Scenario Planning as a Recipe for Corporate Performance: The Nigerian Manufacturing Sector Experience

Abstract

As organisations struggle to deal with an increasingly uncertain world, they are looking to their managers to find ways in helping them to prepare for possible futures. Many organisations now apply scenario planning methods as means of evaluating their effectiveness and performance under different sets of assumptions about the future. This study investigates the relationship between scenario planning and corporate performance in the manufacturing sector in Nigeria. A survey research method was used to generate data from a sample of manufacturing firms in Nigeria on scenario planning and corporate performance variables. Responses from the survey were statistically analyzed using descriptive statistics, product moment correlation, regression analysis and Z-test (approximated with the independent sample t-test). The results of the study indicate a statistical significant relationship between scenario planning and corporate performance as well as reveal a significant difference between the performance of firms whose scenario planning are low and the performance of firms whose scenario planning are high. The research findings provide insights regarding how the interaction between scenario planning and corporate performance would assist the growth and development of the manufacturing sector in Nigeria.