Strategic Agility and Non-Financial Performance of Telecommunication Companies in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper aimed mainly at evaluating the effects of Strategic Agility (SA) on the Non-Profit performance of Telecommunication Firms in Nigeria but, specifically, it meant to determine the key strategic dimensions adopted by the telecommunication firms, assess the extent of the utilisation of the identified strategic agility dimensions, and examine the effects of the strategic agility dimensions on the non-financial performance of the telecom firms. The sampled cohort of telecom employees includes members of the low, middle and top-level management. A total sample of 310 employees was drawn from a population of 1320, using a widely accepted formula as contained in the methodology section of this paper and employing a survey method research questionnaire. The collected primary data was analysed quantitatively with the aid of SPSS v22 by way of descriptive and inferential analysis after rigorous data cleaning. Four options of commonly used dimensions, as identified in the extant literature, were given as options to pick as many from, namely: people, technology, organisational processes, and organisational principles. Of all the four, the people's (the HR) dimension has the highest adoption rate from the responses, followed by technology, organisational processes, and organisational principles in that descending. As for the extent of utilisation of the SA dimensions, the majority of respondents revealed that both Technology (about 96%) and People (about 94%) were utilised either at very high or high levels. Nearly 87% agreed that Organisational Principles were being deployed either at a very high or high level, while about 86% thought the same for Organisational Processes. With regards to the effects of strategic agility dimensions on the non-financial performance of the telecom firms in Nigeria, the results indicated a significant relationship between strategic agility and the non-financial performance of the telecommunication companies. In fact, when the effects of each of all of the four were considered on whether negative or positive, the Chi-Square (X²) results showed all to have a significant association with the non-financial performance of the telecom firms, with the rating effects as follows: Technology at X² = 43.758, p ≤ 0.05, Organisational Principles at X² = 31.013, p ≤ 0.05, Organisational Processes at X² = 17.135, p ≤ 0.05 and People at X² = 15.302, p ≤ 0.05. The follow-up regression analysis also revealed a significant correlation between the strategic agility dimensions and non-financial performance of the telecommunication firms with an acceptable data-model fit at F = 7.450, p = .000. When the results were further disaggregated to look into the effect of each of the four strategic agility dimensions separately, only Technology appeared to be significant at t = 3.485, p ≤ 0.05, all the other three were not statistically significant within the model as their p-values exceeded the threshold limit of 0.05. The study concluded that although each of the strategic agility dimensions may have a role or another to play in improving the telecom firms' performance, technology holds the key to them having the strongest competitive advantage within that industry.