Management Science

The current credit crisis and the transatlantic mortgage financial turmoil have questioned the effectiveness of bank consolidation programme as a remedy for financial stability and monetary policy in correcting the defects in the financial sector for sustainable development. Many banks consolidation had taken place in Europe, America and Asia in the last two decades without any solutions in sight to bank failures and crisis. The study attempts to examine the performances of banks and macro-economic performance in Nigeria based on the interest rate policies of the banks. The study analyses published audited accounts of twenty (20) out of twenty-five (25) banks that emerged from the consolidation exercise and data from the Central Banks of Nigeria (CBN). We denote year 2004 as the pre-consolidation and 2005 and 2006 as post-consolidation periods for our analysis. We notice that the interest rate policies have not improved the overall performances of banks significantly and also have contributed marginally to the growth of the economy for sustainable development.

The study examined the effect of social media marketing on the conversion rate of deposit money banks in Nigeria. Blog, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn were used as the dimensions of social media marketing. The study revealed a gap from the literature that social media marketing and organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria has not been extebsively studied in Nigeria. The study used the conversion rate as a dependent variable. The study adopted descriptive and inferential statistical tools to analyze the data and test the hypotheses. A questionnaire was used to elicit information from the respondents. The population of the study consisted of all the 22 banks approved by CBN. The study sampled 159 respondents from 22 banks in Nigeria and validly used 133 respondents representing 83.65% response rate for data analysis. The study found that banks use a blog, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to conduct their marketing activities for brand promotion and persuasion of customers to patr...

The study examined the effect of social media marketing on the conversion rate of deposit money banks in Nigeria. Blog, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn were used as the dimensions of social media marketing. The study revealed a gap from the literature that social media marketing and organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria has not been extebsively studied in Nigeria. The study used the conversion rate as a dependent variable. The study adopted descriptive and inferential statistical tools to analyze the data and test the hypotheses. A questionnaire was used to elicit information from the respondents. The population of the study consisted of all the 22 banks approved by CBN. The study sampled 159 respondents from 22 banks in Nigeria and validly used 133 respondents representing 83.65% response rate for data analysis. The study found that banks use a blog, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to conduct their marketing activities for brand promotion and persuasion of customers to patronize them. The study revealed that Blog has a positive but insignificant effect on conversion rate. The study discovered that Facebook has a positive and significant effect on conversion rate. The study revealed that Twitter has a positive and significant effect on conversion rate. The study found that LinkedIn has a positive and insignificant effect on conversion rate. The study concludes that as banks use blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to create awareness about their products and services on the internet. The study recommends that bank managers should use Blog, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn by encouraging all the bank staff to participate in social media marketing which in turn covers more ground for the enhancement of conversion rate leading to the conversion rate of banks.

The study examined the relationship between business ethics and entrepreneurial successes. A cross-sectional survey research design was adopted sampling 95 small business owners within five university campuses in Rivers state. Nine hypotheses was tested and the results shows a significant relationship between the dimensions of business ethics (social responsibility, adherence to best practice and consumer protection) and the measures of entrepreneurial success (wealth creation, survival and competitiveness). The study therefore, concludes that there is a strong positive relationship between business ethics and success of entrepreneurship. Consequently, the researchers recommend that entrepreneurial organizations should put more effort on social responsibility in order to achieve competitive advantages.

The study indicated the empirical reflection on employee's emotional intelligence and organizational commitment in private hospitals operating in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The research design was a survey/cross-sectional. The sample frame was 195 workers in 19 registered private hospitals operating in Port Harcourt. The research instrument was tested for validity and reliability. The study developed and tested ten hypotheses. Emotional intelligence (E.I) was proxy by self awareness, self management and social awareness. Employee commitment was measured by affective commitment, normative commitment and continuance commitment. The result of the tested hypotheses with the aid of SPSS version 20 shows that there is a very strong relationship between employee's emotional intelligence and organizational commitment moderated by written rules and procedures (formalization). The researchers therefore, recommends that private hospitals operating in port Harcourt should intensify effort at developing their workers self awareness skill, social awareness skill, self management skill, through training and retraining of the workforce so that workers commitment to the organization would improve and the organization could position itself for competitive advantage.

The study examined the relationship between business ethics and entrepreneurial successes. A cross-sectional survey research design was adopted sampling 95 small business owners within five university campuses in Rivers state. Nine hypotheses was tested and the results shows a significant relationship between the dimensions of business ethics (social responsibility, adherence to best practice and consumer protection) and the measures of entrepreneurial success ( wealth creation, survival and competitiveness). The study therefore, concludes that there is a strong positive relationship between business ethics and success of entrepreneurship. Consequently, the researchers recommend that entrepreneurial organizations should put more effort on social responsibility in order to achieve competitive advantages.

