Influence of Employee Empowerment on Performance: Evidence from Deposit Taking Sacco’s in Kenya

Abstract

Leadership is one of the most important components of management in any business unit. An organization with good leadership tends to have a better chance to survive in todays’ competitive environment. Leaders should engage in strategic leadership practices for instance employee empowerment. Employee empowerment has consistently been argued to enhance performance, yet related studies have generated ambiguous findings. This paper considers the influence of employee empowerment on performance of Deposit taking Sacco’s in Kenya. This study was guided by positivism research philosophy. A descriptive correlational approach was chosen for this study. The study focused on all 42 deposit taking SACCOs in Nairobi County. The study targeted 168 respondents and employed census technique. Purposive sampling was employed to select the CEO’s and senior managers of Deposit Taking SACCO’s. Further simple random technique was employed in selecting 12 CEO’s who were to be interviewed. Primary data was collected using close ended questionnaires and an interview guide. Questionnaires were administered on 126 senior managers while a sample of 12 CEO’s who were randomly selected were interviewed. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were adopted for data analysis. Descriptive analysis entailed frequencies, percentages, mean and standard deviation. Regarding inferential statistics, Pearson’s product moment correlation and regression analysis were conducted. Content analysis was also done to analyze information obtained through interviews. Results revealed that employee empowerment had an influence on performance. The study recommends that Deposit Taking SACCO’s should empower employees to enhance superior performance.