Organisational Factors, Business Environment, Regulatory Systems and Local Content Practices: A Case of Oil and Gas Companies in Tanzania

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of; organisational related factors and the mediating roles of; business environment and regulatory systems on the local content practices in the oil and gas companies in Tanzania. Five hypotheses were developed from the literatures and data were collected using standardized questionnaires from a sample of 150 respondents selected randomly from the employees of the oil and gas companies operating in Tanzania. The collected data were analysed using regression technique where Barron and Kenny approach for testing mediation were applied. The findings revealed that organisational related factors have significant negative effect on the local content practices and that business environment and regulatory systems support partial mediation between organisational factors and local content practices. The findings imply that oil and gas companies’ activities and strategies have significant roles on developing local industries in Tanzania as its influence on regulatory systems and business environment in the host country is significant.