International Scientific and Academic Research Publisher

Midstream oil and gas firms in South-South Nigeria face a persistent paradox of resource wealth coexisting with weak organizational sustainability. Chronic oil spills, gas flaring, operational inefficiencies, and fractured social contracts with host communities collectively underscore the urgency of identifying strategic antecedents of sustainable performance in this sector. This study investigated the relationship between ambidexterity and organisational sustainability of midstream oil and gas firms in South-South, Nigeria, with information technology infrastructure as a moderating variable. The proxies of ambidexterity were exploitative ambidexterity and explorative ambidexterity, while the proxies of organisational sustainability were environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and social sustainability. The study was anchored on contingency theory, dynamic capabilities theory, the moral responsibility theory of corporate sustainability, and the technology-organization-environment framework. Underpinned by the positivist philosophical paradigm, a cross-sectional survey design was adopted, with primary data collected from 274 middle-to-top management staff drawn from 56 midstream oil and gas firms registered with the Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria in South-South, Nigeria, Seven null hypotheses were tested at the 0.05 level of significance using Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling via SmartPLS 4.1.1.7. The findings revealed that exploitative ambidexterity has a strong, positive, and significant relationship with both environmental sustainability and economic sustainability, but a weak, non-significant relationship with social sustainability. Explorative ambidexterity exerted a strong, positive, and highly significant effect on economic sustainability and social sustainability, but a negligible, non-significant effect on environmental sustainability. Information technology infrastructure exerted no significant moderation effect. The study recommended that management teams, operations directors, and HSE officers should  institutionalize exploitative ambidexterity as a core environmental sustainability strategy by conducting regular internal environmental performance audits, and investing in incremental improvements to pipeline integrity monitoring systems, gas flaring reduction technologies, and spill containment infrastructure.

This study investigated the relationship between strategic flexibility and organizational resilience of indigenous airlines operating at Port Harcourt International Airport, with technology adoption serving as the moderating variable. The independent variable, strategic flexibility, was measured using resource flexibility, coordination flexibility, and operational flexibility, while the dependent variable, organizational resilience, was measured using adaptive capacity, absorptive capacity, and robustness. Technology adoption was operationalized through Information Technology (IT) Infrastructure Capability and Digital Innovation Adoption. A cross-sectional survey research design was adopted. The target population comprised 385 management and operational staff drawn from six indigenous airlines operating at Port Harcourt International Airport. Using the Taro Yamane formula, a sample size of 196 respondents was determined and proportionately allocated using Bowley's proportional allocation technique, while simple random sampling was employed in selecting respondents. A structured questionnaire served as the primary instrument for data collection. Out of the 196 questionnaires administered, 162 valid responses were used for analysis. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 30 and SmartPLS 4.0. Descriptive statistics were used for univariate analysis, while Spearman Rank Order Correlation and Partial Correlation Analysis were employed to test the hypotheses. The findings revealed that resource flexibility and operational flexibility had significant positive relationships with all dimensions of organizational resilience, whereas coordination flexibility significantly influenced only organizational robustness but had no significant relationship with adaptive capacity and absorptive capacity. The study further found that IT Infrastructure Capability and Digital Innovation Adoption strengthened the relationship between strategic flexibility and organizational resilience after statistical control, indicating the strategic importance of technology adoption in enhancing organizational resilience. It recommends that airline management should strengthen resource allocation flexibility, operational agility, organizational learning, digital innovation, and information technology infrastructure to enhance adaptability, absorptive capacity, robustness, and long-term organizational sustainability within Nigeria's aviation industry.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science and Automation are transforming organisations, labour markets and public administration, yet their adoption raises interrelated concerns about ethics, data governance, privacy, cybersecurity and workforce displacement. This paper examines these dimensions together and proposes a framework for responsible, human-centered AI-driven automation, with particular attention to Nigeria. The study combines an integrative review of multidisciplinary literature with qualitative document analysis of legal and policy instruments and a comparative analysis of documented cases across ten jurisdictions: Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany and China. AI principles have converged internationally but remain difficult to operationalise; data governance is the foundation on which fairness, privacy and security depend; AI introduces distinctive attack surfaces such as data poisoning, model extraction and membership inference; and automation transforms tasks more often than it eliminates whole occupations, making upskilling decisive. Nigeria exhibits rapid deployment of data-intensive systems alongside a governance lag, although regulatory enforcement under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 is strengthening. The paper proposes the Integrated Responsible Automation Framework (IRAF), which positions data governance as the foundation for three pillars (responsible and ethical AI, privacy and security by design, and workforce and organisational readiness), maps controls to the AI lifecycle, and derives four testable propositions. It offers actionable guidance for policymakers, organisations and educators, especially in emerging economies.

Purpose: This study identifies the determinants of business performance and the challenges faced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Papua New Guinea (PNG), a Pacific island economy characterised by geographic fragmentation, infrastructure deficits and a large informal sector.

Design/methodology/approach: A cross-sectional survey of 100 SME owners and managers in Lae City, Madang and Goroka commercial centers measured access to finance, government support, entrepreneurial competence, and infrastructure and market environment by five-point Likert statements, against a five-item business performance scale. Frequencies, weighted means and standard deviations described the data. Pearson correlation and ordinary least-squares regression tested the determinants.

Findings: Entrepreneurial competence (WM = 3.85; β = 0.35, p < .001) and access to finance (WM = 2.60; β = 0.26, p = 0.004) were significant positive predictors of performance; government support was also significant (β = 0.24, p = 0.007), while infrastructure and market environment (the lowest-rated construct, WM = 2.25) was not significant in the multivariate model (p = 0.538), reflecting a binding structural constraint common to all firms. The model explained 41% of variance (adj. R² = 0.39, F = 16.78, p < .001).

Key challenges included costly formal finance, inconsistent policy implementation, unreliable power and transport, and law-and-order costs.

Practical and social implications: SME growth requires a dual strategy - building owner-manager financial and planning capabilities while removing external bottlenecks through targeted finance, streamlined regulation and infrastructure investment.

Originality/value: The study offers rare empirical evidence on SME performance determinants in the Pacific Islands, extending resource-based and institutional theory to an under-researched context.

This study models a distressed bank under Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) regulatory pressure where baseline valuation decays exponentially with multiplicative seasonality effect. Three analytical paths and theoretical expected means were simulated showing up and down horizontal trend lines instead of exponential growth. Sensitivity analysis for volatility and drift shows both plots look alike with up and down horizontal movements, unlike growth banks where volatility dominates. Results show distressed pattern trapped sideways oscillation with slow decay, indicating that both growth rate and volatility cannot rescue the bank under regulatory overhang. Implication is range-bound trading rather than buy-and-hold .The results provide insight into how regulatory policy propagates across banks, how diversification benefits change across regimes, and how risk managers can stress-test portfolios under policy uncertainty.