Beschreibung
Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Leadership and Human Resources - Miscellaneous, grade: 4.00, Obafemi Awolowo University (Faculty of Administration), course: Business Administration, language: English, abstract: This study identified existing organizational practices and policies helping to balance work and life roles among workers and examined the factors that inhibit or enhance their adoption by workers in South-Western Nigeria. It also investigated the relationship between work-life balance and performance of workers, with a view to gaining an understanding of the range of ways by which workers in Nigeria achieve work-life balance. The study was conducted in six purposively selected private universities across the six states of South-western Nigeria, using primary and secondary data. A sample size of 540 was derived from a total of 702 using stratified sampling technique. Questionnaires were administered to all the respondents to ferret information on work-life balance and performance of workers. Secondary data from institutional records were used to augment information gathered through the questionnaire. Data collected were analyzed using frequency cross-tabulation, correlation and regression analysis. Organizational policies such as the provision of crèche, staff school, staff club, recreational centres, staff canteen and annual family get together were identified as locally adopted practices by staff. The study found that the existence of these organizational policies and practices is positively correlated with available variation of such policies and practices (r=0.859; p>0.01), use or adoption of such policies and practices (r=0.898; p>0.01) and the perception of a balanced work and life interaction (r=0.184; p>0.01). Personal perception of a balanced work-life is also positively and significantly correlated with all the other factors; availability of variations (r=0.144; p>0.01) and adoption of these policies and practices (r=0.166; p>0.01). A fairly low Durbin-Watson score of 1.366 indicates that the availability of any other Work-Life balancing factor, such as flexible working, could dramatically affect the outcome of the study. It also confirmed the hypothesis that there is no relationship between adoption of work-life balance policies or practices and performance. Summarily, there is the need for the expansion of work-life balancing practices to include such practices as flexible working, tele-working, job-sharing, paternity leave, multiple tranches maternity leave and the simpler breast feeding break and that undergraduate HRM curriculum should include work-life balancing concepts to expand the scope of enquiries into their features and evolutions.
