Strategy Implementation Imperatives and Performance of County Governments in the Central Region, Kenya

Abstract

Every organization’s aim is to realize and uphold great performance which leads to progression and growth for the organization. In order to improve competitiveness and safeguard higher performance, organizations have enhanced the strategy implementation process. There has been disquiet about poor service delivery by the devolved units from its citizenry even though formulation of strategic plans upon which performance contracting was based in the devolved systems of governance in Kenya was incorporated in 2013. Counties have fallen way below their revenue collection targets, projects are incomplete while pending bills have continued to accumulate, high personnel emoluments, roads are poorly maintained, no markets for traders, poor or lack of street lighting, irregular garbage collection, and non-payment or delayed payments to contractors and service providers leading to overall poor performance. This is in spite of the reality that County Governments obligate themselves to offering these services in their plans. This scenario was the researcher’s motivation to want to investigate the effect of strategy implementation imperatives on County Governments' performance as the general objective. The specific objectives were to analyse the effect of management commitment, organizational culture, staff competence, budget process, and organizational structure on County Governments’ performance in the central region in Kenya. It also sought to analyse the moderating effect of government regulations on the relationship between strategy implementation imperatives and performance of County Governments in the central region of Kenya. The study was guided by Higgin’s 8S’framework, the balanced score card, general systems theory, and public interest theory of regulation. It employed positivism philosophy, descriptive and explanatory research design, and multi-stage sampling to draw a sample of 252 respondents from the target population of 735 respondents. The unit of analysis was the five counties in the central region and the unit of observation was personnel in the County Government. Primary data was collected through structured electronic questionnaires. To analyse quantitative data, descriptive statistics were computed using mean scores and standard deviations while inferential statistics entailed use of multiple regression and analysis of variance to test the overall model using p-value <0.05. Tables, figures and prose were used to present results. Respondents were made aware of the purpose of the study and assured of their anonymity and privacy. The study found out that management commitment, staff competence and organizational structure positively and significantly affect county government performance thus from the analysis of data the conclusion was that management commitment, staff competence and organisational structure is a significant predictor of County performance. However, budget process and organizational culture had no significant effect on county government performance in the central region of Kenya. The model summary indicated that 72.4 % variation in county government performance in the central region of Kenya can be explained by these strategy implementation imperatives and that government regulation had significant moderating effect on the relationship between strategy implementation imperatives and county government performance in central region of Kenya. This study therefore contributes to knowledge by; providing a conceptual framework which brings together strategy implementation imperatives that affect performance of county governments, providing research evidence of significance of strategy implementation imperatives in the county government performance, revealing what is at risk of being lost if the strategy implementation imperatives are ignored, and by testing government regulation as a moderating variable in this relationship. The study recommends that: development of policies should lay emphasis on organizational structure, management commitment and staff competence and how well they align to county government strategies, and that a policy should be developed that allows for continuity of majority of top-level personnel once the political regime changes. Further study should be conducted on all the 47 counties and other regions, as well as on other moderating variables.