Contextual factors and performance of selected consumer goods firms in Lagos State

The consumer goods sector in the world have witnessed different efforts to improve the performance of the firms that operate in it. Different factors such as intellectual capital, innovation, strategic leadership, have been identified as instrumental to this quest as firms in consumer goods firms in Nigeria seek to take advantage of opportunities in these factors to improve performance. A lack of understanding and full adoption of these factors have been a problem for these organizations as there has been observed decline in performance. This study adopted the cross-sectional survey research design, the population was 583 senior and middle level employees of the selected firms. Total enumeration was adopted and a self-structured questionnaire which was found valid and reliable was used for the quantitative data collection. The validity test yielded an Average Variance Extracted coefficient of 0.529 to 0.841 while the reliability test yielded Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients for the constructs which range from 0.748 to 0.862. The response rate was 92.9%. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings from the study revealed that contextual factors (intellectual capital, innovation, strategic leadership, knowledge management, and core competence) have significant effect on organizational performance of selected consumer goods firms in Lagos state (Adj R2 = 0.894, p = 0.000 < 0.05). The study concluded that contextual factors have significant effects on the performance of selected consumer goods firms in Lagos. Thus, firms are implored to evaluate their environment, internally and externally in order to take advantage of factors that are capable of engendering improvement in performance level.