INFLUENCE OF STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP ON STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION AT KENYA REVENUE AUTHORITY, SOUTHERN REGION IN KENYA
Titus Mabururu Nyong’a - Master of Business Administration (Strategic Management), Kenyatta University, Kenya
Rugami Maina - Lecturer, Department of Business Administration, School of Business, Kenyatta University, Kenya
ABSTRACT
While a well-formulated strategy, a strong and effective pool of skills, and human capital are extremely important resources for strategy success, the high failure rate of strategy implementation efforts is well documented, and many barriers to effective strategy implementation exist. Poor leadership, and specifically strategic leadership, at the top of the organisation have been identified as one of the major barriers to effective strategy implementation. From the reviewed literature, strategic leadership may be viewed as that function of inspiring, involving, motivating and deploying a team to perform their respective activities with the aim of achieving desired strategic and organizational objectives. Kenya Revenue Authority like other governmental or private organizations has faced the challenge of not realizing in full targets of its corporate strategic plans. As clearly demonstrated in its sixth strategic plan, only 140 out of 240 BSC targets were attained in the planning period of between 2013 and 2016. This represented a 58% performance. It is conspicuous that the role of strategic leadership on the said performance has not been evaluated by KRA. Most of the few available studies on leadership and strategy implementation have established that effective leadership and strategy implementation have a positive relationship. Little work has been carried out in this area with regard to public organizations. The main objective of this study was to investigate the influence of leadership on strategy implementation, a case of Kenya Revenue Authority, Southern Region in Kenya. To achieve this the research investigated the following specific objectives: to establish the influence of management’s commitment on strategy implementation at the Kenya Revenue Authority in Southern Region, to establish the influence of participative leadership on strategy implementation at the Kenya Revenue Authority in Southern Region, to assess the influence of employee motivation system on strategy implementation at the Kenya Revenue Authority in Southern Region and to examine the influence of delegation on strategy implementation at the Kenya Revenue Authority in Southern Region. This study adopted a descriptive research design. The target population of the study was the total of 245employees of the rank supervisor to deputy commissioner at the Kenya Revenue Authority within Southern Region. The study made use of simple random sampling method and a sample of 20% of the total respondents generated a sample size of 49 respondents. The researcher used an open and structured questionnaire to collect primary data. The researcher used drop and pick method as a procedure of data collection. He also made use of a research assistant, who he first trained on data collection techniques, to collect data for the study. A pilot study was undertaken to discover any possible problems related to the design of the questionnaire in terms of the degree of clarity and its validity. The study also applied the regression analysis to establish the relationship between the dependent and the independent variables. It was concluded that strategic leadership has a positive and significant relationship with strategy implementation. The study concluded that management commitment, participative leadership, employee motivation system and delegation as strategic leadership practices have a positive and significant effect on the implementation of strategy at the KRA, Southern Region. The study concluded that employee motivation systems at the KRA are not sufficient and therefore contribute to inadequate strategy implementation. The study recommends that the Kenya Revenue Authority needs to improve staff capacity and motivation to improve their performance which in turn translates to better strategy implementation.
