Thesis Abstract

<p> </p><p>The<br>Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) was introduced in the Nigerian<br>telecommunication industry in 2001 after the industry’s deregulation in 1992.<br>The mobile telephone network which revolutionized the business, social and<br>economic lives of Nigerians also engendered competition in the industry.<br>Competition among the operators enabled them to deploy their organizational<br>factors of stakeholders, knowledge, innovation, culture and technology<br>management to create competitive advantage for the benefit of the<br>telecommunication consumers. However, the industry is challenged by volatility<br>of quality of service and intermittent network failures which have affected the<br>value of its competitive advantage. The study examined organizational factors<br>as correlates of competitive advantage.</p><p>The<br>study adopted a survey research design. Target population comprised 584 senior<br>and executive management staff of the selected five mobile network operators.<br>This population size also constituted the sample size for the study, using<br>total enumeration. Data were collected through the use of validated<br>questionnaire. The Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients for the constructs ranged from<br>0.709 to 0.897. The response rate was 64.49%. Data were analyzed using<br>descriptive and inferential statistics.</p><p>Findings<br>revealed that there was positive and significant effect of stakeholders<br>management on competitive advantage in the Nigerian telecommunication industry<br>(Adj R2 =0.626;</p><p>F(1,471)=509.732;<br>p &lt; 0.05). Positive and significant effect of knowledge management on<br>competitive advantage was found in the industry (Adj R2 = 0.532; F(1,<br>471)= 346.11; p &lt; 0.05).Positive and significant effect of innovation<br>management on competitive advantage was established in the industry (Adj R2<br>= 0.514; F(1, 471)= 322.734; p &lt; 0.05).The effect of<br>organizational culture on competitive advantage was positive and significant in<br>the industry (Adj R2 = 0.576;<br>F(1, 471) = 413.575; p &lt; 0.05).There was positive and significant<br>effect of technology management on competitive advantage in the Nigerian telecommunication<br>industry (Adj R2 = 0.516; F(1, 471) = 323.411; p &lt;<br>0.05).</p><p>The<br>study concluded that the massive revolution in the Nigerian economy by the<br>mobile telephone network was created by the competitive advantage driven by<br>organizational factors. It was recommended that the Nigerian telecommunication<br>industry should emphasise improvement of stakeholders’ values, knowledge,<br>innovation, culture and technology management as models for enhanced quality of<br>service and prevention of network failures. <br>The industry regulator, Nigerian Communication Commission should enact<br>policies to regulate these organizational factors.</p><p><b>Keywords &nbsp; &nbsp; </b>Competitive<br>advantage, Telecommunication industry, Stakeholders management, Knowledge<br>management, Innovation management, Culture management, Technology management</p> <br><p></p>

Thesis Overview

<p> </p><p><b>INTRODUCTION</b></p><p><b>1.1</b>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<b>Background<br>to the Study</b></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; According to Kazmi (2008),<br>organizational capability factors or capability factors (or simply<br>organizational factors as this thesis has chosen to call them) are the<br>intrinsic abilities or skills of an organization with which it deploys its competencies<br>to overcome its weaknesses so as to exploit the opportunities and confront the<br>threats in its external environment.They are viewed as skills for organizing<br>resources and channelling them to productive uses (Kazmi, 2008;Ekore 2014;<br>Ismail, Rose, Uli &amp; Abdullahi, 2014). On the other hand, organizational<br>factors are the strategic strengths that are developed in various functional<br>units in the organization which are essential for the formulation and<br>implementation of strategies (Kazmi, 2008; Ekore, 2014). Resources, whether<br>tangible or intangible, may remain worthless without the organizational factors<br>to develop them(Ismail et al, 2014). Many strategists argue that organizational<br>factors are the result of the organization’s knowledge base which is defined as<br>the knowledge and skills of its staff (Ismail et al, 2014). Researchers are<br>interested in organizational factors for two reasons. Firstly, they would like<br>to know what competencies exist within the organization to exploit the<br>opportunities and confront the threats in its environment. Secondly, they would<br>like to determine what potentials would be developed in order to exploit<br>opportunities and overcome threats in the future.Organizational factors are<br>numerous and varied. They could be organizational skills, organizational<br>integration, product development, technological capabilities, innovation,<br>organizational culture, stakeholders’ management, knowledge management (Ismail<br>et al, 2014; Prahalad &amp; Hamel, 1990; Stalk,Evans &amp; Shulman,1992).