write an article on given topic
Answers
Amongst other components of any organisation, human
beings are the most difficult to manage. Folks pose the
most problems to administrators any where in the world,
not excluding school organisations as learning factories
in Delta State, Nigeria. Many authors have posited as a
matter of fact that it is easier to manage the financial and
material components of any organisation than to manage
the human component. They insinuate that “it is easier to
manage even animals than to manage human beings”
(Nakpodia, 2006; Peretomode, 1991; Peretomode, 2001;
Ubogu, 2004; Emore, 2005; Ukoshi, 2004). Thus, in the
school system, the school head, which is usually the
headmaster/headmistress or the principal, is confronted
with numerous problems posed by staff and/or students.
These problems include: sleeping on duty, negative
attitude to tasks, lack of motivation to tasks, sexual
harassment, theft, quarrelling, malice, jealousy, envy,
absenteeism, lateness, etc. But Lauby (2009) stated
clearly that:
“As a Human Resource professional, I have dealt with
plethora of employee issues: sleeping on the job, theft,
sexual harassment… but I have found over the years,
there is one issue that plagues managers more than all
these other issues combined… attendance and
punctuality. That is, people not showing up at all…
people not showing up on time”.
It could thus be deduced from the above excerpt that in
the school system, which is the focus of this paper, both
staff’s and students’/pupils’ lateness to school pose the
greatest problems to school administrators in Delta State.
What then is lateness?
LATENESS DEFINED
Literally, the term “lateness” implies a situation where an
individual arrives after the proper, scheduled or usual
time (Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary, 5th ed.,
1995). Furthermore, Lauby (2009) puts it as a term used
to describe “people not showing up on time”. Breezes et
al. (2010) contributed by saying that lateness is
synonymous with “tardiness”, which implies being slow to
act or slow to respond, thus not meeting up with proper or
usual timing.
It is obvious therefore that lateness could be seen as a
system of network breakdown (Peretomode, 1991); a
situation of not meeting up with programme… a function
of time… time is the criteria and determinant of lateness.