Summary
Research Background
The recent focus on the use of the available resources in order to produce NPK fertilizers has opened the door for Nigeria o enjoy multiple opportunities for attracting investors from overseas, thus, allowing the state to support and maintain its economic growth. Due to its recent foray into Forex trading, Nigeria has produced the premises for consistent economic improvements, which will be supported to a tremendous degree with the influx of investments from foreign partners (Ndubuisi, 2017). Specifically, the company known as OCP Africa, which is currently one of the major fertilizer producers in Nigeria, is going to play a major part in the process (OCP Africa, 2021). However, to ensure that the change occurs smoothly, the major impediments to the increase in Nigeria’s business’ attractiveness to potential investors will be needed. Due to the current sociopolitical and socioeconomic situation in Nigeria, as well as the cultural factors affecting the schedule, the focus on improving the communication channels, increasing visibility within the company, and the use of downsizing will be needed.
Problem Statement
Delving deeper into the development of the project under analysis, one will realize that a unique impediment was encountered as OCP Africa started expanding its services and seeking out foreign investors in search of financial assistance. Namely, evident problems with scheduling and time management, in general, have been observed across OCP Africa’s setting, as well as its expanding supply chain and the creation of new fertilizer blending plants.
Research Question
Will the application of downsizing techniques, the use of delegation for more effective management of tasks, the inclusion of new communication channels into the SCM network, increased visibility by means of innovative digital technology, and the reduction of costs with the help of downsizing, will OCP Africa be able to accomplish its current goals by establishing new Fertilizer Blending Plants and finding new investors overseas?
Literature Review
Given Nigeria’s recent agricultural transformation and the focus on exploring the agricultural industry as the fastest option for gaining leverage in the global economy, the development of fertilizer blending plants as the suppliers of the products that will allow Nigerian agriculture to thrive is entirely sensible. As Olaoye et al. (2020) explain, “The growth rate of the Nigerian population is expected to double 2006 estimate by the year 2030; thus, the sector will need to supply more food to a growing and increasingly urbanized population as well as for export.” Therefore, it is vital to condense the efforts produced by entrepreneurs in the agricultural industry to attract investors to the Nigerian economic setting in order to support further growth within the fertilizer sector of the Nigerian agriculture industry.
It is also noteworthy that the production of fertilizers has become significantly easier from the political perspective in Nigeria despite the ongoing concerns within its government, mainly due to the regulation that lifted the state’s monopoly on fertilizer distribution in 1996 (Olaoye et al., 2020). The specified step has led to the rise in the range of business opportunities for independent organizations producing fertilizers, which, in turn, has had a positive effect on the Nigerian economy (Michael, 2017; Oyetunde-Usman et al., 2021).
However, despite the observed opportunities, significant constraints have been observed while implementing the project. Namely, according to the existing reports, the OCP Africa Company has been dealing with significant time management issues, specifically, failing to meet the set schedule. In turn, the specified problem has caused the schedule to become unnecessarily convoluted, causing a range of errors and delays in the delivery of the required materials and products across the supply chain (OCP Africa, 2018; Wong et al., 2020). The specified errors are likely to devalue the progress that OCP Africa has made, therefore, jeopardizing the chances for Nigeria to remain within the realm of the global economy and continue to increase its GDP along with the economic opportunities and future prospects for partnership and, particularly, investments (Hayat, 2019; Epaphra and Massawe, 2017; Sothan, 2017). Therefore, it is paramount that foreign investors should be drawn to Nigeria’s economic setting, which OCP Africa will be able to implement once the company updates its current communication framework and revisits its HRM strategies along with the approach toward time management.
Specifically, the company will have to focus on the possible sources of conflict within its environment and the nature of the tasks that it has scheduled. Namely, the misalignment between the company’s current objectives, particularly its expansion into the global economic setting, and the problematic approach to scheduling and the management of costs, especially in regard to resource allocation, will need to be addressed. In regard to the budget-related issue, the concerns associated with the poor alignment of the engineering and agricultural tasks need to be addressed. Studies indicate that Nigeria’s described issue is particularly common (Folajinmi and Peter, 2020). Arguably, the problem stems from the lack of an effective communication channel through which key tasks will be assigned to each organization member (Tsado et al., 2017). Therefore, the inclusion of a framework that will guide the organization toward greater flexibility and more accurate management of the available time resources is believed to produce an immeasurably positive impact on the current state of affairs. When applied to the OCP Africa context, the suggested measure may imply that digital project management tools and video conferencing may help to maintain alignment between the actions of OCP Africa’s staff.
