| dc.description.abstract | The major determinant of an organization’s success today in this changing turbulent environment depends on the successful implementation of its strategy. Strategy implementation addresses the issue of how to put formulated strategy into effect within the constraints of time, an organization’s financial and human resources and its capabilities. This requires the organizations to deal with resources required, systems and organizational structures and changes. All organizations are environment dependent, they depend on the environment for their inputs and outputs. Every firm should therefore have a competitive strategy which relates it to its environment and enables it to maintain a fit between itself and the environment. The way a strategy is implemented is governed by setting up an ideal framework, rules, guidelines and procedures to be adopted in meeting its goals and objectives. The greatest contribution is in the design and administration of structure and systems that facilitate the implementation of strategic plans. This research was thus aimed at investigating the challenges of implementing diversification strategy at the Mumias Sugar Company in Kenya. The study adopted a case study research design as it sought to gain an in-depth understanding of the specific understanding of the specific challenges in implementing the diversification strategy. A total of ten respondents were interviewed using an unstructured interview guide. The respondents were the senior management staffs in the company who are responsible for strategy formulation and implementation. Data collected was first checked for consistency, coded and then analyzed to arrive at the various conclusions. The study concluded that the major challenges in implementing diversification strategy at the Mumias Sugar Company were; diverse culture, formulated policy to support diversification programs not in agreement with implementing strategic decisions made in diversification programs, conflict of the organizational role, leaders being resistant to change, poor coordination between management, other employees and stakeholders. The study also recommended; having competent, proactive, positive and procedural people involved in policy making, use of evidence-based reward system based on a similar system, need to grow their market to other countries as in the case of sugar which is supplied in East Africa and European countries, need to focus on customers and suppliers before stakeholders within the supply chain and need to introduce packages of bigger sizes of sugar for example 5kg an 10kg in the market. | en |
