TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND PERFORMANCE OF RUSINGA GROUP OF SCHOOLS IN KENYA
Maurice Juma Nyamori - Master of Business Administration Degree (Strategic Management), Kenyatta University, Kenya
Shadrack Bett - Department of Business Administration, Kenyatta University, Kenya
ABSTRACT
The Education sector has consistently been characterized by persistent operational inefficiencies and poor customer services and in order to address the problems of inefficiency in service delivery these organizations are fast adopting TQM in order to make them effective in meeting public demands. This study seeks to establish the total quality management practices employed by private schools in Kenya and the effect this has on their performance. The specific objectives of the study were to establish the influence of customer focus, continuous improvement, employee involvement and leadership commitment on organizational performance of Rusinga Group of schools. The study was anchored on three theories which include resource-based view theory, Deming’s theory and Crosby’s theory. Empirical literature was based on the continuous improvement, customer focus, employee involvement and leadership. This research study applied the descriptive research design. Descriptive research design was chosen because it enabled the researcher to generalize the findings to a larger population. The target population composed of the 124 respondents employed at the Rusinga Group Schools. The structure at Rusinga Group of Schools had put staff in three categories; Senior Management Team, Heads of department and Teachers. Stratified random sampling technique was used since population of interest is not homogeneous and could be subdivided into groups or strata to obtain a representative sample. The study found out that customer focus significantly influenced overall performance. Leadership commitment to programmes, Employee involvement and continuous improvement also had significant influence on performance. The study concludes that the group of schools had the capacity to satisfy customer needs and wants. Rusinga Group of school valued both the internal and external customers and the school services met the customers’ specific needs which were identified from time to time. Rusinga Group of school leadership had provided a healthy and conducive working environment to its staff of all cadres. Rusinga Group of school gave feedback of performance appraisal to employees annually. The schools had significantly invested in technological infrastructure. The school had proper mechanism of system automation and improvement and acted on feedback on M&E. The study recommends that the stakeholders of Rusinga Group of schools ought to ensure that the school has the capacity to satisfy customer needs and wants. Rusinga Group of school leadership ought to provide a healthy and conducive working environment to all staff. Rusinga Group of school ought to regularly give feedback of performance appraisal to employees to promote performance and morale. The group of schools’ human resource policy ought to encourage employee involvement in decision making. The group of schools ought to continually improve technology infrastructure in line with the needs of the school which change from time to time as well as the changes in the environment as well as its various customers.
