Impact of Business Communication on Organizational Performance in Nigerian Companies

Synopsis

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of business communication on organizational
performance in Nigerian companies. It utilized a contextualized and literature based research instrument to
measure the application of the investigated constructs. The sample data was obtained from 100 companies, a
mixture of both manufacturing and service industries operating in Lagos State of Nigeria. Data were analysed
using descriptive statistics, percentages and t- test analysis.

As Robert Kent, former dean of Harvard business school puts it, in business, communication is
everything. Business communication is any communication used to promote a product, service or organization,
with the objective of making sale. However, the effectiveness of communication differs from one firm to another.
It is on this perception that this paper is based upon.

The paper starts with a critical look at the current literature on business communication and goes on to purpose
three hypotheses namely.,

a. The level of emphasis in effective business communication.

b. The relationship between business size and practice of effective business communication.
c. The relationship between the extent of practices of effective communication and achievement of organizational goals
and objectives.

The sample used for this study was a convenience sample and it has been found relevant in previous
studies (Hall and Lockshin, 2000). The questions in the research instrument were adapted from extant literature
(Kotler, 2006; Blalock, 2005; Alyssa, 2006; amongst others). These works were adapted and refined following the
research guidelines of Wright and Kearn (1998) for replicating existing marketing or business constructs.

The data for the present study were obtained through a five-scale questionnaire (i.e. from very high
extent (5) to no extent at all (1) administered on a convenience sample of 500 respondents. The questionnaire
consisted of two sections, A and B.

Section A deals with measuring the extent to which the sampled Nigerian companies had embraced
effective business communication. Section B measured the demographic profile of respondents with respect to
title, address, e-mail, phone number, category of industry of respondents company, type of business measured
by number of employees in respondents organization, educational qualification, professional qualification,
working experience, age and gender.

Using various tools in Statistics such as Mean, Standard deviation, Correlation coefficients as well as KMO
and Barletts test for factor analysis, each hypothesis was tested and the following results were found.

In conclusion, results from the study and suggestions that generally affects organizational performance to
a reasonable extent in Nigerian companies is provided which would be useful for both academic and business
practitioners with interest in Nigerian companies.