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This chapter presents the key results of a research project that explored managing service productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of lived experiences of bank executives employed as ‘knowledge workers’ in the Nigerian banking sector. The study adopted a qualitative phenomenological research design. Data was gathered from 16 Nigerian top bank executives purposively selected using semi-structured face-to-face interviews. Trans Positional Cognition Approach (TPCA), a new phenomenological research method, was used to analyse the data gathered. The study data analysis yielded five themes; micromanagement practices, use of dysfunctional strategies to drive service operations, deposit mobilisation target as a productivity measure, managerial indifference to potential nescience economy issues and master-servant (power culture) strategy, which epitomises fundamental managerial approaches adopted in the sector. The study identified critical service productivity management issues grounded in reality that influence the capability and potentiality of the study knowledge workers. It also contributes the novel, ‘official knowledge worker lived experience of service productivity model’ for use by decision-makers in the banking sector. Thus, it sets an agenda for these ‘knowledge workers’ line managers’ and bank regulators in the research setting. The study extended the viable system model by applying it in this phenomenological enquiry and using it to explain/deepen our understanding of the findings that emerged. The output of this work contributes to scholarly knowledge on service productivity management from the sub-Saharan African banks’ perspective. It can be generalisable in countries with similar financial and economic characteristics like the research setting.

This paper examines the relationship between the institution’s organizational work-life-balance (WLB) policies and practices and subsequent challenges faced by Nigerian workers. The paper argues that institutions shape WLB practices (and policies), and thus, constitute WLB challenges.

Relying on qualitative, interpretive approach, and the institution-based view of organizational practice, the study investigates the relationship between institutions, WLB practices/policies, and subsequent challenges that female workers undergo, using 25 semi-structured interviews.

The findings reveal Nigeria’s unique institutional context frames and foster challenges for female workers. Also, it was identified that institutional and sociocultural pressures on female employees demonstrate that consequent challenges, while common to female workers in other countries, are more intense and challenging in Nigeria because of its peculiar institutions and context.

This study offers an opportunity to unpick how institutions are important in understanding organizational practices as part of wider social structures, which influence organizational realities, including WLB. The qualitative, exploratory approach undertaken can limit generalizing the findings.

This study contributes to the emerging concept of WLB discourse from the developing countries’ perspective. It also reveals how WLB discourse differs from nonwestern context and emphasizes previously identified challenges that female workers experience based on WLB practice. The study also sheds light on how institutions shape organizational practice.

This paper sets out to investigate the various inhibiting factors to individual home ownership in Nigeria. It aims to establish just how feasible home ownership is in Nigeria.

Secondary data were obtained from journals, government publications and technical reports. The sources are sorted into sections: prices of the houses, inflation rate, income levels of Nigerians.

The dominant informal sector in the national economy does not augur well for housing delivery; job creation and economic empowerment are the primary catalysts for increased disposable incomes and savings that will subsequently boost investment in home‐ownership.

With hard work and diligence in policy formulation, project implementation and economic resuscitation, home‐ownership will no longer be a utopian ideal but a national reality. The nation's policy makers must begin to adopt strategies that have practical application in the immediate environment.

This paper comprehensively highlights the various home ownership finance options available in Nigeria, and critically assesses how practicable these options are to the average Nigerian.

This empirical study aims to explore how actors in specific human resource practices (HRPs) such as line managers (LMs) impact employee productivity measures in the context of financial institutions (FI) banks.

This cross-country study adopted a qualitative methodology. It employed semi-structured interviews to collect data from purposefully selected 12 business facing directors (BFDs) working in the top 10 banks in Nigeria and the UK. The data collected were analysed with the help of the trans-positional cognition approach (TPCA) phenomenological method.

The findings of a TPCA analytical process imply that in the UK and Nigeria’s FIs, the BFDs line managers’ human resources practices (LMHRPs) resulted in a highly regulated workplace, knowledge gap, service operations challenges and subjective quantitatively driven key performance indicators, considered service productivity paradoxical elements. Although the practices in the UK and Nigerian FIs had similar labels, their aggregates were underpinned by different contextual issues.

To support LMs in better understanding and managing FIs BFDs productivity measures and outcomes, we propose the Managerial Employee Productivity Operational Definition framework as part of their toolkit. This study will be helpful for banking sectors, their regulators, policymakers, other FIs’ industry stakeholders and future researchers in the field.

Within the context of the UK and Nigeria’s FIs, this study is the first attempt to understand how LMHRPs impact BFDs productivity in this manner. It confirms that LMHRPs result in service productivity paradoxical elements with perceived or lost productivity implications.

This paper explores the link between employee stress and the high-power distance (HPD) culture in Nigeria. The study context is the banking and manufacturing sectors in Nigeria, which have a history of exploitation, unconducive work environments to productivity, work-life imbalance, work overload, burnout and employee stress.

Using a qualitative, interpretive methodology, this article adopts a thematic analysis of data drawn from semi-structured interviews with 24 managerial and non-managerial workers to explore the process by which Nigerian manufacturing and banking sectors' work (mal)practices go unchallenged, thereby triggering and exacerbating employees' stress levels.

The study found that the high power distance culture promotes a servant-master relationship type, making it impossible for employees to challenge employers on issues relating to stressors such as work overload, unconducive work environments, work-life imbalance and burnout, thereby exacerbating their stress levels in a country in which stress has become a way of life.

