prabhakar (2010) found a relationship between organisational politics and leadership styles; they identified that organisational politics has a negative impact on turnover intentions, job satisfaction, job involvement and job stress. job stress and organisational politics demonstrated that transactional leadership has an effect on work-related outcomes. Studies also established a reputation as one of the dimensions of organisational politics that can affect motivation. Well politically skilled personnel, especially the superior, use reputation to seek rewards and recognition. For instance, in libraries and information centres, each unit or department has a head that controls the unit’s affairs and activities. Each person is assigned a task force or job description to carry out. Yet, all employees in the unit are a team working together to achieve organisational goals. Therefore, a situation where only the unit head is rewarded and recognised as a goal achiever kills employees’ morale, resulting in demotivation.

Another factor that affects motivation is lack of trust, which has also been linked to organisational politics. Okello and Gilson (2015) state that workplace trust relationships involve fair treatment and respectful interactions between individuals. He went further that such a relationship enables cooperation, openness, and vulnerability among employees, colleagues, supervisors, and managers and may act as a source of intrinsic motivation. He concluded that evidence indicates that trust relationships encourage social interactions and cooperation, thus impacting intrinsic motivation but the consequence for retention and performance. Another study by Whitford and Lee (2012).find a positive effect of trust in the organisation on intrinsic motivation. However, once workplace trust is tampered with through politicking, it will create uncertainty, risk and vulnerability, lack of openness, disrespect, and then negatively either directly or indirectly impact motivation, which will have consequences on performance and satisfaction. Organisational politics has been associated with perceptions of fairness and justice (Cropanzano et al. 1997; Ferris et al. 1989; Ferris and Kacmar 1992) cited in (Vigoda- Gadot and Beeri 2012) which is also an intrinsic motivation factor that can motivate employees Gichure, (2014). Still, organisational politics can affect it wherein the head of an organisation fails or is incompetent to fairly treat employees according to lay down organisation policy bringing in interpersonal conflict. Lack of fairness of concealed motivation, performance and standards establish a hypercompetitive, unsupportive environment that can elicit tension among the employees in the library.

3. Methodology

A descriptive survey research design of correlational type was used for the study. The research instrument used for data collection was a monkey survey structured questionnaire titled Organisational Politics and Job Impetus among Library Personnel in Federal Universities in South-West Nigeria Questionnaire. The total sample size for the study is 187. This was drawn from three federal Universities and three state Universities selected across states in southwest Nigeria. The selection comprised 77 non-librarians from federal Universities, 21non-librarians from state-owned Universities, 59 library officers from federal universities and 30 library officers from state universities. (See Table 1)

Table 1.

Selected Universities

A Google form was designed, with its administration lasting six weeks. Participation in the study was voluntary, with respondents being duly informed of the purpose of the research through the consent form. Copies of the questionnaire were analysed using the SPSS package to obtain descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, means percentages and correlational analysis.

4. Results

Socio-demographic characteristics such as the library's name, gender, age, highest educational qualification, years of library work and cadre were analysed using descriptive statistics of frequency counts and percentages. The result is presented in Table 2. The result on the gender indicated that the majority of the respondents were males, 76(53.1%), as against their female counterparts, which was 67(46.9%). This suggests that there was no gender imbalance in the composition of library personnel in universities in South-west Nigeria since the trend in gender distribution could twist to either side.

Table 2.

Demographic Characteristics of Respondents

On educational qualification of the respondents, the result showed that 60 (42.0%), which constituted the majority had MLIS certificate, 26(18.2%) had BLIS while 0nly 13(9.1%%) of the library personnel had Diploma. It is worthy to note that 21(14.7%) of the respondents had a doctoral degree. This finding indicates that university libraries in South-west Nigeria were full of qualified personnel to carry out library and information services expected of them. Still, only a few of them were holders of a doctoral degree. In terms of years of library work, the result revealed that 28(19.6%) had 1-5 years of experience, 48(33.6%) had between 6-10 years, 37(25.9%) had between 11-15 years of experience while 13(9.1%) had working experience of 21 years and above. This means that the study participants were quite experienced in their years in service.

