Determinants of Strategic Change Implementation in State Corporations in Kenya

Abstract

The study aimed at establishing the determinants of strategic change implementation among the state corporations in Kenya. The specific objectives guiding the study comprised the assessment of the influence of; stakeholders’ involvement, leadership commitment, change communication, employees’ participation, change coercion on strategic change implementation, as well as the influence of the moderating effect of organizational culture on the relationship between the determinants and strategic change implementation in state corporations in Kenya. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey research design and targeted all 392 state corporation in Kenya, grouped into 18 functional categories. A sample of 80 state corporations was derived through proportionate stratified random sampling. The study purposively selected 4 respondents from senior level and middle level management drawn from the critical departments in strategic change implementation namely; the Chief Executive Officer office, the ICT, finance and Human Resources. The total number of respondents thus comprised 320 participants. A questionnaire containing both open ended and closed ended questions was used to collect primary data while secondary data was gathered through reviews of both theoretical and empirical literature. A pilot study was carried out on ten (10) percent of the respondents totaling 32 participants. The goal of piloting was to test both the reliability and validity of the research instruments. The study used Cronbach’s alpha coefficient to test reliability at the mark of 0.848, whereas face and content validity were used for checking for validity of the research instrument. The analysis of the primary data was carried out with the use of SPSS version 21. Descriptive statistics were tabulated into percentages while inferential statistics were provided using correlation and multiple linear regression outputs. The study revealed that stakeholder involvement, leadership commitment, employee participation, change communication and change coercion had significant bearing on strategic change implementation in state corporations in Kenya. The study also found out that organizational culture only added predictive value to both the individual variable models and the overall joint model, but did not moderate the strategic change implementation in state corporations in Kenya. Additionally, the study established that organizational culture acted as a strategic change determinant and not a moderator. This was contrary to the prevailing scholarly view. The study concludes that change coercion, change communication, leadership commitment, stakeholder involvement and employee participation independently affect strategic change implementation in state corporations in Kenya, with change coercion and change communication giving the highest contribution in presence of organizational culture. The study also concludes that organizational culture as a moderator does not affect the implementation of strategic change in organizations. The study recommends that to achieve positive results in implementation of strategic change, state corporations should prioritize use of coercion, communication of the change and ensure stable organizational culture is in place. Similarly, the study recommends for institution of policy guidelines to regulate strategic change implementation process in state corporations in Kenya. Equally, the study recommends a replication of the study in other entities in order to establish the sector specific trends regarding strategic change implementation in organizations, as well as adoption of other research designs.