A survey of employee participation in management in the top ranking private secondary schools in Nairobi

Abstract

The possiblecause of good performance of students in private secondary schools is employee commitment to duty. This comes about through effective employee participation in management in schools. This study was undertaken with two objectives in mind: 1. To establish the extent of employee participation in management in the private secondary Schools in Nairobi. 2. Identify the challenges that employee participation present to management in the private secondary Schools in Nairobi. To meet these objectives the researcher used survey design, proportionate stratified random sampling procedure, out of the top 100 schools in the country, listed in the Kenya education Directory (2004), 17 were private schools based in Nairobi. 30% of employees in each school were selected, in total they were 208 targeted respondents. Data was collected through the questionnaires and was analyzed by using frequency distribution tables, percentages, graphs and bar charts. The research findings revealed that employees participate in management moderately and the most popular forms of participation is team work. The main challenge to participative management is communication barriers and organizational structure. Further studies should be done on employee participation in public schools and determination of viability of trade union participation in private schools.