Finally, the result shown in Table 2 revealed that 86 (60.1%) of the respondents were librarians while the remaining 57(39.9%) were library officers cadre. This implies that although there were more librarians than library officer cadres in the population, all cadres were adequately represented. The implication of the findings on demographic characteristics of respondents points to the fact that the library personnel who participated in the study were well informed to respond appropriately to the questions posed in the questionnaire used in the study. The distribution also shows that demographic characteristics of the library personnel in the selected public universities in South-west Nigeria were homogeneous.

RQ 1: What are the effects of organisational politics on job impetus in selected public universities in southwest Nigeria?

Table 3 presented results on the effects of organisational politics on job impetus in selected public universities in southwest Nigeria. These effects were considered under five indices: toxic work environment, poor leadership style, reward and recognition, lack of trust and Injustices, and lack of fairness of treatment. In a toxic work environment, most of the respondents agreed with the fact that organisational politics results in a toxic work environment via response formats: being afraid to go to work because of the attitude of the boss (37.8%), difficulty in understanding policies (32.2%) and petty jealousy (62.9%). It can be deduced from the study that organisational politics results in a toxic work environment among library personnel in the selected public universities in South-west Nigeria. Moreover, using the decision rule, a high level of toxic work environment was established with a mean score of 3.13. Therefore, it can be deduced there was a toxic work environment among library personnel in the selected public universities in South-west Nigeria due to organisational politics.

Table 3.

Effects of Organizational Politics on Job Impetus of Library Personnel

On poor leadership style, the result revealed that most of the respondents in the university libraries surveyed affirmed that: there were traces of interpersonal conflict in the organisation based on the style of leadership used (55.3%) and that the leaders in my organisation chase mistakes and enlarge them while underestimating achievements (52.5%). Thus, it could be inferred that poor leadership exists in selected public university libraries in South-west Nigeria, based on a weighted mean of 2.57 (Table 3).

The reward and recognition of personnel in public university libraries in South-west Nigeria revealed a low level of reward and recognition practices with a weighted mean score of 2.24, which fell below the benchmark. This means that organisational politics results in a low level of reward and recognition in selected public universities in South-west Nigeria. Similarly, the result on lack of trust indicated a low level of organisational trust resulting in organisational politics. This was evident in the mean score of 2.43 which falls below the criterion mean. In other words, organisational politics in public university libraries were found to lack trust. Another effect of organisational politics on job impetus in selected public universities in southwest Nigeria was injustices and lack of fairness of treatment among library personnel (weighted mean = 2.86). This means that level of injustice and lack of fairness was high. Overall, the weighted mean was 2.66, which shows a high level of effects of organisational politics resulting in a toxic work environment, poor leadership style, low level of reward and recognition, lack of trust and Injustices and lack of fairness of treatment.

RQ 2: What dimensions enhances organisational politics among the library personnel selected public universities in southwest Nigeria?

Table 4a presented the dimensions that enhance organisational politics among the library personnel selected public universities in southwest Nigeria. Dimensions of organisational politics were considered under two main constructs: organisational conditions (relationships, decisions and reputation) and organisational objectives and goals (resources, policies and policies and procedures). From the result on organisational conditions, relationships (agreement scores: mutual integration to achieve personal goals: (66.4%), decisions (highest agreement score: Library personnel use their relationship to influence organisational decisions: (72.1%) and reputation (agreement score: Personnel try to make themselves look good by making others look incompetent (55.2%) had weighted mean scores of 3.05, 2.81 and 2.74 respectively. Also, the weighted mean for an organisational condition is 2.88, which is high according to the decision rule. This means that one of the dimensions that enhanced organisational politics among the library personnel selected public universities in southwest Nigeria is that Library personnel use their relationship to influence organisational decisions.

