Strategic Planning and Implementation Challenges in the County Government of Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

Organizations formulate and implement strategies to remain competitive in their ever-changing operating environment. Strategy implementation is the procedure that transforms the systems without hesitation to fulfill the objectives. The study sought to establish the challenges that face the County government of Nairobi in implementing its strategic plan. The theories that guided this study included stakeholder theory, resource based view theory and institution based view theory . The study made use of case study as the research design. This study adopted primary data which was collected by use of an interview guide. This study targeted 11 senior officers who were well conversant with strategic implementation challenges at the County government of Nairobi. The researcher personally conducted the interviews. Care and control was achieved by keeping a register of all the questions asked and their responses. This study adopted qualitative analysis since it enabled the researcher to describe, analyze and the subject matter of the research at the same time because it was difficult to do so numerically. Qualitative analysis of the study was carried out through the use of content analysis. Based on the study findings the study concluded that the Nairobi City County experienced challenges in implementing its strategic plan. The specific challenges included organization structure challenges, organization culture challenges, leadership challenges, communication challenges, lack of adequate resources and existence of conflicting organization objectives. The study also concluded that these challenges affect the implementation of strategic plans negatively in that it slowed the process as well as resulting to inefficiencies and increased costs. The study also concluded that there exists remedies to these challenges. These remedies were such as designing a new structure to allow integration of the duties of the Nairobi City Council with those of the devolved units. Adoption of a transformational style of leadership would help solve communication challenges and challenges emanating from use of poor leadership styles. There was also the remedy of adoption of a more flexible organization culture. The study recommends that Nairobi City County should come up with proper human resource policies which have provision for capacity building through training. The study also recommends that Nairobi City County should embrace diversity in its culture. Further, the study recommends that Nairobi City County should consider adopting a flexible organizational structure whereby decisions and functions of the County can be decentralized to enhance flexibility and efficiency in decision making and procedures. The management should consider reviewing the structure periodically to counter environmental changes.