SOURCE:

Faculty: Management Sciences
Department: Business Administration

CONTRIBUTORS:

Igomu, J. A.
Nnabuife, E.

ABSTRACT:

Business environment has become highly competitive, dynamic and heterogenic. As a result, business organizations are expected to be strategically positioned. Despite the loud attention business practitioners and researchers had drawn towards strategic management studies, there is lack of empirical work about the decomposition of strategic orientation in general and its effect on entrepreneurial development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) firms in Nigeria. Majority of the research on strategic orientation were from developed economies such as UK, USA and European Countries and Nigeria (in terms of developing countries and emerging market economies) and have basically captured only strategic orientation in terms of market and entrepreneurial orientation. In order to fill the gap in literature, this study incorporates other dimensions of strategic orientation to analyze its effect on entrepreneurial development of ICT firms in Nigeria. In order to accomplish this, the objective of the study was to examine strategic orientation and entrepreneurial development on the performance of Information and Communication Technology firms in North-Central, Nigeria. Five research questions and hypotheses were formulated for the purpose of investigation. The study adopted the cross-sectional survey design, thereby making the questionnaire the main instrument of data collection to exploit the relationship between the variables. A total of fifty (50) question items was designed for questionnaire distribution in order to elicit responses after validity and reliability test. The study employed the Spearman’s rank order correlation methods with the aid of SPSS 23.0 to analyze the formulated hypotheses. From the data analysis, the study revealed that there is significant relationship between market orientation and competitive advantage of ICT firms in North-Central, Nigeria; technology orientation significantly influence product innovation of the ICT firms in North-Central, Nigeria; resources orientation significantly influence competitive advantage of ICT firms in North-Central, Nigeria; there is significant relationship between learning orientation and service quality of ICT firms in North-Central, Nigeria; and there is significant relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and competitive advantage of ICT firms in North - Central Nigeria. The study therefore recommended that ICT firms that seek improving product innovation, competitive advantage, service quality and gaining competitive advantage should maximize and utilize the different construct of strategic orientations.