Role of Supply Chain Knowledge Transfer on the Performance of State Corporations in Kenya

Abstract

Knowledge is considered as the capacity to take effective action in varied and uncertain situations. Supply chain member can contribute to the creation, management and dissemination of collective knowledge throughout the organization. A successful company should be a knowledge-creating company: that is, one which is able to consistently produce new knowledge, to disseminate it throughout the company and to embody it into new products or services quickly. The supply chain is endowed with great specialized knowledge that can be of great use to all the members of the supply network. To leverage this, the supply chain members must transfer this knowledge on either side of the chain. The main objective of this study was to examine the role of supply chain knowledge transfer on the performance of State Corporations in Kenya. The specific objectives of this study were: to establish the role of supply chain acquired knowledge transfer, supply chain created knowledge transfer, supply chain skills transfer and supply chain competencies transfer as intervened by innovative thinking on performance of State Corporations in Kenya. There are two basic schools of thoughts which have focused on knowledge transfer theories, namely behaviorist psychology which is based on an empirical epistemology and cognitive psychology which is based on a rational epistemology. Empiricists have espoused the view that knowledge is derived from sensory impressions. Several theories guided this research which included: behaviorist psychology, cognitive psychology, the learning curve, experiential learning, knowledge transfer model and resource based theory. This research adopted a positivist, quantitative approach to the development of the research instrument. A cross-sectional survey research design was used in this study with a descriptive approach. The choice of this design was appropriate for this study since it utilizes a questionnaire as a tool of data collection and helps to establish the role of supply chain knowledge transfer in the performance of state corporations. The study population comprised of 119 State Corporations in Kenya as listed in Office of the President website. The samples size of this study was 220 respondents i.e. 55respondents from each of the four core supply chain division in the 119 state corporations in Kenya. Descriptive statistics were used aided by Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22 to compute percentages and means of respondents’ answers. Inferential statistics employing multiple regression and correlation analysis was applied to examine the relationship between the research variables. Tables, charts and figures were used to present the analyzed results to ease interpretation. Overall the findings indicated that supply chain knowledge transfer components played a strong role in the performance of state corporations by enabling the production of high quality products and services, making production processes more efficient and effective by both reducing defects in products and services as produced and delivered to the customers. It was also realized that these knowledge components when effectively transferred. The study recommends that state corporations should corroborate with their strategic suppliers to enhance knowledge transfer and sharing between them so that they could leverage on the knowledge bases of each other to enhance their competitiveness. The researcher further recommends state corporations should establish mechanisms to encourage and reward employees who want to share and transfer supply chain knowledge freely.