Participative Management as a Strategy for Enhancing Job Satisfaction of Teachers: The Case of South African Teachers

Abstract

Participative management and shared decision-making are increasingly finding their way into schools. This signifies a radical change for many teachers and school principals that could lead to either an increase or decrease in teacher morale and job satisfaction. This paper investigated the efficacy of participative management as a strategy in enhancing job satisfaction of teachers. The study was conducted on twenty-four secondary schools in Dzindi Circuit of Vhembe District in Limpopo Province. Adopting a qualitative research approach, the study used interviews as the research instruments to gather data from school principals and teachers at the twenty-four sampled schools. Purposive and snowball sampling methods were used to sample research participants from twelve schools that employed participative management and twelve schools that did not employ participative management. The results revealed that the increasing emergence of participative management strategies for school management reflect the widely shared belief that flatter management and decentralized structures have long lasting effects on the job satisfaction of teachers. The study also suggests that school principals should be offered management courses frequently so that by implementing participative management, quality teachers could be retained in our schools.



Author Information
Tsvara Peter, University of Venda, South Africa
Manzira Francis Mungofa, University of Venda, South Africa

Paper Information
Conference: ACE2014
Stream: Educational Vision

This paper is part of the ACE2014 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon