Challenges of Strategy Implementation in Higher Education Institutions in Kenya

Abstract

Various prior studies have concurred that 90% of strategic initiatives fail, not due to formulation but to implementation difficulties. Failure of strategy implementation efforts causes enormous costs in the organization. Despite the importance of the implementation process within strategic management, this is an area of study often overshadowed by a focus on the strategy formulation process. Institutions of higher education have been forced to re-examine their operation and position themselves by matching organizational strengths and resources with changes in the environment so as to take advantage of opportunities and overcome or circumvent threats. In positioning themselves these organizations must make appropriate strategic choices that are consistent both at the corporate and business unit level. The primary objective of the research was to investigate the challenges of strategy implementation in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Kenya. The specific objectives were to establish the effect of institutional culture; external environment; organizational structure; managerial skills; human resource development and investigate the intervening effect of quality of staff training in the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable. The study employed a descriptive survey design. The accessible population was senior management, middle management and lecturers of HEIs. This study used both stratified sampling and simple random sampling while the target sample size was 364 employees. A pilot study of 10% of the sample was conducted to improve on validity and reliability. Three hundred and sixty five questionnaires were distributed out of which 354 were returned duly completed resulting into a response rate of 96.7%. The results of the data analysis were presented in form of tables, pie charts, bar charts and scatter plots. The study revealed that institutional culture on its own in the regression model explained the highest of the variation in strategy implementation followed by human resource development, managerial skills, external environment and organizational structure in that order. The study also revealed that the intervening effect of quality of staff training was highest on the relationship between human resource development and strategy implementation followed by managerial skills, institutional culture, organizational structure and external environment. However, the study revealed that on the overall model, organizational structure and managerial skills had an insignificant effect on strategy implementation resulting to an optimal model made up of organizational culture, external environment and human resource development The study recommends that HEIs should intensify the inculcation of positive culture like embracing creativity and innovation, being receptive to new ideas, adopt benchmarking and communicate strategy clearly to staff. HEIs should strategically position themselves by mounting programmes that they have competitive advantage in. They need to seek ways of income generation, seek industry sponsorships for projects and institute organizational structures that support strategy implementation. HEIs are also advised to equip managers with the necessary skills, intensify on improvement of HRD strategies, share feedback, document complaints and use them to improve on the future training. Finally, a comparative study of challenges of strategy implementation in public and private universities among others has been proposed.