Research on the relationship between employee stress and HPD culture is relatively underdeveloped. This article sheds light on issues associated with stressors in Nigeria's human resource management (HRM) and employment relations practices. The link between the inability of employees to challenge these stressors (which are consequences of an HPD culture) and increased employee stress has substantial implications for employment and work-related policies and practices in general. The study is constrained by the limited sample size, which inhibits the generalisation of its findings.

The article adds to the scarcity of studies underscoring the relationship between high-power distance and the inability of employees to challenge work-related stressors as a predictor of employee stress and a mediator between workplace practices and employee stress, particularly in the emerging economies.

This study explores the nexus between institutions and managerialist employment relations and subsequent work-life balance (WLB) challenges for Nigerian employees. Through an exploratory approach, the paper investigates how institutions shape employment relations, which is characterised by systematic and normalised managerialist practices and lack of employee participation.

Relying on a qualitative, interpretive approach, this study explores the relationship between institutional pressures, managerialism and employment relations. 31 semi-structured interviews and nine focus group interviews data was used.

This paper found that institutions shape organisational practice, specifically employment relations and human resource management (HRM) practice generally through its normative tendency. The study also found that although managerialist employment relations leads to WLB challenges, Nigeria's unique context aggravates this situation constituting serious WLB challenges for workers.

Researches dealing with the relationship between managerialism, employment relations and WLB are largely underdeveloped and under-theorised. HRM phenomena such as unhappy workforce, stress, lack of flexibility, burnout, turnover and turnover intention, associated with management practice, have major implications for engagement procedures and HRM strategies. However, the sample size used potentially limits generalisation including its qualitative approach.

This study contributes to the dearth of researches focusing on employer–employee relationship quality as a precursor to WLB challenges and a mediator between managerialist employment relations and WLB challenges. Additionally, the study contributes to the burgeoning WLB discourse from developing countries perspective, which is understudied. It also sheds light on how Nigeria's unique context can bring new insights into the nascent WLB discourse and its associated HRM practices.

Job satisfaction is indispensable in the daily life of the workforce, and the mechanism that drives job satisfaction requires the attention of the management of corporate organisations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the predictors of work environment on job satisfaction among nurses in both federal and state tertiary hospitals in Lagos State.

The study used the longitudinal research design to elicit information from the respondents. The research instrument used is a nursing work index scale by Aiken and Patrician which has been established to have a high internal reliability coefficient. The simple random sampling strategy was used to administer the research instrument to 364 nurses. The study used hierarchical multiple regression to analyse the data obtained.

This study discovered that all the variables collectively determined nurses job satisfaction; however, the salary was the most fundamental essential predictor that drive nurses’ job satisfaction followed by advancement and promotion. All seven predictors, namely, socio-political climate; administrative and managerial support, autonomy and responsibility, salary, supervision and working condition, recognition and achievement, advancement and promotion, collectively exert positive relationship with nurses’ job satisfaction. The study concluded that to retain and prevent turnover intention among nurses, and other health-care workers, the management of hospitals must pay due attention to issues relating to job satisfaction, as this is likely to increase health-care system effectiveness, boost mental and social health of the nurses.

This study shows that job satisfaction in the workplace comes from diverse techniques, as other factors have been proven effective other than salary in international cultures and regions, but in Nigeria, salary and career promotion take pre-eminence above other factors. This is because of Nigerian socio-cultural realities and that is another paradigm shift.

Most OD consultants would like to think that any truly effective company should be capable of making adequate adaptations to changing situations and conditions. It must be flexible when appropriate. OD in Nigeria through our Organisation Dynamics Development Consultants' Unit attempts to achieve just that. The Unit attempts to disseminate information on the promotion and understanding of OD effectiveness of Nigerian companies and induce appropriate changes in company procedures, structure or products. However, OD is no easy thing in Nigeria. Larger companies in Nigeria have difficulty in maintaining any kind of flexibility. Good ideas are not always accepted or even recognised, whilst divisional and ethnic rivalry sometimes impede change. Emphasis tends to be on operating well today, rather than superbly tomorrow.

This work surveys staff discipline in university libraries in Nigeria. Staff of two university libraries – University of Benin Library, Benin City and Delta State University Library, Abraka – were used as subjects for the investigation. By means of questionnaires, data were collected from respondents while data were analysed using frequency counts and percentages. Findings revealed sex of respondents, categories of staff used, their working experience, disciplinary measures staff have been subjected to, behaviours/acts that elicited discipline as well as respondents' views on the disciplinary measures of the libraries. Recommendations are made in light of the findings.

The purpose of this study is to examine how institutionalised patriarchy triggers work-life-balance (WLB) challenges for Nigerian female medical doctors. It is focused on Nigeria to understand how its unique institutional context poses WLB challenges.

Relying on exploratory qualitative approach based on 41 semi-structured interviews with female medical doctors in Nigeria and informed by institutional theory (IT), this study explores how patriarchal institutions create, maintain and transmit male dominance, exploitation and inequality in the family, workplace and larger society.

The findings of this study show that patriarchy exists not only in family but also in all structures and institutions that allow for control of women by men and further inequality and exploitation of women. It was also found that in contrast to research in the west, WLB challenges stemming from Nigeria's patriarchal institutions are significantly different because of the peculiar institutional frameworks framing them. Also, WLB challenges for female physicians while common to female doctors in western countries are more intense in developing countries, given their unique sociocultural and institutional realities.

The implications of this study are that WLB challenges of female doctors are not fundamentally driven by individual choices but by broader contextual issues, which create and sustain such challenges. Further studies can be undertaken in private hospitals including quantitative approaches.

This research thus contributes to both institutional theory and WLB discourse from the perspective of developing countries.