</p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; Kazmi (2008) also argued that strategic<br>advantages are the results of organizational capabilities/factors.Strategic<br>advantages are the outcome of the activities of the organization in its bid to<br>generate greater economic value for its customers, the reward of which are such<br>financial benefits like profitability, return on investments and non-financial<br>advantages like market share or reputation(Kazmi, 2008; Prahalad &amp; Hamel,<br>1990).Competitive advantage is the common example of strategic advantage<br>created by companies.A company is said to have competitive advantage if it is<br>able to create more economic values than its competitors in the industry<br>(Akinbola, Adegbuyi &amp; Otokiti, 2014).According to Prahalad and Hamel,<br>(1990), the source of competitive advantage has moved from physical to<br>intangible intellectual and knowledge based resources.</p><p>The<br>challenge facing most mobile network firms today is to identify the set of<br>intangible market based capabilities or factors as sources for creating<br>competitive advantage (Akinbola, Adegbuyi &amp; Otokiti, 2014; Akingbade,<br>2014). Most of the capabilities<br>available to the firms are heterogenous and numerous but for a resource to have<br>and gain advantage, it must be valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable<br>(Barney, 1991). It is only when these scarce resources or capabilities are<br>identified and appropriate programme developed to meet the above criteria<br>before an organization can have competitive advantage (Akinbola, Adegbuyi &amp;<br>Otokiti, 2014; Barney, 1991). There are different views about where the sources<br>of competitive advantage are generated from.The two common views are the<br>capabilities based view and the resources based view.</p><p>There<br>are two opinions on the capabilities based view.According to Zhang(2008), the<br>first is the core competence opinion postulated by Prahalad and Hamel (1990)<br>and the remaining one is the overall capability opinion given by Stalk,Evans<br>and Shulman (1992). Prahalad and Hamel (1990) cited in Zhang (2011) described<br>core competence as the organization’s retained knowledge, especially the<br>knowledge concerning how to manage the numerous types of producing skills and<br>how to combine the network of technologies, Zhang (2008).They highlighted three<br>criteria to identify corporate core competence as follows; Firstly, it must be<br>able to co-ordinate several products and markets. Secondly, they should<br>guarantee measurable advantages to the final consumers. Thirdly, they must be<br>extremely difficult for competitors to copy (Prahalad &amp; Hamel, 1990). On<br>their part, Stalk, Evans and Shulman (1992) submitted that a successful company<br>should focus on its behaviours especially the organizational actions and<br>business systems as well strategize on improving its activities as a basic<br>strategic goal, Zhang (2008). By this,<br>they postulated the idea of total capacity as the general skills and experience<br>among the employees of the organization (Zhang, 2011).</p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The mobile telecommunication network<br>has a market share of 72% of the global telecommunication industry (GSMA,<br>2016). Equally, in Africa, the mobile network controls 80% share of the<br>telecommunication market. In Nigeria, the mobile telecommunication network has<br>99.74% share of the telecommunication industry.In a quest for telecommunication<br>services, the Federal Government of Nigeria promulgated Decree no. 75 of 1992<br>which deregulated the telecommunication industry and created the Nigerian<br>Communication Commission as the apex regulator of the industry. Before the<br>deregulation of the telecommunication service in 1992, Nigeria had only about<br>400,000 installed telephone lines and 25,000 analogue mobile lines which<br>translated to 0.4 lines for 100 inhabitants(Ndukwe,2003). Putting it in another<br>way, this amounted to a tele -density of about 250 inhabitants to one telephone<br>line i.e0.45% (Ndukwe, 2003; Hassan, 2011). In January 2001, Nigeria, through<br>the telecommunication regulatory body, Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC),conducted<br>the world acclaimed transparent auction of its digital mobile licenses which<br>were won by three service providers, namely MTN (Nigeria), Econet Wireless<br>(Later Vmobile, later Celtel,later Vodafone, later Zain and now Airtel) and the<br>national carrier, MTEL (a subsidiary of NITEL) at the cost of N285 Million each<br>(Ndukwe, 2003). In the year 2002, the second national carrier, Globacom was<br>granted an operating license while in January 2007, the Emerging Markets<br>Telecommunication Service (EMTS) under the brand name of Etisalat was granted a<br>unified access license (NCC, 2007). In 2009, another unified access license was<br>granted to Smile Communications.In December, 2014, the national carrier license<br>earlier granted to Mtel was acquired by Natcom which they (Natcom) launched as<br>Ntel in April, 2016. From these accounts, there are six GSM service providers<br>in the Nigerian telecommunication industry. They are: MTN, Globacom, Airtel,<br>Etisalat, Smile and Ntel.