Similarly, problems with defining the target team clearly and ensuring that each participant is aware and constantly updated on the status of his or her tasks and performance rates appear to lie at the core of the poor budget and time management in Nigeria. According to the research performed by Bartel-Radic and Giannelloni (2017), the inclusion of cultural competence into the leadership framework and especially in project management will invite a positive change, thus, causing a shift in staff members’ perception of their role within the company and the significance of their input. Therefore, the problem at hand must be considered through a different lens, including financial, economic, and sociocultural, so that the key constraints within OCP Africa can be isolated and addressed.
Research Methodology
The nature of the question that this research seeks to answer might seem as qualitative at first since it does not involve a direct premise for the quantitative analysis by juxtaposing two variables requiring a numerical comparison. However, on further assessment of the research nature and its goals, one will notice the necessity to compare the efficacy of the current method to the outcomes of the suggested improvements, which is why the integration of a quantitative methodological foundation for the study is quite justified (Basias and Pollalis, 2018). Namely, since the study is geared toward the examination of the effects that the expectedly improved framework will have on the current attractiveness of Nigeria and, particularly, OCP Africa for overseas investments, locating the variation in the effects of the suggested method and the current one is highly desirable. Therefore, the quantitative approach should serve as the basis for conducting the research.
For this reason, when selecting the research paradigm, the Positivism philosophy should be prioritized. In conjunction with the specified reasoning, the necessity to use the deductive approach as the means of eliciting the relationships between the key variables is preferable. Namely, the key conclusions will be made based on the outcomes of testing the suggestion that the use of a communication-based strategy with the focus on opening additional channels for data management will allow enhancing the quality of OCP Africa’s performance in the Nigerian agricultural sector, thus, drawing the interest and attention of investors overseas.
To ensure that the process of testing the proposed model should be as close to the target set as possible, a case study will be conducted within the setting of OCP Africa. Namely, a mono-method with the adoption of a cross-sectional framework to ensure that not only economic but also political, sociocultural, legal, and even environmental concerns are taken into account will be utilized. Thus, the study will remain focused, leading to further elicitation of poignant and meaningful results.
Data Collection
Data Collection Methods
The information gathering process can be approached from different perspectives in this case. Specifically, the required statistical data may be obtained by analyzing the submitted reports and obtaining them directly with the help of observations. However, since observations are very time-consuming for the project in question. to collect the necessary information, data recorded from the outcomes of meetings with stakeholders and internal team meetings will be used. Namely, the reports produced by team members and provided during team meetings, including not only the keynotes but also the detailed statistics concerning the changes in OCP Africa’s economic and financial performance will be gathered during the meetings in question.
Data Collection Instrument
To gather the necessary information, a form that will be filled out based on the reports submitted by managers and staff members during meetings will be used. Specifically, the form in question will contain information concerning the performance rates within OCP Africa, in general, as well as the statistical data concerning the number of delays and failed tasks. Particularly, the number of incomplete assignments and the instances of ineffective cost management will be documented to be compared afterward with the statistical data to be collected after the experiment (see Appendix A).
Population and Sampling
To facilitate high veracity and accuracy of the research results, it is strongly recommended to increase the sample size significantly so that high levels of variation could be addressed accordingly. As a result, a highly probable outcome is expected to be obtained. For this reason, it is suggested that the sample should be represented by statistical data that will include at least 1,000 reports, of which 280 will be utilized as a sample. With the confidence level of 95% and the margin of error being located at 5%, the specified sample size will satisfy the need for accuracy in assessing the variation rates within the selected variables (Sim et al., 2018). Namely, the suggested sample will help to assess the efficacy of changes to be made to the communication channel within the organization, as well as the role that downsizing will play on OCP Africa’s performance and the further improvement in Nigeria’s overall rate within the target economic environment.
