The Influence Of Informality On Employee’s Performance In Higher Learning Institutions In Tanzania

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to examine the influence of informality on employee’s performance in public institutions. This included looking at how informal channels of communication, social networks and managerial interpersonal skills influence the performance of academic staff in public universities in terms of teaching, research and consultancy.The population of studyincluded all academic staff in University of Dar es Salaam and University of Dodoma with the sample size of 100. The study employed a mixed research approach and a cross sectional research design. Data was collected through questionnaires to academic staff and face to face interviews to managers. Analysis was done using Structural Equation Model in SPSS AMOS. The study revealed that informal channels of communication most especially gossip chain and cluster chain influence the performance of academic staff in teaching, research and consultancy with p values of 0.000. This is mainly because of the timeliness, frequency and accuracy of information in these channels. Single strand chain was also found to influence performance to some extent most especially at the beginning of the chain but as this information progressed down the chain the information became unreliable. The use of single strand chain was discouraged by the managers interviewed because its informationpasses down a long chain. The findings also show that social networks through advice and trust network influences the performance of academic staff with p values of 0.004 and 0.005 respectively, however political network shows a weak influence because its magnitude of standardized loadings is below 0.4 at 0.342. Likewise, managerial interpersonal skills, of rewards and conflict managementwere discovered to have the highestinfluence on employee performance as many supervisors have these skills. Therefore, the study recommends that, managers should monitor information that passes through gossip and cluster chain as it is most used in these organizations and control its impact accordingly. Moreover, academic staff should be encouraged to effectively make use of advice and trustnetworks so as to enhance their performance.Likewise managers should strive to improve their interpersonal skills, especially power which many managers lack.