Social Values And The Performance Of Selected Public And Private Universities In South West Nigeria

Abstract

Historically, many governments in developing countries of the world had to resort to direct participation in the productive sectors of their economies owing to the dearth of private capital. Hence,a multiplicity of public organizations were set-up. From the experience of most of these countries, public organizations have mostly failed to achieve their goal–attainment function. Some inconclusive studies have pointed, among other factors, to the effect that social values may have on the effective running of organizations. They posited that the social-value system of a society influences the behaviour of organizational members.This study, therefore, sought to investigate how social values from the social environment impact on the performance of public organizations. The study adopted a comparative design to study the performance of some selected public and private organizations, specifically universities, in South West Nigeria. The main objective was to explore the values of the community and those of the organization to determine which of the social values are dominant both in the environment and in the culture of the universities,and in turn, impact on the performance of the universities. Performance evaluation, in this study, adopted the Strategic Constituency model with public perception of the universities, the employers’ evaluation of universities’ products, and also individual punctuality as specific measuring variables. The study adopted both quantitative and qualitative research designs. The cross sectional survey and indepth interviews were used for quantitative and qualitative data respectively.Three universities– Lagos State University (LASU a State-Owned Public University), University of Lagos (UNILAG, a Federal-Owned PublicUniversity) and Covenant University (CU, a privately owned university) were sampled for comparative analysis.The study locations were Lagos and Ota. Respondents drawn from the universities–LASU, UNILAG and CU were 270 while 600 respondents were sampled from 11 LGAs which included the surrounding communities of these universities. Six hypotheses were formulated for the study based on the objectives. The statistical analysis was done using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) programme. The findings of the study showed that religious values, monetary/material, family/marriage/children, education, and peaceful/easy life values were expressed most as life-values. The T-test analysis of the two samples for community and universities showed that the mean scores for the social values were very close indicating that the two populations from which they were drawn were significantly the same. Organizational culture comparison of the three universities indicated that the state public university manifested the least positive culture, the federal public had a more positive culture while the private university exhibited the most positive culture. When their performances were related to their organizational culture, the private university with the highest positive culture had the best public perception, the federal public university, with the more positive culture was rated better while the state public university with the least positive culture had the lowest public perception. Other measures of performance followed the same pattern. All the six hypotheses were supported by the findings. The study recommends that organizations must develop appropriate positive culture. Leadership of organizations should be given to those who have either developed or bought the values appropriate for the organizations. There is also the need for continuous orientation to inculcate the values into staff members.