Table 4a.

Dimensions of Organizational Politics

Similarly, the result on organisational objectives and goals in Table 4b revealed that the weighted mean scores for the sub-constructs are as follows; Resources (Resources are unfairly allocated based on individual influence rather than organisational priorities: (58.1%), Policies and procedures (changes made in policies here that only serve the purposes of a few individuals, not the work unit of the organisation: (65.7%) and Communication (Rumors are central to people's understanding of what is happening in this organisation: (69.9%); Gossip is the primary way in which information is shared: (77.2%) were 2.52, 2.55 and 3.02 respectively. Overall, the weighted mean was 2.70, which is high according to the decision rule. This implies that communication is a dimension that enhanced organisational politics in selected public universities in South-west Nigeria. In other words, resources and communication influence organisational politics among the library personnel selected public universities in southwest Nigeria with a high level of impact.

Table 4b.

Organisational objectives and Goals

Further analysis is presented in Table 4c to compare organisational politics in federal and state universities indicated that the level of organisational conditions of state universities was higher than their federal counterparts, as these were apparent in the mean scores of 10.03 and 9.43 for relationships and decisions, respectively. Still, federal universities had a higher mean score of 9.23 under reputation. Similarly, in terms of organisational objectives and goals, federal universities had higher mean scores of 7.55 and 7.91 for resources, policies and procedures than their state counterparts, with mean scores of 6.54 and 7.56, respectively. However, state universities had a higher mean score of 9.17 in communication than federal universities (8.91). This result implies that the overall level of organisational politics is higher in state universities than federal universities in South-west Nigeria.

Table 4c.

Organisational politics in federal and state universities

RQ 3: What are the motivating factors/job impetus that exists in the library selected public universities in southwest Nigeria?

The result on the motivating factors/ job impetus that exists in the library selected public universities in southwest Nigeria is presented in Table 5 revealed that library personnel in public universities in South-west Nigeria has high regard for regard job security (mean = 4.53), promotion opportunity (mean = 3.63), good supervision (mean = 3.57) and good work environment (mean = 3.24). According to the respondents, most of these were motivating factors that keep them working as library personnel in the selected public universities in South-west Nigeria. On the other hand, factors such as unlimited wifi (mean = 2.21), appreciation of effort and reward (mean = 2.38), recognition by authority (mean = 2.43) and training and job advancement (2.51) were rated low by library personnel in selected public universities in South-west, Nigeria.

Table 5a.

Motivating factors/job impetus in selected public university libraries

Further data analysis based on the pairwise comparison test is presented in Table 5b revealed that the respondents in Obafemi Awolowo University (x = 29.37), the Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta (x =27. 93) and Lagos State University (x = 25.41) had higher job impetus than their counterparts in other public university libraries in South-west, Nigeria. In other words, it could be established that the job impetus of library personnel was higher in federal universities than their state counterparts in South-west Nigeria.

Table 5b.

Mean and standard deviation scores of job impetus of library personnel based on universities

RQ 4: Is there any significant relationship between organisational politics and job impetus?

Table 6 showed that although there was a relationship between organisational politics and job impetus in federal university libraries, it was not significant (r= .013; p < 0.05). On the other hand, there was a significant negative relationship between organisational politics and job impetus (r= -.234; p < 0.05). This means that in federal university libraries, organisational politics did not play a prominent role in determining the job impetus of library personnel. In contrast, selected state. In both cases, the null hypothesis that there is no significant relationship between organisational politics and job impetus of library personnel in public universities in southwest Nigeria is partially accepted. This means that while organisation politics prominently influenced the job impetus of library personnel in state universities, the case was slightly different among library personnel in federal universities in South-west Nigeria.

Table 6.

Relationship between organisational politics and job impetus of library personnel in federal and state universities in South-west Nigeria

5. Hypotheses Testing

Two hypotheses were tested at a 0.05 level of significance.

