INFLUENCE OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE ON ORGANISATIONAL PERFORMANCE: A CASE STUDY OF A KENYAN AIRLINE

Abstract

The study wasconducted with the main objectiveof determiningthe influence oforganizational culture on the performance of a Kenyan Airline.This Kenyan Airline has over the years put in place to initiatives to develop an organizational culture that enhances performance. However the effects of these initiatives have yet to be investigated. To carry out the study, questionnaire was developed and used to capture the required data. The study targeted members of management staff at the Head office in Nairobi.The influence of an organizational culture on the well-being of any business organization has been a subject of many studies. Culture has been recognized by many organizational researchers as one of the key component of a successful organization.Organizational culture is an important resource for enhancing organizational competitiveness. In recent years, there has been attention paid to the influence of organizational culture on organizations effectiveness. This study therefore sought to investigate the influence oforganizational culture on the organizational performance with special focus on a Kenyan Airline. The research adopted adescriptive research design.The target population composed of874Management staff at the airline headquarters in Nairobi stratified through level of management. From each stratum the study used simple random sampling to select 90 respondents. This was 10 % of the target population. Random sampling frequently minimizes the sampling error in the population. The researcheradministered questionnaire to each respondent.Organizational culture was measured using competing value framework developed by Cameron and Quinn. The framework describes the four dimensions of organizational culture and how to measure them. That is Clan, Market, Hierarchy and Adhocracy culture.Organizational performances was measuredby methodswhich have been used in previous similar studies based on Kaplan balanced score card. Financial perspective of the organizational performance data are those available for any publicly quoted company. The information was therefore available to the respondents.Other sources of performance are internal, for example customer surveys. Quantitative data collected was analysed using SPSS and presented through percentages, means, standard deviations and frequencies. Pearson correlation was be used to assess if the relationship between the independent variable, organizational culture and the dependent variable, organizational performance was significant or not. The information has been displayed by use of bar charts, graphs and pie charts. The findings of this study were that all the dimensions of organizational culture as described by Cameron and Quinn are present in the airline. Secondly there is a strongpositive correlation between all dimensions of culture and organizational performance. The major recommendations of this study are that further investigations be done to relate each perspective of organizational performance as described by Kaplan balanced score card and each dimensions of organizational culture so that we can gain a better understanding of each culture influence on each performance.