Additionally, the evaluation to be conducted will shed light on the extent to which the staff members’ motivation and readiness to develop new skills will have grown once the downsizing strategy is implemented in OCP Africa’s setting. It should be pointed out that the use of downsizing should not be treated as a scare tactic used to force staff members to comply so that they are not dismissed. Instead, it needs to be represented as a change in corporate ethics and the promotion of a more respectful attitude toward customers and other stakeholders, as well as a more responsible interpretation of employees’ workplace responsibilities and tasks.
The required sample will be collected with the help of the cluster sampling technique. The proposed technique will allow obtaining reports from experts in different fields, which will provide vital insights into the subject matter from the political, economic, environmental, financial, and sociocultural perspectives (Rahi, 2017). Namely, the cluster sampling approach will be used to disperse the data in a way that will lead to the most fruitful research.
However, it is noteworthy that the cluster sampling technique may cause one-sidedness in data collection. Therefore, reconsidering the cost management approach to minimize the financial losses for the project will be needed. Nonetheless, the application of the cluster sampling approach should be prioritized in the case at hand over other techniques due to its numerous advantages. Specifically, the cluster sampling technique is bound to cause notably lower expenses than the rest of the approaches (Etikan and Bala, 2017).
Limitations
The key limitations of the study to be conducted in the OCP Africa Company setting is inextricably connected to the selection of the sampling technique. Namely, the necessity to maintain higher levels of research at all costs will put significant strain on the participants; moreover, it will increase the likelihood of an error, which may jeopardize the outcomes of the study. Thus., a set of control tools, particularly, careful recording and further checking of the key stages of the study will need to be incorporated into the study design so that the quality of the research outcomes should not suffer (Heudtlass et al., 2018). Overall, it is assumed that the proposed sampling technique and the approach toward determining the sample size will lead to a rather precise assessment of the situation and the resulting
Data Analysis
After the key data is obtained from the analysis of the reports provided during team meetings, it will be analyzed accordingly. Since the study in question pursues the comparison of key dependent variables, namely, the impact of the suggested techniques on the efficacy of the project’s cost efficiency and the quality of the time management processes, a comprehensive assessment will be needed. For this reason, the use of ANOVA as the method of locating variance within the selected variables based on the impact of independent variables will be utilized. Additionally, the application of the ANOVA analysis tools will help in detailing the exact effects of specific powers on the development of the company’s efficacy and its performance in the target market.
Admittedly, the ANOVA tool has several limitations, one of which concerns its restricted use in quantitative assessment; according to British (2019, p. 3), ANOVA “simply compares the means of the observed DV(s) across groups.” However, the specified limits of the selected approach toward data analysis and assessment does not suggest that the application of ANOVA will lead to erroneous results; quite the contrary, the proposed analysis tool will serve its purpose perfectly and perform its main function accordingly since it is designed to isolate the presence of a system within the located data range, thus, determining whether the observed phenomenon is attributed to a random effect or whether there is a presence of a statistical influence between the variables in question.
The key information will be processed with the help of the SPSS tool. Although the SPSS software has been utilized as the tool for data analysis in research for decades, it remains the most effective framework for evaluating the data with extraordinary levels of precision and presenting the results as accurately as possible. In fact, Ong et al. (2017) point out that SPSS is “very user friendly and various statistical tests could be conducted using this software” (p. 18). Moreover, the author continues to praise SPSS for its ability to perform a meticulous evaluation of the available data, producing the outcomes of unmatched high precision: “This statistical software undertakes both comparison and correlational statistical tests in the context of univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis for both the parametric and non-parametric statistical techniques” (Ong et al., 2017, p. 19). Therefore, the application of the IBM SPSS tool to the analysis of the data and the eventual delivery of the final results is entirely justified by its high flexibility and accuracy. Although Ong et al.’s (2017) further comparison of SPSS to other devices for statistical analysis proves that other types of software can also be applied to the performance of different types of analysis, the ease of use that SPSS currently boasts and its potential for conducting complex tests such as ANOVA, MANOVA, and MANCOVA proves that the proposed software should be integrated into the data analysis process.
Finally, the results of the analysis will be represented.
Reference List
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