Abstract. The current global business climate has not been favorable to most firms irrespective of industry affiliation. That condition necessitated companies to adopt operational excellence as a strategy for optimising output with little resources, reducing lead time with the efficient use of assets and employees and avoiding safety and health issues to people and the environment. As a result of the need for operational excellence, many kinds of literature defined the concept based on the context of industry or sector. Industries such as manufacturing, services, oil and gas, mining and so many industries to mention a few, have their unique construct in the definition and therefore causing dilemma on which dimension to hold on to. It is against this backdrop that this paper synthesizes and integrate all the varying dimensions and fuses out similarities, differences and the antecedence of research directions taken on the few mentioned sectors. The paper thus concludes that the unique construct among all the definitions is continuous improvement, cost reduction, quality, time utilization, operational efficiency, staff involvement and output optimisation. However, they varied on risk management, staff health, safety and the concern for the environment, which is unique to oil and gas industry and that can affect the choice of research variables.

Stiffer regulations, the rise in the cost of production, health, safety and environmental issues are some of the daring challenges faced by the oil and gas sector in recent time. Other complexities include pricing framework, advancement in technology, ageing of assets, continued depletion of oil reserves (Mustapha, Umeh & Adepoju, 2015). Also, the increasing stakeholders demand oil firms perform at all cost is the current situation in the oil and gas industry. These pressures compelled the firms in the sector to develop and adopted a strategy that helped them reduce and control some of the challenges. Thus the top strategic priority for oil and gas firms remains operational excellence for cost reduction, and health and safety programs (PwC, 2017). With operational excellence in place, primary containment loss drops by 40%-50%, export deferrals declines by 98.5% and emergency and reactive activities reduces by 80%-90%

Even in the post-pandemic period, the Covid-19 pandemic still has a multiplier effect onthe performance of SMEs. As sales revenues dropped, branches were closed, and employees’ jobs and overall performance were impacted negatively around the world. This paper aims to review literature to determine research antecedents on the relationship between firms’ entrepreneurial orientation and manufacturing SMEs' performance in the post-Covid-19 era in Africa and the rest of the developing economies. This is to note the area needed to cover some of the major causes of the variation in this sub-sector of the economy for future research. A literature survey methodology was employed for the current article. Articles were reviewed from sources including journals (Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, Academia, and ResearchGate platform), and ordinary articles that spanned from 2002-2022 to understand the antecedents of research contexts and variables explored. The findings revealed that most studies focused on large-scale manufacturing firms and SMEs and considered external environmental factors like regulation, competition, interest and a few others to explain variation in enterprise performance. Furthermore, the result shows that non-multidimensional measures of enterprise performance were used. Consequently, a new conceptual framework was developed to look at firms’ inward entrepreneurial orientation as the driving factor for organisational performance improvement. The implication of the proposed framework developed is to harness strategies for performance improvement, growth, and survival in a complex and dynamic business environment. Thus, the paper concludes that the way to this development is for SMEs to build capacities that entrench theircorporate entrepreneurial orientation to suit every business situation.

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