Abstract

Operational excellence as a strategy had helped improve the performance of firms across industries. This paper is aimed at determining the role of some enterprise risk management determinants in the implementation of operational excellence in the oil and gas sector. The study provides an improved framework that could help oil firms increase productivity, reduce health and safety issues, and enhance environmental performance. A survey research design was adopted and structural equation modelling, specifically PLS-SEM was employed in the analysis of data collected from seven subsidiary firms of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) purposively selected. The findings suggest that regulatory framework, staff capacity, information technology and firm characteristics could have a significant effect on operational excellence implementation in the oil and gas sector. The findings prepare the firms on how to improve health and safety, operational efficiency by reducing cost and wastage, enhance assets and process reliability and improve environmental performance. The study fills a knowledge gap in the field of operational excellence by exploring a hybrid conceptual model that combine technology and people to explain operational excellence, especially in the Nigerian oil and gas industry. The limitation of the study was its inability to generalise findings because of the purposive sampling technique employed.