The Chief Executive Officer of Business School Netherlands International, Prof. Lere Baale, has made a case for Nigerian organisations to intentionally build corporate cultures around five pillars including responsiveness, respect, reliability, responsibility, and relationships—to compete globally.
Baale, a global scholar-practitioner with over 40 years of cross-sector experience spanning healthcare, telecommunications, education, corporate strategy, and public policy, stated this while speaking at the WorldStage Business Forum Q2 2026 and the public presentation of the WorldStage Nigeria Economic Report Q1 2026 on June 30, 2026.
He noted that leading organisations across Europe, North America, Asia, and other emerging economies consistently invested in culture, a pattern Nigeria could not ignore.
Dissecting the theme of the lecture, “Nigeria’s Corporate Culture and Global Standard”, Baale addressed the subject across four areas: Corporate Culture and Why it Matters; Customer Experience Is the New Competitive Advantage and The Human Side of Business; Building a World-Class Nigerian Corporate Culture and The Nigerian Opportunity; and A New Corporate Social Contract.
His invitation to deliver the lecture explicitly required him to address what could be regarded as “corporate terrorism,” where large corporate organisations disregarded basic courtesy in dealing with the public and small businesses.
These practices include ignoring physical or electronic correspondence, failing to return phone calls, and managing directors refusing interviews except with foreign media outlets.
Commending WorldStage for consistently providing a platform for meaningful national conversations on business, governance, leadership, and economic development, Baale said, “While the phrase ‘corporate terrorism’ may be provocative, the concern is real.”
He explained that many stakeholders experienced situations where emails to large organisations remained unanswered for months, telephone calls were ignored, customer complaints disappeared, business proposals received no acknowledgement, and media inquiries were treated with disdain.
“The irony is that many of these organisations were once small businesses themselves,” he observed.
He stated that culture was what people experienced when they interacted with an organisation, how decisions were made, how customers were treated, and how employees were valued. He added that an organisation could only fake a strategy for a while, but it could never fake its culture for long.
According to him, the world has entered an era where reputation travels faster than products, and a single customer experience can reach millions of people within minutes.
“The era when organisations could hide behind size, market dominance, bureaucracy, or regulatory protection is over,” Baale stated. “We are now operating in an age of transparency, accountability, and stakeholder scrutiny. The organisations that will win in the future are not necessarily the biggest. They are the most trusted.”
On the emerging challenge of corporate arrogance, he pointed out that many firms exhibiting pride had benefited from relationships, responsiveness, and trust before success arrived.
He argued that global standards were not about expensive buildings, imported furniture, sophisticated websites, foreign accents, or international awards, but were fundamentally about behaviour, professional discipline, and mindset.
He asked, “If a multinational organisation can acknowledge an email within hours, why should a local organisation take months? If world-class institutions can respond professionally to inquiries, why should Nigerian organisations consider responsiveness optional?”
Addressing the trust deficit in corporate Nigeria, Baale observed that trust was the currency of sustainable business. Without it, customers would leave, employees would disengage, investors would hesitate, and reputations would suffer.
He added that customer experience had become the new competitive advantage over corporate arrogance. While customers remember how they were treated, suppliers remember how they were respected, and employees remember how they were valued.
He noted that corporate culture did not emerge accidentally but flowed directly from leadership. He warned that employees rarely behaved differently from what leaders tolerated, emphasising that culture was not what was written on office walls but what leaders repeatedly modelled.
On the human side of business, Baale warned against losing humanity to technology, stating that automation should improve efficiency but never replace basic courtesy. Behind every email, complaint, and supplier interaction was a human being or a family depending on that relationship.
He shared his experience while working as a level-one manager at Pfizer, where a critically ill employee requiring dialysis was sent abroad by the company for about six years. The company later flew the employee’s family overseas to be with him, purchased two personal dialysis machines to continue his treatment safely in Nigeria, and employed personal home maids to support his intensive care. Baale explained that this exemplary corporate care motivated him to extend his planned five-year stay with the company to 25 years.
To build a world-class Nigerian corporate culture, Baale urged companies to anchor their operations on global best practices, which include continuous training, measuring customer satisfaction, encouraging feedback, and embracing total transparency.
Expressing optimism about Nigeria’s economic future, he said the country possessed all the ingredients required to build globally competitive organisations, noting that the primary issue was consistency and scale rather than capability.
He called for a new corporate social contract in Nigeria where customers were respected, employees were valued, suppliers were treated fairly, and media professionals were engaged as true partners.
Earlier in his opening remarks, the President and Chief Executive Officer of World Stage Limited, Mr Segun Adeleye, stated that the business forum aimed to address whether minimum standards of professional courtesy still existed or if the corporate world had devolved into a jungle for the survival of the fittest.
Making reference to a recent public declaration by Vice President Kashim Shettima that Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises accounted for 90 per cent of businesses and 60 million jobs in Nigeria, Adeleye lamented that small businesses remained at the receiving end of an oppressive corporate culture.
The business forum attracted prominent corporate officials and media executives, including the President of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Chief Emeka Obegolu, and the Lagos State Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, Hon. Mosopefoluwa George, who was represented by the Director of Budget, Mr Olufemi Orojimi.
