A MODELLING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WORK SATISFACTION AND FACULTY PERFORMANCE IN THE NIGERIAN PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES

Given the pivotal role that academics play in determining the efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of educational sector of the economy, coupled with the constant mobility of these highly skilled persons from one University to another, it is important to understand what motivates them, and the extent to which the University environment and other contextual variables affect their performances. Thus, the paper utilizes survey data collected from 558 faculties of selected private Universities in the Southwest Nigeria to find out the factors that will determine the work satisfaction of faculties and their impact on academic excellence, whether faculties leave based on their dissatisfaction with these factors. Structural Equation Model (SEM) was used to analyze the relationships between the dependent and the independent variables. The results showed close association between the tested variables. The study stood as an eye opener to the management to ensure that existing benefits for academic staff are fairly, justly and competitively allocated to them as this affect their level of commitment and overall performance. Thus, we concluded that salary, package, organizational policies, work condition, social context of the job, as it relates to academic autonomy, relationship with academic colleagues, participation in decision making, promotional opportunities, etc will have positive effects on faculty’s commitment to their academic activities and subsequently impact on their performances

Development of Bi-modal exercise bicycle for physical fitness and rehabilitation

Exercise bicycles are used for kinesiological activities; to increase general fitness, and for training for cycling events. They are also used for weight loss. The aim of this study is to produce a special exercise bike which allows for both upper and lower limbs pedalling either independently or otherwise. The manufacturing processes employed in the design involved the use of AutoCAD design suite and other production engineering processes which included material selection and acquisition, cutting, welding and drilling. The device was tested for both comfort and effectiveness for cardiac rehabilitation using the rate of heartbeat as the test parameter. A strong positive correlation was found (p<0.001; r=0.962) between the two heart rate tests. An ergonomic evaluation of the bi-modal exercise bike showed 98% suitability of the seat-pedal height with the knee height of the study population and 100% suitability of the seathandle post height with the buttock-knee length of the population. In conclusion, the goal of developing a bi-modal exercise bike that permits simultaneous upper and lower limbs pedalling was realised.Keywords: exercise bicycle; cycling; ergometer; fitness; rehabilitation

Evaluation and Comparison of Metrics for XML Schema Languages

The importance of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) can’t be understated; their usefulness may range from data sharing to data transport in software systems. Schema languages describe the structure of an XML document and the common schemas languages are Document Definition Type (DTD), W3C XML Schema and RelaxNG. Applications depend heavily on XML documents to be free of error and this makes it imperative to determine the quality of such schema document. Schema metrics is used to achieve this, and several of them have been proposed in recent years. In this paper we present the existing schema metrics and to make comparative studies on all schema metrics, figuring out the features, advantages and limitations of each metrics

Developing a Model for Employees’ Intrapreneurial Engagement and Organizational Survival

The survival of any organisation in the midst of economic hardship and competitiveness is becoming a serious concern. One of the strategies organisations can adopt is to tap into the intrapreneurial potentials of their employees. The main objective of this study examines the strategic roles of employees’ intrapreneurial engagement and its implication for organisational survival. A descriptive research method (Structural Equation Model {AMOS 22}) was applied to analyse the two hundred and fifty-nine (259) copies of valid questionnaire completed by the respondents using stratified and simple random sampling techniques. However, the study indicated that fostering employees’ intrapreneurial engagement have positive significant implications on organisational survival. This suggests that employees’ empowerment, involvement, autonomy, relationships and reward system have significant effects on organisational survival. It is therefore recommended that organisations should challenge their employees by providing them with autonomy and the freedom to innovate and carve out spaces for them to take risks and experiment

Rural Women in Kwara State (Nigeria) and their Contributions to the Welfare of their Households

The high incidence of poverty in the rural households calls for a concerted effort by all members of the household, including the women. Meanwhile, the discussion on the economic contribution of rural women in many developing countries has largely focused on national and regional levels with little or no concentration on their impact at their immediate household level. Therefore, this study examines the contribution of rural women to household welfare in Kwara State, Nigeria. Data were collected from 160 women in the rural area of the state using structured interview schedule. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, index ranking and regression model. Results showed that the mean age of the women was 41.2 years, 61.3% were married, less educated and had an average household size of six persons. Their main source of income was agro-processing (54.4%), though they were pluriactive in nature. The mean income earned by the women was N15,344.65 ($42.62) per month. The major areas of contribution of the women to household expenditure were food (47.73%), clothing (12.13%) and children’s education (9.12%). The results further revealed that the significant factors influencing women’s contribution to households’ welfare in the study area were age, level of education, savings, remittances, training on enterpreneurship and access to credit. Therefore, measures that will increase the income generated by rural women should be put in place so as to boost their contribution to the welfare of their households

PREDICTING THE IMPACT OF JOB SATISFACTION LEVEL IN BOLSTERING TURNOVER INTENTIONS OF FRONTLINE HEALTH WORKERS: EVIDENCE FROM SOUTHERN NIGERIA

