Risk Taking and Business Performance of Manufacturing Firms in Rivers State

Risk taking and business performance of manufacturing firms in Rivers State was examined in this study. Risk taking was used as predictor variable while product quality, customer loyalty and profitability were used as measures of business performance. The study developed three research questions and three research hypotheses. The cross-sectional survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised of 119 employees drawn from 32 manufacturing companies in Rivers State. It was a sampling census study since the population was manageable. Questionnaire instrument was used to elicit data from respondents. Cronbach Alpha was used to determine reliability which result indicate a consistency of .851. Descriptive statistics using mean and standard deviation was used for univariate analysis, Pearson Product Moment Correlation were used for bivariate analysis. From the data analysis the study revealed that there is a significant relationship between risk taking and business performance of manufacturing firms in Rivers State. The study concluded that risk taking is a critical predictor on the level of business performance in terms of improvement in product quality, customer loyalty and profitability of manufacturing firms in Rivers State. The study further recommended among others that management of manufacturing firms should take risk strategically in other to achieve high level of business performance