Strategic Change Management Practices and the Performance of Tier Two and Tier Three Commercial Banks in Kenya

Abstract

Organizational change influences the manner in which firms operate and that for them to prosper, they must be dynamic to the changing environments they operate. The management of strategic change is always incomplete without a thorough understanding of strategy. Negative organizational performance is attributed to the lack of an organization or organizations from embracing fully built-in strategic change management efforts in marketing as a key driver of strategic change to win competition and thus attain a positive performance. It is therefore evident that lack of appropriate strategic change management practices can affect organizations inversely. This study sought to investigate the impact of strategic change management practices on the performance of tier two and tier three commercial banks in Kenya. The theoretical review centered on the resource based theory, the dynamic capabilities theory and contigency theory. Empirical literature was reviewed on the challenges of Managing Strategic Change, strategic change management practices and performance. The study adapted a descriptive survey research design. All the 37 banks listed under tier two and tier three status were under the interest of the research population. Population scope was confined to head offices of the selected banks and whose results will be representative of the rest of branches for those banks. Conducting a census study was necessary because the population that was targeted for this research work was small and hence manageable. Questionnaires were used to collect data from respondents.Prior to data analysis, data cleaning and coding was carried out and conclusion made there after. Measures of central tendency such as median, mean and mode were established using Descriptive statistics. Relationship between different study variables was established using inferential statistics. Using content analysis, Qualitative statistics were analysed. The significance of variable relationships was determined by the Analysis of variance (ANOVA). SPSS software was used to facilitate data Analysis. The study establishes that tier two and tier three banks embrace focus strategy, differentiation strategy, diversification strategy, information communication strategy training strategy and performance management strategy as practices that are crucial to tier two and tier three banks’ realization of greater financial performance levels. Diversification practices, Performance Management System Practices, differentiation practices and focus practices have been adopted to a moderate extent, job description and training programs to a little extent and information technology practices to having been adopted to a high extent. The study recommends that all these practices be considered for adoption as a high extent as they are vital in the improvement of tier two and tier three banks’ performance. The researcher recommends further studies on similar topic but on tier one banks in order to determine similarities or dichotomies in research findings so as to determine some of the practices tier one banks are using to beat tier two and tier three banks in the market and which if embraced by these tier two and tier three banks, performance can be at par.