Analysis of Managers’ Characteristics And Perception Of Firm Strategic Factors And Performance Of Nigeria’s Manufacturing Firms

Gunu Umar, Adamade Sylvanus Simon

Abstract


Sound strategic decision making in manufacturing firms is bedrock for realizing the huge potentials of the sector. Against the background of inclement market structure conditions for manufacturing firms survival in Nigeria and plethora of empirical evidences supporting the dominance of firm strategic factors over market structure factors in strategy decision making, this study was designed to analyze the perceptions of manufacturing firms’ managers on effects of firm strategic factors on the strategy and performance of manufacturing firms in the country.
A survey design was developed for the study involving the generation of primary data with the aid of structured questionnaire administered on 263 respondent managers selected using multistaged sampling procedure from 119 firms listed in the 2010/2011 Nigerian stock exchange Factbook.
The multiple variables in the study were descriptively analyzed with MANOVA with Roy’s largest root as test statistic. The hypothesized none association between managerial characteristics i.e. experiences, age, sex, educational attainment and specialization and perceptions of firm strategic factors i.e. firms’ size, age and capital intensity, and performance
relationships were supported by the findings of the study as Roy largest roots values for the analyzed associations all fell within acceptance regions (for firm size: 0.094 @ p < 0.1; firm age: 0.2069 @ p < 0.001; and 0.0832 @ p < 0.1). This implied there was consensus amongst managers
on the relationship between proxies of firm strategic factors and the performance of Nigerian manufacturing firms. It was therefore concluded that Nigerian manufacturing firms should focus on taking advantage of the strategic advantages within the firms and recommended that more efforts should be devoted to internal analyses so as to identify and harness firm strategic factors.
Key Words: Strategy, managers, decision-making, firms, performance.

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