Improvement in health care delivery requires a deliberate focus on quality of health services. Nigeria is among the 57 countries worldwide considered by The World Health Organization (WHO) to experience a critical shortage of health workers. While it is evident that there is high turnover among frontline health workers (i.e. frontline health workers, midwives, nurse/midwives, community health officers and community health extension workers), the magnitude of or reasons for turnover is complex, challenging and unknown. Their intention to leave their jobs in the next 5 years has not also been investigated. Hence, this study assessed the key enablers and drivers of turnover intention of frontline health workers in Nigeria. The study used a quantitative approach to address the research questions. This research is directed at managing job satisfaction levels of frontline health workers in Nigeria. Four hospitals were purposively selected and adjudged to be among the best private hospitals in Nigeria based on their standard and popularity, length of existence, standard medical equipment and high customer patronage. Data were collected from 782 frontline health workers and analyzed with descriptive statistics, Structural and Measurement models. The findings indicated that 56% of frontline health workers planned to leave the hospital next year, and 66% said they would look for another work if the situation at the hospital become progressively unsatisfactory. Salary satisfaction, promotion satisfaction, and job satisfaction all influence turnover intentions. The majority of nurses want to move, thus hospital management should re-evaluate the wage and incentive scheme. Promotions must be offered honestly and equitably, and training and education programs must be established to help frontline health workers advance in their careers. Implementation of friendly healthcare strategies that reflect the needs of frontline health workers is imperative to reduce turnover intention and improve health service outcome

Supporting drivable region detection by minimising salient pixels generated through robot sensors

The role of robots, automatically guided machines able to perform tasks on their own cannot be over emphasized. In particular, if robotic vehicles are to work effectively, the way they are required to perform their jobs and their ability to reach the desired destination where the job is to be performed are of utmost importance. This necessitates the need to facilitate proper navigational aid for robotic vehicles. Various navigational approaches have been proposed in robotics literature, but this work serves to provide an assistive pre-processing strategy for the detection of drivable region through minimisation of salient pixels in a colour feature extraction. Salient pixels are pixels occupying the non-drivable region particularly those having same grayscale value as road images. Salient pixels provide difficulties during colour feature extraction on road images captured by a robot’s camera (sensor). In our method, a stream of road images is captured, pixels are extracted based on a RGB (red, green, blue) colour space, edges of objects are detected using Sobel operator. Salient pixels are minimised using some heuristic which is based on a threshold parameter. In a series of experiments using our method, a stream of real life road images is obtained and results show that good drivable regions, which facilitate proper robotic navigation, can be detected

Data regarding talent management practices and innovation performance of academic staffina technology-drive nprivate university

The articlepresentedanintegrateddataontalentmanagement practices andinnovationperformanceofacademicstaffina technology-drivenprivateuniversityinNigeria.Thestudyadopted a quantitativeapproachwithasurveyresearchdesigntoestablish the majordeterminantsoftalentmanagementpractices.The population ofthisstudyincludedacademicstaffandtheuseof questionnairewasadoptedtoelicitfromthestudypopulation. Data wasanalysedwiththeuseofstructuralequationmodelling and the field datasetismadewidelyaccessibletoenablecriticalor a morecomprehensiveinvestigation.The findings identified talent development andretentionstrategiesaspredictorsforfacilitating innovationperformanceinthesampleUniversity.Itwasrecom- mended thatmanagementofthesampleduniversitywillcon- sistentlyneedtoadoptreliablerangeofstrategiestoattractand retain peopleforexcellenceperformanc

Data on perception of faculty members on the influence of faculty support initiatives on the efficacy of job responsibilities

The mainobjectiveofthissurveyistopresentdataontheper- ception oftheinfluence offacultysupportinitiativesonefficacy of job responsibilitiesusingsixprivateuniversityinNigeriaascase study.Thepopulationofthestudyincludedallfacultymembersof selected privateuniversitieswithatotalof1912facultymembers. A samplesizeof500wereselectedtoparticipateinthesurvey based ontheoutcomeofthesamplesizedeterminationformula suggestedbyFalolaetal.(2016) [5]. Thevalidityandreliabilityof the researchinstrumentwerecarriedout.Regressionanalysisand structural equationmodelingwereusedasstatisticaltoolofana- lysis.Itisbelievedthatwhenthedataisanalysed,itwillgive insight intohowfacultysupportinitiativesofvariousuniversities can help in enhancing the effectiveness of job responsibilities

Survey data on work environments and productivity of academic staff of selected public universities in Nigeria

The articlepresentedasurveydataonworkenvironmentpre- dictors andproductivityofselectedacademicstaffofselected public universitiesinSouthern,Nigeria.Thestudyadopteda quantitativeapproachwithasurveyresearchdesigntoestablish the majordeterminantsofworkenvironmentsintheselected public universities.Datawasanalysedwiththeuseofstructural equationmodellingandthe field datasetismadewidelyacces- sible toenablecriticaloramorecomprehensiveinvestigation.The findings identified meaningfulworkandgrowthopportunitiesas predictivefactorsformaximizingproductivityinthesampled institution