Effect of Deployment of Strategic Leadership on Organizational Performance: A Case Study of Selected Dairy Processing Firms in Nairobi City County, Kenya

Lucy Kiende^1, and Janet Kavengi Muthimi¹

¹School of Business, Economics & Tourism, Kenyatta University, Kenya

Cite this paper

Lucy Kiende and Janet Kavengi Muthimi. Effect of Deployment of Strategic Leadership on Organizational Performance: A Case Study of Selected Dairy Processing Firms in Nairobi City County, Kenya. Journal of Business and Management Sciences. 2024; 12(1):46-59. doi: 10.12691/JBMS-12-1-5

Abstract

The serious issue in the Kenyan dairy processing firms is poor strategic leadership in the midst of the fierce competition as organizations compete to achieve competitive advantage and market reach at through enhance performance. The general objective of the study was to investigate the influence of strategic leadership on the performance of dairy processing firms in Nairobi City County, Kenya. The specific objectives included determining the effect of organizational core competences, organizational culture, organizational processes and networking on the performance of dairy processing firms in Nairobi City County, Kenya. This study was anchored on dynamic capability theory, goal setting theory and resource-based view theory. The study adopted a descriptive research design. The respondents for the study were 350 staff members. The study used a semi - structured questionnaire as the data collection instrument. Primary data was analysed using statistical package for social sciences based on the questionnaires. From the study findings, it established that core competences has a significant and direct relationship with core competences and performance of dairy processing firms. The study established that there is a direct relationship between organization culture and performance of dairy processing firms. The study findings indicated that there is significant relationship between organizational process and performance of dairy processing firms and lastly, majority of the respondents agreed that networking impacts performance of dairy processing firms. The management of the dairy processing firms should include core competencies in its strategic plans to ensure continued high performance. Organizational culture should be enhanced since it enhances performance and the dairy processing firms must encourage a culture in which employees are allowed to understand how the organization operates. The organizational process must be carefully worked out and applied process in the entire organizations. This process involves determining what work is needed to accomplish the goal and assigning those tasks to individuals. This should result in a work environment where all team members are aware of their responsibilities. The dairy processing firms should focus on ways of maximizing the utilization of relational trust by cultivating trust amongst staff and interactions in open forums, and encouraging information sharing amongst their networks in order to boost performance. In addition, these dairy processing firms should create strategic networks and partnerships that are unique and inimitable by other organizations to enable them acquire innovations, resources, skills and competencies, thus improving performance. There is need to focus on a different geographical area to establish whether the results will be similar to the findings of the current study. The study should also cover different variables not used in the current study such as strategic thinking, competitive advantage and organizational resources.

Keywords

strategic leadership, firm performance, brand promotion, competitive advantage, work life balance, organization culture, organizational core competencies, organizational process

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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