Advancing Workforce Skills, Safety, and Stability in High-Risk Sectors: A Nigerian Perspective on Predictive Maintenance and Conflict Management (Published)
This research article investigates the convergence of predictive maintenance (PdM) and conflict management strategies as fundamental components for enhancing workforce safety, operational stability, and productivity in high-risk industries, with a particular emphasis on Nigeria’s energy sector. The Nigerian energy industry faces multifaceted challenges, including aging infrastructure, frequent equipment breakdowns, and limited financial resources for technological advancement. These challenges are compounded by workforce dynamics that are often complex, with cultural diversity and economic pressures contributing to a higher likelihood of workplace conflicts. As such, a dual approach that combines PdM and conflict management strategies is proposed to address these critical issues.Predictive maintenance, a proactive maintenance methodology, utilizes data analytics, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Machine Learning (ML) to anticipate equipment failures before they occur. This minimizes unexpected downtimes, optimizes repair schedules, and significantly enhances both asset reliability and workforce safety. PdM is particularly pertinent to Nigeria’s high-risk energy sector, where equipment failure not only disrupts productivity but also endangers workers and can lead to costly delays. Mathematical models, such as Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) and uptime calculations, provide insights into optimizing PdM schedules and minimizing repair times, thereby improving overall operational uptime. These metrics offer a quantifiable framework for implementing PdM, ensuring that resources are allocated based on real-time equipment conditions and predicted maintenance needs, resulting in substantial cost savings and a more efficient use of resources.Conflict management, another essential strategy, is crucial in a sector where diverse teams collaborate under challenging and high-stakes conditions. In the Nigerian context, effective conflict management can mitigate the impacts of interpersonal disputes, misunderstandings, and stress factors that could otherwise compromise team productivity and safety. This study reviews various conflict management frameworks, including the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI), which categorizes conflict responses into competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating. In high-risk sectors like energy, adopting conflict management strategies can enhance psychological safety, enabling employees to communicate openly, trust one another, and collaborate more effectively. This creates a safer and more productive work environment, where potential conflicts are handled constructively, fostering a cohesive team dynamic essential for operational stability.This article also presents mathematical models to guide the implementation of PdM and conflict management, optimizing each approach’s effectiveness within Nigeria’s unique socio-economic landscape. For PdM, cost optimization models are introduced, balancing maintenance costs against failure rates to establish the most cost-effective repair intervals. Conflict management is analyzed through game theory, where payoff matrices illustrate possible outcomes based on cooperative or competitive interactions. These models provide actionable insights into balancing cost-effectiveness, safety, and team dynamics, empowering Nigeria’s energy sector to adopt innovative strategies for a more stable and resilient workforce. The integration of predictive maintenance and conflict management represents a transformative approach to addressing Nigeria’s energy sector challenges. By adopting these data-driven maintenance schedules and fostering a culture of constructive conflict resolution, Nigerian energy firms can mitigate risks, enhance safety, and achieve operational resilience. This dual strategy not only addresses immediate operational challenges but also builds a foundation for sustainable growth, improved productivity, and workforce development.
Keywords: Maintenance, Nigerian perspective, Safety, advancing workforce skills, conflict management, high-risk sectors, stability
Conflict Management and Employee’s Motivation Among Frontline Staff in Abuja Hotels (Published)
The hospitality industry heavily relies on frontline staff in hotels to provide exceptional service to guests. However, these employees often encounter conflicts stemming from guest interactions, team dynamics, and organizational policies. Effective conflict management is crucial for maintaining service quality and employee satisfaction. Therefore, understanding the factors that motivate frontline staff is essential for organizational success. This study aims to investigate the relationship between conflict resolution strategies and employee motivation among frontline staff in Abuja hotels. The methodology involves adopting and designing a structured survey questionnaire to collect data from diverse frontline employees in three selected Hotels in Abuja. The study will explore their conflict experiences, preferred resolution strategies, and motivational factors. By analysing the data, the study hopes to identify dominant conflict management approaches and understand what motivates these employees. Potential findings may reveal correlations between conflict management styles and service quality. Based on these insights, the research anticipates recommending tailored training programs, recognition initiatives, and policy adjustments to enhance conflict resolution practices and boost employee motivation. Ultimately, improving conflict management and motivation can lead to better service quality and increased guest loyalty in Abuja hotels. Further research will be needed to expand on the study findings.
Keywords: Abuja Nigeria., Employee Motivation, Employee Satisfaction, conflict management, emotional exhaustion, frontline employees
Employee Engagement Strategies and Organizational Conflict Management. A Study of Hospitality Industry in Delta State, Nigeria (Published)
The study was conducted to examine the effect of employee engagement practices on organizational conflict management. The study, anchored on the stakeholders’ theory, adopted the survey research design hence data were collected from primary sources through the use of a structured questionnaire. The population of the study consists employees of hospitality firms in Delta State, Nigeria. Findings of the study show that internal mediation, collective bargaining and alternative dispute resolution strategies have a significant positive effect on organizational conflict management. The study also finds that employee task definition has a positive but not a significant impact on organizational conflict management and concludes that workforce conflict engagement practices influence the implementation of conflict management in hospitality companies in Delta State, Nigeria. The study recommends amongst others that managers should adopt collective bargaining and alternative dispute resolution strategies since they are found to be effective in managing conflicts in organizations.
Keywords: Alternative dispute resolution, Employee Engagement, Mediation, collective bargaining, conflict management, task definition
Organizational Conflict and Employee Job Performance: A Case Study of Akwa Ibom State University (Published)
This study investigated organizational conflict and Employee job performance in Akwa Ibom State University. Survey research design was adopted for the study. Participants comprised 226 employees selected through the use of random sampling technique. Data were generated through the use of validated structured questionnaire. Descriptive and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Statistics were employed to analyze data collected from the respondents. The results of the empirical tests showed a significantly positive relationship between Causes of organizational conflict (goal differences, common resources, task interdependence and specialization) and employee job performance. Also, the result of the Pearson product Moment Correlation indicated that specialization displayed the highest significant positive correlation with organizational harmony. In addition, the study findings revealed that conflicts arose over multiple factors of organizational experiences based on economic and goal incompatibility orientations in the workplace. Union-management conflict was discovered as the most prevalent type of industrial conflict in the organization. The study concluded that conflict was an unavoidable phenomenon in organizational life and it could contribute to or detract from organizational performance depending on the conflict management methods adopted in the workplace. Moreso, the study recommend that management of Akwa Ibom State University should ensure a credible channels of communication and open discussion of conflict in work relation, must be encouraged with an attempt to avoid confrontation, competition and domination as conflict management strategies.
Keywords: Employee Job Performance, Organizational effectiveness, conflict management