Organizational culture and performance of transport and logistics firms in Mombasa County

Abstract

Transport sector in Kenya is facing numerous challenges of low performance in their daily business operations, with most of them indicating retrenching employees to survive. The general objective of the study was to determine the effect of the organizational culture and performance of transport and logistics firms in Mombasa County. The specific objective study was to determine the effect of hierarchy culture, to establish the effect of clan culture, to evaluate the effect of adhocracy culture, and to assess the effect of market culture and performance among the transport and logistics firms in Mombasa County. The study was based on a competing value framework. The theories that guided the study were, the social exchange theory, Hofstede theory of culture and Theory of performance. The study adopted an explanatory research design, and the target population was 892 transport and logistics firms operating in Mombasa County. A simple random sampling method was used. The study applied Yamane’s formulae to arrive at a sample size of 276 firms as a unit of analysis to provide data using a structured Likert questionnaire. SPSS version 25 aided in analyzing the data and the significant level set at 0.05. Descriptive results found that at least each of the four competing value culture types were present on average, mean Hierarchy culture (mean= 3.55, SD = 0.86) Clan culture (mean = 3.85, SD = 0.706), Adhocracy culture (mean =3.94, SD = 0.66), Market culture (mean= 4.21, SD=0.68) among the Transport and logistics firms. Correlation results showed that market culture was the most dominant association with performance (r=.624, p<.001), and hierarchy the weakest association with performance (r.377, p<.001), clan culture in association with performance indicated (r.431, p<.001), Adhocracy culture also in association with performance influenced (r=.380, p<.001). Regression results showed that Clan culture (B=.169 p=.007), Hierarchy culture (B=, .088, p=.040) and market culture (B=.460, p=.000) each had a significant effect on the performance of transport and logistics in Kenya. A key conclusion drawn from these findings shows that the four types of organizational cultural values have a major associated role in the performance of transport and logistics firms in Mombasa County. The study recommends the management of transport and logistics firms in Mombasa County to ensure all cultural values are taken seriously to enhance improved performance in their firms. Future researchers may consider using more than one method of data collection to enhance the credibility of findings. Finally, future researchers will do longitudinal studies to help understand issues of time and cultural changes other than the current cross-sectional study in nature to enable them to determine the effect of time on culture type.