Innovativeness and Diversification as Veritable Competitive Strategies for Organisational Performance: Evidence from Nigerian Oil and Gas Sector

Abstract

Organizations need to adapt to challenges of today’s competitive environment by improving their performance. It is presumed that competitive strategies have impact on general performance. This study evaluated the effect of competitive strategies with respect to innovativeness and diversification on organizational performance of selected oil and gas firms in Lagos State, Nigeria. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of this study consisted of the employees (1400) of the four selected oil and gas firms (Capital Oil, ExxonMobil Nig, Cornoil and Total Nigeria Plc) located in Lagos state, Nigeria. The sample size used for the study was 302, using Cochran formula. Findings of the study revealed that diversification strategies dimensions have a significant effect on profitability of the organizations (β = 0.310, F _{(1, 304)} = 1.541, Adj R² = 0.008, p > 0.05), innovation strategies dimensions have a significant effect on firm growth of the organizations (β = 0.511, F _{(1, 304)} = 8.726 , Adj R² = 0.200, p < 0.05) and finally there was a significant  and positive effect of competitive strategies dimensions on organizational performance (β = 0.326, F _{(1, 304)} = 6.101, Adj R² = 0.109, p < 0.05). The study concluded that competitive strategies contribute immensely towards organizational performance and recommended that the human resource management team of the selected oil and gas firms should necessitate enough competitive strategies towards its beneficiaries as it leads to high level of organizational performance.

Keywords: Innovativeness, profitability, firm growth, diversification and strategies