Effect of Strategic Leadership Practices on Organizational Performance of Non‑Governmental Organizations in Abuja, Nigeria (Published)
We set out to examine how strategic leadership practices bear on the organisational performance of Non-Governmental Organisations in Abuja, Nigeria. In this research, we took programme effectiveness as our gauge for organisational performance and focused our attention on four particular areas: the setting of strategic direction, ethical governance, stakeholder engagement and strategic control. Our approach was a descriptive cross-sectional survey of the NGO population in Abuja, which covers a wide range of thematic work from education, health and humanitarian aid to poverty reduction, peacebuilding, women empowerment and environmental sustainability, among others. We put questionnaires in front of qualified respondents from these organisations. Of the 360 we handed out, 332 were fit for analysis, which is a solid 92.2% response rate. To make sense of the data we ran a battery of tests including descriptive statistics, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation, multiple regression (at the 0.05 significance level) and a Cronbach’s Alpha for reliability. The latter confirmed that all our constructs were internally consistent. As for the correlation, it was clear that each of the four leadership practices had a positive and statistically meaningful link to programme effectiveness. The multiple regression painted a more detailed picture. Taken together, the leadership practices accounted for 33.3 per cent of the variance in programme effectiveness (R² = 0.333, adjusted R² = 0.325; F(4, 327) = 40.864, p < 0.001). But when you look at them in isolation with the other predictors controlled for, only strategic control and stakeholder engagement showed an important positive effect; the same could not be said for strategic direction setting or ethical governance. It would seem that in this context some practices are more directly consequential than others. Our conclusion is that strategic leadership does have a significant impact on how NGOs in Abuja perform, driven largely by those two factors. What this means for the NGOs is that they ought to put more muscle into their monitoring and evaluation, foster better feedback and learning, and get deeper into stakeholder participation. They should also keep up good ethical governance and make sure their strategic plans are executed with discipline. Done right, it is the way to convert sound strategy into results you can measure.
Keywords: Financial Sustainability, Organizational Performance, education-focused NGOs, ethical governance, programme effectiveness, stakeholder engagement, strategic control, strategic direction setting, strategic leadership practices