Global Journal of Management and Business Research, A: Administration and Management, Volume 22 Issue 4

Effectively, the legal basis for collective bargaining in Nigeria is embodied in the various employment and labour laws in Nigeria, including: the Trade Disputes Act 2004, the Labour Act 2004, the Trade Union Act 2005, the Pension Reform Act 2014, and such other national and state legislation that directly and indirectly incorporates various organisational crisis management recommendations of the International Labour Organisation (Ngele, 2016). e) Nature of Organisational Crisis in Nigeria Public Domain Although organisational crisis does not peculiarly happen in developing countries alone, but it is more so in occurrence and severity of impact, attributed to leadership and structural problem. Osabuohien and Ogunrinola (2020) note that strike has become domiciliary in contemporary Nigeria; arguing that this is because industrial conflicts that would have been proactively resolved via collective bargaining often degenerate to dire organisational crisis with concomitant actions grinding operations to a halt. Monogbe and Monogbe (2019) avow that this clearly depicts the scenario in most Nigerian public institutions; hence due to ASUU industrial strike actions, university program meant to last for eight semester or four years, most times stretches beyond five to six years or thereabout. Thus, collective bargaining ought to be proactively applied to manage organisational crisis and nip them in the bud, by pro-viding an industrial democracy platform for the employee-employer representatives to jointly determine and regulate decisions pertaining to both substantive and procedural matters within their employment relationship. Ekene and Samuel (2022) however note that many organisations in Nigeria public sector are bedeviled by a myriad of problems and ailments caused by strained relationship between government and the labour unions. Offem, Anashie and Aniah (2018) avow that this is the reason why unionism and labour relations originated first in the Nigerian Civil Service in 1912, when paid employment was first introduced into the country by the colonial administrators. Ngele (2016) asserts that since after Nigeria’s attainment of independence in1960, industrial actions have greatly hampered performance and productivity of public institutions in fast-tracking the expected socio- economic development of the country. Wahab (2018) buttress that even after the inception of democratic governance in 1999, it has become more of a common occurrence in Nigeria that there must be some form of industrial strike action demonstrated particularly by the academic staff of universities which disrupts academic activities. Ekene and Samuel (2022) affirms that there have been incessant strikes since ASUU was instituted in 1965, such that in the last 22 years, Nigerian lecturers through ASUU have gone on strike 15 times. Some of the causes that have being attributed to the series of persistent organisational crisis or industrial conflict, as it is often called in Nigeria include poor welfare provisions, improper remuneration, poor infrastructural base, low level of motivation, job insecurity, policy inconsistencies and variance in management styles, breach of collective agreement amongst other factors (Osabuohien and Ogunrinola, 2020). Yusuf (2020) rightly notes that industrial actions in Nigerian universities are particularly triggered by delay, withdrawal, or non-concession to labour relation agreements over issues bothering on poor and inconsistent payment of salaries and other entitlements, poor work hours or rest periods, arbitrary dismissal and poor working conditions, poor funding of the educational sector, dissatisfaction with certain institutional policies, etc. f) Theoretical Framework The conflict theory served as the theoretical model of analysis for exploring the nexus between leadership subterfuge, collective bargaining, and organisational crisis management in the context of Nigeria public universities. The theory was propounded by Karl Marx in the 19th century, with the idea that society is in a state of perpetual conflict because of competition for limited resources. Thus, the fundamental tenets of the theory center on issues regarding social inequality, division of resources, and the conflicts that exist in organisations and among diverse socioeconomic groups (Daniel, 2019). Conflict theory holds that social order is maintained through manipulation, domination, and power; rather than by consensus and conformity (Hayes, 2022). The proponents of the theory see the organisation as a coalescence of sectional groups with different values, interests, and objectives. Employees have different values and aspirations from those of management, and these values and aspirations are most often in conflict with those of management; this makes organisational crisis or conflict an inevitable phenomenon that ought to be a rational, functional, and normal situation when properly managed in organisations. This study corroborates that the Nigerian public sector is not immune from the conflict-crisis phenomenon, but instead of rational or functional crisis management that resolves issues through compromise, collective bargaining, and collective agreement; leadership subterfuge prevails whereby government (as the employer of labour in public universities) continues to renege on its contractual responsibilities with unfulfilled promises. Relating this theory to practice brings leadership subterfuge into the context of organisational crisis management, where the conscious refusal to retrieve one’s self-centered personality traits in leadership position has led to a servant-master Implications of Leadership Subterfuge on Collective Bargaining and Organisational Crisis Management: A Case of Nigeria Public Universities 6 Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume XXII Issue IV Version I Year 2022 ( ) A © 2022 Global Journals