STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION FACTORSANDPERFORMANCE OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING CENTRES IN BUNGOMA COUNTY, KENYA

Abstract

Strategy implementation is a crucial and important process in strategic management. In order to be successful organizations need to effectively implement their strategies to enhance their performance.Vocational training centres(VTCs)have experienced a lot of attention in the past five years,due to their role in attaining the MDGs, vision 2030 and afterthe promulgation of the Constitution of Kenya in August 2010 which devolved VTCs to county governments.A skilled workforce is a basic requirement for driving the engine of industrial and economic growth. Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) holds the key.This ideahas causedmanyVTCs to come up with strategies to suit in the competitive market in a bid to survive. However,the VTCs have not performed as expected leading one to inquire if there is a problem with strategyimplementation.This study therefore establishedthe effect of strategy implementationfactorson performance of VCTsin Bungoma County, Kenya. The studyspecific objectives wereto examine the effect of organizational; culture, structure, leadership andresourceallocation on performance of VTCs. The study wasanchored on Theory of PlannedBehavior, other theories that guided the study were;Classical Organization Theory, Contingency Theory of Leadership and Resource Based View Theory. A descriptiveand correlational research designswereused. The target population includedManagers,DeputyManagersand Instructorsof the 36 Public VTCs in Bungoma County, totaling to189. The sample of 57respondents wasselected through stratified random sampling. Primary data wascollected through semi-structured questionnaires usingdrop and pick method.The researcher carriedout thematic analysis on interview data in order to find out a common pattern across the data sets. Content validity wasevaluatedthrough the opinion of scholars and experts in strategy implementation as well as through a pilot test which wascarried out in 10% of the sampletocheck the reliability of the research instruments. Reliability of the questionnaire wasevaluated using the Cronbach alpha test, which providedan acceptable threshold. Descriptive statistics wasapplied to analyze quantitative data in order to generate percentages, means, median, mode, standard deviation and variance of both dependent and independent variables. Inferential statistics in the form of correlation tests and multiple regression analysis wereused to evaluate the influence of the independent variables on the dependent variablesandto establish whether there wasa correlation between independent variables and the dependent variable. This wasachieved through the use of Pearson correlation. Descriptive statistics and inferentialstatistics were employed to analyze data. Data waspresented in the form offrequency distribution tablesthat facilitateddescription and explanation of the study findings.From the findings,organizational resource allocation had the highest positive and significant effect on performance of VTCs in in Bungoma County followed by organizationalstructure, then organizationalleadership and lastly organizationalculture. The study also found out that organizationalresource allocation, organizational structure, organizational leadership and organizational cultures contributes to 34.5%, 26%, 22.1% and 15.4% of performance of VTCs in Bungoma County respectively. The study therefore recommends that for better efficient strategy implementation towards realization of superior performance in VTCs in Bungoma County, the county management should prioritize on organization resource allocation, organization structure, organization leadership and organization culture in that order.