Risk Taking, Proactiveness and Internationalization of Nigerian Deposit Money Banks

The study examines the effect of proactiveness and risk taking on the internationalization of Nigerian deposit money banks, using census survey, whereby the entire two hundred and twenty six (226) management staff of strategy and foreign operations departments of the ten (10) Nigerian deposit money banks with foreign subsidiaries constituted the population and sample. The validity of the instrument was tested using Content Validity Index (CVI). The CVI gave a value of 0.8998, which suggests that the instrument was valid. The test-re-test method through Cronbach Alpha was used to ascertain the reliability of the research instrument, and Cronbach Alpha of 0.8821, 0.8164 and 0.7942 were obtained for risk taking, proactiveness and internationalization respectively which suggests that the instrument is reliable. The data was analyzed using ordinary least square with the aid of STATA 14. The findings revealed that both proactiveness and risk taking have individual and combined significant effect on the internationalization of Nigerian deposit money banks and that proactiveness and risk taking account for 37.5% variation in the internationalization of Nigerian deposit money banks. The study concludes that proactiveness and risk taking are the critical elements driving the internationalization of Nigerian deposit money banks. It can therefore be recommended that banks’ seeking international presence should consider a futuristic and opportunity-seeking perspective typified by acting in anticipation of future demand and going ahead of competitors which depicts proactiveness. Furthermore, deposit money banks should display a risktolerant position towards foreign market incursion.