Perceived influence of sustainable Human Resource Management capabilities on performance of the National Police Service in Kenya

Abstract

Performance of the National Service Police has been comparatively low in relation to other public sectors despite their efforts to fulfill their mandate in the current dynamic environment characterized by increased demand for service quality, globalization phenomena, fluctuating environmental threats, employee diversity, competition, preferences and technology. For instance, according to the 2017 East Africa Bribery Index (EABI) report, the National Police service is still the most corrupt public sector, with an 83.3% likelihood of corruption. In addition, the Independent Police Oversight Authority reported in 2016 that 71% of Kenyans are dissatisfied with the way the National Police Service provides its services. The inconsistent delivery of services has been attributed to challenges like the appalling working conditions that police officers are required to perform in, the lack of adequate housing facilities, work imbalances, low pay, and insufficient career advancement programs, as shown by Ombudsman, Human Rights Watch, and United Nations Development Program Reports. This served as the foundation for the study that examined how the performance of Kenya's National Police Service was perceived to be influenced by sustainable human resource management capabilities. The specific objectives of the study were to establish the perceived influence of career development, work-life balance and working environment on performance of National Police Service in Kenya. The study was guided by Resource based theory, Attribution theory and Contingency theory. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 398 respondents who were selected from a target population of 101,262 uniformed police officers by employing stratified and simple random sampling. The study employed cross-sectional research design. Descriptive and inferential statistics was used to facilitate analysis of quantitative data with tools such as percentages, mean scores, frequency distribution, and standard deviations, and factor analysis. The key findings along the study objective reveal that police officers perceive sustainable HRM capabilities to have a positive influence on the performance of the National Police Service. The Service's direction and approach to achieving its objectives are clearly seen by the police officers as sustainable HRM capabilities. Consistent with the attribution and resource-based theory, organizational resources like career advancement, work-life balance, and working conditions have been identified as crucial to improving performance. The findings of the study are also consistent with other empirical studies that have identified sustainable HRM capabilities as best practices that will result in superior organizational performance. The study recommends the findings to be applied in the National Police service during policy formulation and decision making. In addition, the study recommends that alignment of perceived sustainable HRM capabilities to the organizational strategy would improve performance of the National Police Service. A critical discussion of this subject suggests a study on other public security institutions, private security entities and comparative studies among East African countries like Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda should be done to determine how sustainable HRM is perceived to influence performance. Additionally, further research to establish whether there is a link between gender complement and the success of implementing sustainable human resource management capabilities may be interesting given that demographic data revealed that there are more male than female police officers.