Despite substantial discussion of the Internet's impact on individual activities, there is an absence of a theoretically grounded measure of Internet usage for the provisioning of information required by decision-makers. Our research addresses this void in the literature. We conceptualize Internet Usage for Information Provisioning (IUIP) as the degree to which the Internet is used to meet information requirements of individual decision-makers engaged in diagnostic decision-making tasks. Drawing on the information processing theoretical framework, three dimensions (usage for breadth of content, usage for depth of content, and usage for interaction dynamism) of IUIP are identified. The construct was validated through a two-phase empirical study conducted in the physician clinical decision-making context. The first phase involved interviewing physicians to establish face validity of the dimensions and to generate multi-item measures for each dimension. The second phase consisted of surveying physicians to evaluate measurement properties and nomological validity. Principal components analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and partial least squares analysis were the primary statistical techniques used to analyze the data and evaluate construct validity. Our results suggest that decision-makers operating in uncertain and equivocal decision contexts use the Internet to a greater degree for their content needs and selective attention requirements. Our results also suggest that a fit between the user's information processing requirements and technology, and selected social norms, lead to higher levels of IUIP. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

Organizational downsizing research indicates that downsizing does not always realize its strategic intent and may, in fact, have a detrimental impact on organizational performance. In this paper, we extend the notion that downsizing negatively impacts performance and argue that organizational downsizing can potentially be detrimental to software quality performance. Using social cognitive theory (SCT), we primarily interpret the negative impacts of downsizing on software quality performance by arguing that downsizing results in a realignment of social networks (environmental factors), thereby affecting the self-efficacy and outcome expectations of a software professional (personal factors), which, in turn, affect software quality performance (outcome of behaviour undertaken). We synthesize relevant literature from the software quality, SCT and downsizing research streams and develop a conceptual model. Two major impacts of downsizing are hypothesized in the conceptual model. First, downsizing destroys formal and informal social networks in organizations, which, in turn, negatively impacts software developers' self-efficacy and outcome expectations through their antecedents, with consequent negative impacts on software development process efficiency and software product quality, the two major components of software quality performance. Second, downsizing negatively affects antecedents of software development process efficiency, namely top management leadership, management infrastructure sophistication, process management efficacy and stakeholder participation with consequent negative impacts on software quality performance. This theoretically grounded discourse can help demonstrate how organizational downsizing can potentially impact software quality performance through key intervening constructs. We also discuss how downsizing and other intervening constructs can be managed to mitigate the negative impacts of downsizing on software quality performance.

Succession planning and replacement planning are both strategies that are incredibly important to the lifeline of any organization. Succession planning is a deliberate and systematic effort by an organization to ensure leadership continuity in key positions, retain and develop intellectual and knowledge capital for the future, and encourage individual advancement. Replacement planning is the process of identifying short-term and long-term emergency backups to fill critical positions or to take the place of critical people. This paper examines the role of succession and replacement planning in improving organizational performance. It established the importance; types; features and objectives of succession planning in the workplace. The paper juxtaposed replacement and succession planning in the workplace, established the development plan of replacement planning and examines how succession and replacement planning helps to improve on the performance of the organization. The paper ident...

Abstract:
This paper examined the association of differentiation strategy and performance of deposit money banks in port Harcourt, rivers state. In line with the purpose of this paper as stated above, our population comprised 10 selected deposit money banks listed on the floor of Nigeria stock exchange as at December, 2012. The taro-yamene sample size
determination formula was used to determine the sample size. Questionnaire was the instruments used in gathering primary data which were analyzed using regression analyses. The study found that deposit money banks can achieve improvement along the terms of organization’s performance if the banks are able to differentiate their products
effectively and efficiently, and that the profit of the banks will be improved by the adoption of various differentiation strategies .the study also found that there is no one specific differentiation strategy that can enhances performance, rather it is different differentiation strategies and recommends that in order for firms to maintain their competitiveness in the industry, they should be differentiation conscious by expanding their market coverage with different products.

This paper investigated the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on the performance of Nigerian-based organizations. The methodology for the study was qualitative and its design was phenomenological. Data was generated using the observation and interview tools from 25 referents purposively selected and distributed equally across 25 organizations from 5 industries (manufacturing, banking, oil and gas, hospitality and telecommunication industry). Analysis was thematic and based on a 2-level coding system (open and axial codes). The findings of the study report that the experiences of organizations and the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on their operations, customer relations and employee relations, differed substantially across their industries. Evidence showed that this difference was also reflected in their choice of response and strategic approaches towards addressing the crisis. It was concluded that organisations must be flexible and at alert in taking the right decisions in the quickest possible times always as they respond to the impact of this pandemic.

