| dc.description.abstract | New businesses pass through transitional stages that present new challenges to their
founders. These transitional stages are represented by an organizational life cycle which
follows a well known pattern of early growth, rapid growth, maturity and decline. For a small business to make the transition to a medium and large organisation, it’s important that it manages the growth phase effectively. Although growth is a defining feature for a successful enterprise, it does not mean that the enterprise has a right to grow. It merely means that if managed the right way it has the potential to grow. Growth must be an objective and strategy for the venture and it must be managed. Management of growth can be approached in a number of ways such as combining the critical success factors for growth, managing the life cycle of the firm or managing the different types of growth. To effectively manage growth, Small and Medium Enterprises need to focus on strategic planning, financial management, marketing, employee management, production management, technology monitoring and control. This study set out to find out how Suntra Investment Bank (SIB) had managed growth. SIB survived a very turbulent time in the capital markets during which several stock brokerage firms collapsed, were put under receivership or were acquired by other companies. This study set out to address two main objectives which were to determine the approaches adopted by SIB to manage growth and to determine how SIB has managed the organisation culture through its growth
In order to address these two objectives the study made use of both primary data and
secondary data. Primary data was collected through personal interviews. Secondary data was collected from journals, websites and in-house publications. A content analysis was then carried out on the data obtained and the findings were presented in form of brief discussions on the growth of the company, the approaches adopted to manage both growth and the organisation culture and on what informed those approaches.The study established that SIB had gone through a full organisation life cycle marked by a
period of slow growth which lasted about 12 years between 1990 and 2002, rapid growth was experienced between 2003 and 2006 when the company reached maturity and there was a decline in growth in period between 2007 and 2007. The study established that growth for the company was highly dependent on the performance of the economy and the change in government at the end of 2002 was a huge milestone for the company due to increased investor confidence which saw to an increase in investors in the capital market and there by positive returns in the company too. The study established that SIB had adopted various approaches to manage growth more so during the rapid growth phase and the decline stage. These approaches were applied to varying extents with the key ones being strategic planning, human resource management, financial control, enhancements of the management information systems and management of the organisation culture while standardization marketing and lobbying the government were
used to a lesser extent. In strategic planning the company had developed strategic plans for the years 2000- 2006 and for the years 2008-2012. The study established that the strategic plans were very instrumental in managing the growth for it was during the strategic planning process that the company had done an in-depth situation analysis and come up with objectives and specific strategies to meet the objectives. In Human Resource Management, the researcher found that SIB had changed the organizational structure to match the growth of the company for effective delivery. In addition key changes were made to the recruitment process where vacant positions were filled professionally through short listing and interviewing of candidates as opposed to filling these positions with relatives who did not necessarily have the qualifications required. For financial control the company had sort to raise funds to support its growth through two main channels; bank overdraft and a rights issue. While the bank overdraft helped them honor recurring obligations the rights issue was to raise the share capital to comply with changes in regulation. The researcher found that the company had made changes to its management information systems to make sure it provided them with timely and relevant information for decision making. As at the time of the study, the company was in the process of implementing an SMS system that would further enhance their service delivery.
The study established that SIB had encountered a big challenge in overcoming the
organizational culture barrier. This was so because although SIB saw the need for the
leadership to change the mindset from that of a founder to that of a Manager they too were victims of the long established culture and breaking away from it was a main challenge for the company. The Chief executive and the top management serving with him had a grip over all the operations of the company and often run through with menial task which could have been effectively delegated to their juniors. The company addressed this challenge by having culture change as an objective in the strategic plan and various strategies were developed on how to achieve the objective to include succession planning and induction of all new employees on the mission vision and core values of the company. The study concluded that it is very important that companies adopt various approaches to managing growth and to keep evaluating the approaches in light of the changes in the | en |