Ho1: Organisational politics have no significant influence on the job impetus of library personnel in public universities in South-west Nigeria

The relationship between organisational politics and job impetus of library personnel in public universities in southwest Nigeria is presented in Table 7. All the indicators were used in the multiple linear regressions since their tolerance values were greater than 0.1 and VIF were less than 10, indicating no multicollinearity problem. The results indicated that for organisational conditions: relation ship: (β = 0.088, p < 0.05) and reputation (β = 0.601, p < 0.05) and for Organizational objectives and goals: resources (β = 0.690, p < 0.05) and communication (β = 0.135, p < 0.05) had significant positive influences on job impetus (F (6, 136) = 64.866, p < 0.05). However, policies and procedures (β = -0.513, p < 0.05) had significant negative influences on library personnel's job impetus in South-west Nigeria's public universities. Meanwhile, decisions (β = 0.030, p < 0.05) had no significant influence on the job impetus of library personnel in public universities in South-west Nigeria. Also, it could be noted that resources contributed the highest to job impetus. At the same time, decisions had the least influence on library personnel's job impetus in South-west Nigeria's public universities.

Table 7.

Influences of organisational politics (dimensions) on Job impetus of library personnel

Ho2: There is no significant difference in organisational politics of federal and state university libraries in South-west Nigeria.

Result of the hypothesis two revealed that the mean of organisational politics in federal universities is 47.79(SD=14.243) while that of the state universities is 52.79(SD=12.332). The test statistic is -0.309 with p>0.05. This means that since p is greater than 0.05, there is no significant difference in the variables being tested; hence, it was established that there was no significant difference in organisational politics of federal and state university libraries in South-west Nigeria.

Table 8.

Organisational Politics in Selected Universities

6. Discussion

The result in this study implies that there was a high level of effects of organisational politics resulting in the toxic work environment, poor leadership style, low level of reward and recognition, lack of trust and injustices and lack of fairness of treatment on job impetus. Ashley (2016) support this result; Rahbi et al. (2017), Alghazo and Al-Anazi (2016) and Ram and Prabhakar (2010). The result also revealed that all the indicators mentioned are dimensions of organisational politics and that organisational politics in state universities is higher than the federal universities in Southwest Nigeria.

The result also revealed that personnel are motivated by job security, promotion opportunity, good supervision, and a good work environment due to a conducive working environment. Good working conditions include good physical conditions (such as good ventilation, adequate workplace, lighting), good working relationship with the superior, little tension on the job, and freedom to adapt your approach, just to mention a few. Aworemi et al. (2011) and Njambi (2014); cited in George and Jones (2012) and Shaikh et al. (2018). Analysis established that job impetus was higher in federal universities than state counterparts in South-west Nigeria. This implies that personnel are motivated with little motivating factors government or school provides. The study went further that organisational politics play a negative role in the job impetus of library personnel in state universities; thus, the hypothesis was partially accepted.

7. Conclusion

Organisational politics have far-reaching effects on the job impetus of library personnel in public universities, which impede their job performance. The overall impact is reflected in the progress and development of such libraries. Therefore, it is imperative on the management of libraries in public universities to manage effectively the politics which usually come to play in the form of appointment, promotion, leadership tussles, and personality clash, which give rise to mediocrity and underdevelopment of the organisation.

8. Recommendations

Given the initial results of the findings, the following recommendations are made:

• 1) Public university library personnel should be encouraged to focus on their job specifications and limit organisational politics. This could be achieved by adhering to rules and regulations in the library and the code of conduct for library staff.
• 2) Information should be properly channelled and communicated effectively to prevent rumours, gossips and speculations from thriving among library personnel in public universities.
• 3) There is the need to teach in the library system the culture of appreciation of effort and reward, recognition by authority, and training and job advancement for deserving library personnel in selected public universities in South-west Nigeria.

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