The Strategy and Structure of Business Enterprise in Nigeria
摘要
This chapter contains a synthesis of my research findings on the strategy and structure of large-scale business enterprises in Nigeria over the period 1960–1980 as well as the current status of the 50 largest industrial and commercial enterprises in Nigeria by market capitalization on the Nigerian Stock Exchange as of December 2023. The research project was similar to studies earlier undertaken on the strategy and structure of the largest industrial corporations in Western Europe, namely in Britain, France, Germany and Italy, respectively, covering the period 1950–1970 as compared to the Nigerian study which covered the period 1960–1980. Both the European and Nigerian studies were based on Chandler’s groundbreaking works in the United States which traced the strategy and structure of large-scale American corporations from the 1920s and the subsequent adoption of the multidivisional structure to manage diverse and far-flung business activities. Research findings revealed that the strategic and structural evolution of modern large-scale industrial and commercial enterprises in Nigeria have developed along the same evolutionary path identified in similar studies undertaken in Western Europe and the United States. However, the evolutionary path was not as tortuous as in the older industrialized countries as Nigerian organizations were able to benefit from the distilled experience of the more advanced economies.