</p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The Global system for mobile<br>communication(GSM, originally called Groupe Special Mobile) is a technology<br>developed by the European Telecomunication Standards Institute (ETSI) to<br>identify the rules or the code for second-generation (2G) digital cellular<br>networks which use the altered version of Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)<br>deployed in mobile phones.It was first deployed in Finland in July 1991 and is<br>the most popular of the three digital wireless telephony technologies (TDMA,<br>GSM and CDMA), (Abubakar &amp; Bello, 2013).According to Abubakar and Bello<br>(2013), the GSM .technology network is made of three subsystems such as a<br>network switching subsystem (NSS), a base station subsystem (BSS) and the<br>operations support subsystem (OSS).The network describes the technology of the<br>band system of the wireless communication( like GSM,CDMA,WAN).This technology<br>is made of MSC (Mobile Switching Centre) and other connected registers.The base<br>station system is made of a BSC (Base<br>Station Controller) and many BTSes (Base Transceiver Stations).The operating<br>support system (OSS) coordinates the monitoring and maintenance of the<br>technology of the network. Users (subscribers) deploymobile devices referred as<br>User Equipment (UEs) such as hand sets<br>to connect with the help of the network.The other connecting system between the<br>subscriber and the network is the BTS which is regulated by the original base<br>station controller through the base station control function (BCF).The BCF is<br>executed as a separate unit or combined in a TRX (Transceiver) as a single<br>entity base station.The BCF supplies an operations and maintenance (O&amp; M)<br>linkage to the network management system (NMS) and coordinates operational states of TRX as well as software<br>and alarm linkage.</p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The mobile telecommunication<br>network since its deployment in Nigeria has increased the teledensity from<br>0.45% in 1992 to 107.87% in 2015 (NCC,2016). The subscription level also<br>increased from 425,000 lines 1992 to 154,529,780 GSM lines in 2016, which<br>represents 355% increase. Table 1.1<br>shows the subscription level for GSM lines in Nigeria from 2002 to 2016</p><p><b>Table<br>1.1: Number of Subscribers to GSM technology<br>in Nigeria (2002 -2017)</b></p><p><b>Years</b></p><p><b>No of<br>Subscribers</b></p><p><b>Teledensity</b></p><p>2016</p><p>154,529, 780</p><p>110.00</p><p>2015</p><p>151,017,244</p><p>107.87</p><p>2014</p><p>139,143,610</p><p>99.39</p><p>2013</p><p>127,606,629</p><p>91.15</p><p>2012</p><p>113,195,951</p><p>80.85</p><p>2011</p><p>95,886,714</p><p>68.49</p><p>2010</p><p>88,348,026</p><p>63.11</p><p>2009</p><p>74,518,264</p><p>53.23</p><p>2008</p><p>64,296,117</p><p>45.93</p><p>2007</p><p>41,975,275</p><p>29.98</p><p>2006</p><p>33,858,022</p><p>24.18</p><p>2005</p><p>19,519,154</p><p>16.27</p><p>2004</p><p>10,201,728</p><p>8.50</p><p>2003</p><p>4,021,945</p><p>3.35</p><p>2002</p><p>2,271,050</p><p>1.89</p><p><b>Source:<br>NCC 2017 Website</b></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; It is to be noted that the<br>teledensity in Table 1 was computed on the basis of a population of 126 Million<br>for Nigeria until 2005 and from 2006, it was computed on a population of 140<br>million people.The penetration level from December, 2007 is based on active<br>subscribers while from 2002 to 2006, it was based on connected subscribers<br>(NCC, 2016).</p><p>The<br>contribution of the telecommunication industry to the Nigerian wealth basket is<br>tremendous.Table1. 2 shows the contribution of the telecommunication industry<br>to the Nigerian Gross Domestic Product (GDP).</p><p><b>Table1.2:The<br>Contribution of the telecommunication industry to the GDP of</b></p><p><b>Year</b></p><p><b>Jun.2016</b></p><p><b>2015</b></p><p><b>2014</b></p><p><b>2013</b></p><p><b>2012</b></p><p><b>2011</b></p><p><b>2010</b></p><p>% contribution<br>to GDP</p><p>9.80%</p><p>8.50</p><p>7.60</p><p>7.40</p><p>7.70</p><p>8.60</p><p>8.90</p><p><b>Source:<br>2017 NCC Website.</b></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The GSM technology controls the<br>Nigerian telecommunication industry. Table 1.3 below shows the market share of<br>each of the three technologies in the Nigerian telecommunication market.</p><p><b>Table 1. 3: Percentage Market share by Technology<br>as at January, 2017</b></p><p><b>Technology</b></p><p><b>Mobile<br>GSM</b></p><p><b>Mobile<br>(CDMA)</b></p><p><b>Mobile<br>Wireless</b></p><p><b>Fixed<br>Wired</b></p><p><b>VOIP</b></p><p><b>%</b></p> <br><p></p>