Sociology of Conflict and Communal Management: A Qualitative Inquiry at University of Sierra Leone, Freetown, Western Urban, Sierra Leone

Abstract

As a qualitative sociological research technique, case sociological inquiry was utilized in the sociological research conveyed out to examine the mainsprings of conflicts in colleges, thresholds and nature of conflict, upshots of conflict, models utilized to resolve conflicts. Forty lecturers working in three constituent colleges of University of Sierra Leone in Freetown, Western Urban, Sierra Leone which constituted the sociological research group or cohort of the inquiry, were determined utilizing the criterion sampling technique within the purview of convenience sampling and purposive sampling mode. The social particulars were collected via dialogues and semi-structured dialogue structure and explored with content analysis. A medium threshold conflict in colleges will submit constructive outcomes regarding individual and organizational facets and consequently augment the effectuality of colleges when considering the constructive out-turns and repercussions of conflicts in colleges. Nonetheless, subsequently the augment in the threshold of conflict can marshal to cynical character, communal and organizational upshots, both lecturers and college bureaucrats at colleges should have an extensive mastery of conflict and superior conflict oversight competences. Besides, conflict intelligence will curtail the character, communal and administrative grounds that divulge the conflict. The contemporary sociological inquiry discovers the ensuing significant and obvious outcomes: lecturers fatigue as a result of conflict,  hesitance to service, decline in job productivity and conducting, downturn in organizational obligation, pressure or anxiety, solitude, depression, mistrust, subside in motivation, hesitance to come to college, wanting to quit college, exit of principled conducts, disengagement, and annoyance. Furthermore, one of the most significant outcomes of the sociological inquiry is to divulge some social constituents such as functional communication, actualization of tasks or duties in a punctual means, organizational suitability, conduct of lecturers and bureaucrats in harmony with the directives of professional and employment ideals, collaboration and collegiality in colleges which  have no conflict.