www.theinternationaljournal.org > RJCBS: Volume: 03, Number: 12, October-2014 Page 36 The Impact of Organizational Environment on Corporate Performance Ugwa, Magnus Lecturer Department Of Business Administration And Management Osisatech Polytechnic, Enugu-Nigeria. Okonkwo, Chukwudi Joseph Lecturer Department Of Cooperative Economics And Management Osisatech Polytechnic, Enugu-Nigeria. ABSTRACT The Nigerian business sector should play a major role in the economic development of the country and the actualization of the Millennium Development Goals. However, its performance indices - profit, capacity utilization and contribution to GDP indicates that some sectors has performed poorly. The general objective of this study is the assessment of the impact of the external environment on the operations of business sector in Nigeria with a view to determining the level of adaptability of the firms and its implications on their corporate performance. Specifically, the study tend to; ascertain the impact of information management on corporate performance of business organizations, to find out the extent to which organizational rigidity contributes to the high level of business mortality, to ascertain the extent to which environment turbulence contributes to the poor corporate performance. The study adopted evolution theory and from the reviewed literature, we discovered that business environment impacts negatively on the corporate performance of business organizations. The implication of the findings is that, given that Nigerian business environment is general hostile; the owners of business organization should adopt appropriate strategies that would enable them to manage environmental turbulence effectively and help minimize the negative effects of environment on their performance. Based on the findings, we conclude that the business environment impacts negatively on the corporate performance of business organizations. We therefore recommend that organizations should make information management a priority, ensure greater heterogeneity of the dominant coalition and should intensify efforts on research and development. INTRODUCTION Organizations are systems. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a system as a set or assemblage of things connected, or interdependent, so as to form a complex unity; a whole composed of parts in orderly arrangement according to some scheme or plan. Systems can be considered to be either closed or open. A system is regarded as open if it exchanges information, energy or material with its environment as happens with biological or social systems; otherwise it is regarded as closed (Koontz et al, 1981). Researchers have long discovered that organizations are open systems that constantly interact with their environment and in the process affect and are affected by the environment. According to Hicks and Gullet (1987), an organization does not exist in a vacuum but exist in an environment that provides resources and limitations. If it is to remain prosperous, an organization must continually adapt to its environment which is constantly changing. They also believe that failure to adequately adapt to the environment is a major cause of organization failure. The environment in which organizations operate in Nigeria as in other parts of the world is dynamic and is becoming increasingly so. As the environment changes, there is the need for organizations to change in order to adapt to such environmental changes. Organizations that are unable to adapt eventually die or fold up. The increase in the rate of change, complexity as well as level of competition in the Nigerian business environment can be attributed to a number of factors. First among such factors is globalization. Propelled by accumulated developments in transportation and information technology, globalization has transformed the economics of the world into one global market where local market boundaries to a large event have been affected. This simply implies that a