Impression Management and Incentives as Political Instruments in the Administration of Secondary Schools in Rivers State of Nigeria

The study examined impression management and incentives as political instruments in the administration of secondary schools in Rivers State. Two research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. The population of the study comprised all the 7142 teachers in the 274 public senior secondary schools in Rivers State. The sample of the study was 421 (221 male teachers and 200 female teachers), drawn from a population of 7,142 teachers, using the proportionate stratified random sampling technique. A validated instrument titled Impression management and Incentive as Political Instruments in Secondary School Administration Scale (IMISSAS) with a reliability of 0.85 used for data collection. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while z-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. It was found among others that principals’ apply impression management to a high extent while incentives are applied to a very high extent in the administration of secondary schools in Rivers State. Consequently, the study concluded that impression management and incentives are veritable instruments in secondary school administration. It is recommended among others that the school principals should continue to use impression management, as a conciliatory measure for managing the inherent diversity of interest of teachers to ensure optimal productivity and commitment to goals in the school sector. The school principals should also continue to outline desirable incentives as compensation for teachers for a notable job performance.