This study examined the relationship between workplace spirituality and employee deviant behaviour in Deposit Money Banks in Rivers State. Employee deviant behavior was operationalised through property deviance, personal deviance and production deviance. The study adopted the cross-sectional survey in its investigation of the variables and the primary source of data was generated through questionnaire. The population of this study consists of 202 staff of Deposit Money Banks in Port Harcourt and a sample size of 134 based on Taro Yamane sampling formula. The reliability of the instrument was achieved by the use of the Cronbach Alpha coefficient with all the items scoring above 0.70. Data generated were analyzed and presented using both descriptive and inferential statistical techniques. The hypotheses were tested using Spearman’s Rank Order Correlation Statistics. The tests were carried out at a 95% confidence interval and a 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed that ther...

This study was designed to examine the relationship between mentoring and organisational innovativeness (OI) of manufacturing companies in Port Harcourt. Among the statement of the problem is the ability of firms to remain competitive in globally controlled market due to the influence of the internet created by advancement in technology, organisations situated within Port Harcourt, Nigeria are being faced with several lack of conducive environment to aid their capacity to invest more in their human capital, the technical institutions not being equipped enough to support the industry in providing programmes that are consistent with the prevailing demand of the industry instead these organisations spend more importing experts abroad and this impact on the cost of implementing human capital development. This work examined the influence of mentoring on OI in Port Harcourt. Three research questions and hypotheses were derived. To be able to test formulated hypotheses, data were drawn from two hundred and ten samples using structured questionnaires and were analyzed with the aid of statistical packages for social sciences (SPSS), adopting Pearson Correlational Coefficient analytical technique. The result showed all hypothetical relationship positive and significant with organizational innovativeness. The study therefore recommend that decision makers should be more deliberate in investing in its human capital as they poses the needed input required by the organisation to achieve its set objective since organisation start dying when they stop innovating.

This study conceptually took a comparative overview of conflict and crisis phenomena as it relates to the current state of business operating environment which is riddled with so many threats and uncertainties. In doing this, extant reviews were made on the two variables in order to demystify the controversies surrounding their manifestations and impacts on the organization. Consequently, we discovered that both conflict and crisis phenomena are indispensable part of human existence and environmental character. The comparative analysis explored revealed that both phenomena impact on the organization negatively but at varied degrees. Crises are mainly associated with disaster and hazard that ruthlessly negates the functionality of the organization where urgent response is not taken to mitigate it. While this goes, conflict is not completely a dangerous phenomenon in its entirety as people superficially perceive it to be. It is like a coin with two sides, the head and the tail; where the head represents success and the tail represents failure. The functional (head) aspect impacts on the organization positively while the dysfunctional (tail) aspect leaves the organization with negative and destructive consequences just like crisis. Therefore, we conclude that both conflict and crisis are inherent phenomena among people and their environments which cannot be eradicated but managed through the adoption of context-fit strategies. In this regards, we recommend that: i) in the face of conflict and crisis, the choice of management approach should mainly be guided by its type, level and phase ii) since conflict and crisis are endemic factors, managers should regularly carry out both internal and external diagnosis as a means of identifying early warning signs of disruptive conflicts and natural crisis's incubation periods and possible manifestation time so as to provide adequate proactive and reactive response strategies timely.

This study aims to analyze the nexus between transformational leadership and corporate entrepreneurship by integrating the dispersed scholarly work on transformational leadership, absorptive capacity, and corporate entrepreneurship into one framework. The paper utilizes the literature on relationship between transformational leadership and corporate entrepreneurship in a novel way which fills the gap of investigating more dimensions of entrepreneurship individually as well as unidimensionally and includes the mediating role of absorptive capacity and tests a number of hypotheses which have been previously ignored. This study compared to the existing research contributes to the impact of transformational leadership on corporate entrepreneurship and absorptive capacity especially in the Pakistan business settings. A survey method was employed and analysis of results on small and medium manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) of Pakistan using structural equation modeling. The results demonstrate that transformational leadership positively affects corporate entrepreneurship and its dimensions namely innovation, new business venturing, self-renewal, proactivity and risk-taking both directly and through absorptive capacity. The direct effect of absorptive capacity on corporate entrepreneurship is more than the direct effect of transformational leadership on corporate entrepreneurship and its dimensions. Thus transformational leadership approach encourages corporate entrepreneurship through self-renewal, proactivity, innovation, new business venturing and risks-taking. It generates possible futures with the current research that clearly fits the kind of leadership required and it is against this backdrop that this research is done. This is a cross-sectional study with its limitations and future studies could extend beyond the manufacturing sector.

Transformational leaders motivate followers to achieve performance beyond expectations by transforming their attitudes, beliefs, and values as opposed to simply gaining compliance. Transformational leadership was conceptualized as being composed by four independent dimensions, known as the four "I"s : inspirational motivation (the sense of drive that the leader inspires in followers and that produces additional, goal-oriented energy for the group or organization), intellectual stimulation (the boost in creativity in followers that the leader stimulates by encouraging an independent and innovative way of thinking), idealized influence (exemplary behaviour of the leader that generates respect and trust and makes followers proud of their group and organization), and individualized consideration (perception that the leader genuinely cares for followers and their well-being). This paper examines the nexus between transformational leadership and team effectiveness.