Managers’ personal values and strategic orientation as drivers of organizational performance: A study of selected banks in Nigeria

Human resources are critical elements in all economic enterprises; and at the core of the philosophies that shape the strategic posture of a firm are the personal values of owners and strategic managers. Therefore, this study explains the impact of manager's personal values in company strategic orientation as a driver for organisation performance in the Nigerian Banking Industry. The study is based on questionnaires administered to managers of two banks in Lagos. Simple random sampling was used to select the managers and correlation was adopted to test the formulated hypotheses. The results confirm that managerial values have a positive significant relationship with the choice of corporate strategy orientation, organizational decision/strategy on the company's performance. The study recommends that emphasis and conscious effort should be made to evaluate managerial values within the systems. This will go a long way to improve mangers’ choice of strategies, invariably enhance good performance. Within the work environment, individual employees encounter managers who possess principles and values that seem substantively divergent. These differences may initially present a challenge and even create a potential conflict in continuing the working relationship. These differences, whether real or perceived, may detrimentally impact the employee, depending on whether or not the manager has the ability to recognize and respect the employee's differences. Management instability arises when a manager demonstrates no tolerance for diversity.