Global competition, dynamic environment; and the need for efficient and effective resource utilization have created a lot of pressure on today’s organisations including Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Hence, the need for leaders capable of engaging in daring activities such as improvisation and entrepreneurial self-efficacy cannot be overemphasized. The objective of the study is to examine the relationship between leaders’ strategic improvisation, entrepreneurial
self-efficacy and HEIs performance in Nigeria. Using a structured questionnaire to academic leaders in HEIs in Kano state, Nigeria a total of 220 useable data was gathered and analysed using SmartPLS 3.0. The result indicates that all the exogenous variables have a significant relationship with the endogenous variable of the study. Strategic improvisation and entrepreneurial self-efficacy explains 21.9% of the variance of HEIs performance. Interestingly, strategic
improvisation was found to be the strongest predictor of HEIs performance in Nigeria. Finally, implications and suggestions for future studies were presented and elaborated.
