EFFICIENT OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT AND GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS OF FIRMS: IMPLICATIONS FOR NIGERIA

ABSTRACT
The primary purpose of this study was to ascertain if efficient operations management accounts for global competitiveness of firms. This was borne out of the belief that improving the operations efficiency of Nigerian firms could help to increase their global competitiveness. Six cement firms in Europe were selected as case study, and relevant data from their annual reports were used. This was with the aim that if significant relationship could be established between the efficient operations management of these cement firms and their global competitiveness, Nigeria could take a cue from that. Three dimensions of operations management namely; operations cost efficiency, operations capital efficiency, and operations employee efficiency were used as proxies for global competitiveness. Three parameters of global competitiveness were also identified. These are the Level of international focus, foreign market share and foreign profit. Foreign profit was however adopted for analysis, and this was represented by the firms’ earnings from outside of Europe. Findings revealed that capital efficiency and employee efficiency correlated significantly with global competitiveness. Cost efficiency showed some level of correlation, but it was not significant. On the whole however, the regression result indicated that efficient operations management accounts for global competitiveness. This result indicates that Nigerian firms need to improve their operational efficiency in order to be globally competitive. This is corroborated by an analysis of Nigeria’s Dangote Cement which is seen to be competitive mainly in countries with restrictions on cement importation.