Dynamic Capabilities, Innovation, and Competitive Advantage in Nigeria’s Insurance Industry: A Strategic Management Analysis

This dissertation examines how dynamic capabilities, encompassing sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring organizational competencies, drive product and process innovation and create sustainable competitive advantage in Nigeria's insurance industry. The dynamic capabilities framework (Teece et al.) provides a theoretically powerful lens for understanding how firms in volatile, changing competitive environments build durable advantages through continuous organizational learning and innovation. Nigeria's insurance industry is experiencing technology-driven disruption, regulatory transformation, and shifting consumer expectations that create a demanding capability development environment. This study employs a mixed-methods design with a survey of 250 senior managers across 25 insurance companies and qualitative case studies of five companies representing diverse strategic positions. A validated Dynamic Capabilities in Insurance Scale (DCIS) is developed and confirmed through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) tests the hypothesized pathways from dynamic capability dimensions through innovation types (product, process, and business model innovation) to competitive performance outcomes measured by market share growth and customer satisfaction. Case studies provide causal process tracing for the quantitative findings. The study contributes the DCIS as an original measurement instrument and provides the first large-scale empirical test of dynamic capabilities theory in the African insurance context. Keywords: Dynamic Capabilities, Innovation, Competitive Advantage, Insurance Industry, Nigeria.