SCANNING TASK AND GENERAL ENVIRONMENTS: A COMPARATIVE EFFECT ON THE PERFORMANCE OF SMES IN LAGOS STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study examined the relationship between environmental scanning and financial and non-financial performance of SMEs in Lagos State, Nigeria. Survey research design was adopted. The population of the study comprised 3864 Small and Medium Enterprises in Lagos State, Nigeria. Stratified and purposive sampling techniques were used to select the participating SMEs. Results showed a positive and significant relationship between task and general environmental scanning and performance. In addition, task and general environmental scanning jointly predicted performance of SMEs. It is recommended that SMEs owners should concentrate more on the task environment as it has more direct effect on organizational objectives. In addition, the size of the general environment is usually large, available staff may not have the competency required and the cost may be to large for SMEs. Hence owner-manager should concentrate efforts on scanning the immediate environment. While attempt could be made toward outsourcing general envromental scanning information from business research agencies at a reduced cost.