Factors Influencing Strategy Implementation of Water Supply Firms in Kenya (Case Study of Mombasa Water Supply and Sanitation Limited)

Abstract

Strategy implementation is understood as one of the most difficult business challenges facing today’s managers. The challenges can be ascribed to several reasons among them ever changing external environment, inadequacy of resources and inappropriate organizational systems among others, despite the neglect by academicians and consultants. No known study has been done on factors influencing strategy implementation in MOWASSCO. This study therefore sought to fill this gap by investigating the factors influencing strategy implementation of water supply firms in Kenya. The specific objective of the study was to analyze factors influencing strategy implementation of MOWASSCO. They included; leadership, organizational culture, organizational resource and stakeholders. The target population of the study was MOWASSCO in Mombasa amounting to 80 respondents from a population of 20% of 400 employees. The study used stratified random sampling technique to select a sample of 80 employees from three department namely; technical, commercial and finance and administration. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Corresponding author. Tel: +254728743223 E-mail address: muthoni_winnie@yahoo.com. 191International Journal of Sciences: Basic and Applied Research (IJSBAR)(2015) Volume 22, No 2, pp 191-211 Data was collected using structured questionnaire while data analysis was done using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. From the research findings, it was established that organizational leadership performance at MOWASSCO was noted to be generally mentoring, aggressive and results oriented in strategy implementation. High response was noted in the organizational culture questionnaire, this clearly demonstrates that organizational culture plays a critical role in strategy implementation and executive management don’t know what kind of culture support strategy implementation .As a result, it was established that resources plays a very important role in terms of strategy implementation and long range planning. The study clearly demonstrates that strategy implementation has a high performance to the other three functions. The fourth and final objective of the study was to establish the influence of stakeholders in strategy implementation a big number agreed that stakeholders play a vital role in achieving organization strategy implementation this explain reason why all organization should ensure stakeholders get good service and their relation and support towards organization objective is felt. The study concluded that the major factors influencing strategy implementation in MOWASSCO were lack of commitment of top management to strategy implementation, poor leadership style of managers, limited human resource skills, economic forces and pressure from stakeholders. The study recommends that the management should ensure that they employ and deploy qualified and competent individuals. The water firms should implement approaches such as effective reward management systems meant to enhance manager’s commitment. The water sector should improve integrated plans to improve strategy implementation.