Job Design and Sustainability of Tertiary Institutions in South East, Nigeria

Tertiary institutions in southeast Nigeria have in the past been bedeviled with the challenge of achieving optimal performance as a result of seemingly poor job structure as exemplified by low skill variety and poor task identity which has lead to various industrial actions. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between job design and sustainability of tertiary institutions in South East, Nigeria. The study was anchored on Hackman and Oldham's (1975) Job Characteristics Model (JCM). The population of the study consisted of 9240 academic and non-academic staff of six tertiary institutions in South East, Nigeria. Taro Yamane formula was used to determine the sample size of 383. Hypotheses were tested using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient at 5% significance level. The findings confirmed that there was a significant correlation between skill variety and employee empowerment and between task identity and workplace flexibility. It was therefore recommended among others, that managers of tertiary institutions in the South-East should take a proactive role in designing jobs that take care of the main job characteristics in the institutions.