Antecedents of University Performance: Does Strategy Matter?

Okechukwu Lawrence Emeagwali

doi:10.5296/ijssr.v9i2.18928

Abstract

In a bid to contribute to the increasing body of extant interdisciplinary research within the antecedents of university performance and strategic management domains, this study investigates the role of generic strategies in the perceived performance of universities. Using a case study of eight Nigerian universities and survey responses from 380 academics and administrative staff from these universities, the study tested four succinct hypotheses using the covariance structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) technique. Findings revealed that while there was a limited link between differentiation strategy and performance, there was a substantially strong link between focus strategy and performance according to the findings. Similarly, findings revealed that respondents from public-private universities perceived their institutions as having the strongest generic strategy-performance connection, followed by respondents from the public sector. The cost leadership-performance path demonstrated no significant effect.

Highlights

Given the long-established notion in free market economic systems that generic strategy strategies drive corporate performance
We did a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in AMOS to explore both the psychometric and dimensional characteristics of each of the latent endogenous variables featured in this investigation, having adopted and altered all of the measures utilized in this work from existing literature
The CFA was conducted with all of the constructs using the default Maximum Likelihood (ML) estimation method

Summary

Introduction

Given the long-established notion in free market economic systems that generic strategy strategies drive corporate performance Is it safe to assume in a similar fashion, that the sort of generic strategy used by a higher education institution has an impact on its performance? When Porter (1980) established differentiation, cost leadership, and focus strategies, he created the notion of generic strategy These are potentially effective strategies that businesses may employ to gain a strategic position in any given market that they can readily defend. The first of these strategies, while not dismissing the need of providing high-quality products and after-sales services to customers, concentrates on attaining low-cost manufacturing of goods and services in comparison to competitors. While Kaplan and Norton (1996) introduced the balanced score card as a multifaceted tool to help managers solve a wide range of strategic issues, it is best known for being used as a performance measurement tool in organizations, with the goal of enabling managers to effectively measure the performance or achievement of strategic goals from four perspectives: financial, customer, internal, and innovation and learning

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