Cultural Advantages Used by Delmonte to Advance Profitability in Kenya

Abstract

Kenya is among the many developing countries who have worked in the pursuit of retaining MNCs and attracting more foreign investors. The government through the trade department and the ministry of foreign affairs has worked hard to improve foreign direct investment in the country (De Simone et al., 2020). From the president’s directives issued in a press statement on 1st may 2020 during the Labor Day celebrations, a declaration was made to ease the laws governing foreign direct investments in the country. This directive was to enable foreign investors to easily set up and run their businesses in Kenya without hindrance from both local and national authorities. The directive given would ensure successful entry and trade into the Kenyan market with less restrictions of trade. This new directive is set to target more foreign investors and MNCs. In correspondence to the directive there is an expectation of foreign investors permanently settling in Kenya hence interfering with the local culture. For MNCs to run their operations successfully, they require resources such as minerals, land and water. An increase in settlement for these MNCs will lead to an increased demand for these resources. Due to the nature of limited resources in Kenya, a conflict might ensue between the communities and the MNCs. This is because both parties will be claiming an appropriation right over the inefficient resources. A fight for the resources will lead to over using the already available ones hence leading to depletion of the resources. When a community’s resources get depleted, it lags behind in the socio-economic development (Orts, 2019). MNCs in Kenya tend to have competition on already existing Kenyan companies in the same industry. Local investors lack skilled and enough labor supply as all skilled labor is poached by the foreign investors. Foreign investors have access to foreign markets and highly innovative technologies which lead to large scale manufacture of products (De Simone et al., 2020). Due to the economies of scale presented by the large scale manufacturing and production by MNCs, competition impedes the market throwing out the small scale companies. According to the discoveries, the most occupants living close to MNCs had assumptions from the MNC. This is shown by the greater part (96.7%) of respondents certifying that they had assumptions from the MNC. It was not additionally shocking that the significant assumptions were financial in nature having work and decrease in destitution as the most often referenced. In any case, further tests conducted by the researcher uncovered that the MNC did not have any information regarding such assumptions; (Uwafiokum, 2007) portrays this as a mental agreement. The Delmonte Corporation has been an MNC that has operated in the country for a long period of time. Previous study has focused on employer-employee relationship and the impact of the MNC to Kenya’s GDP. However, there exists a gap on the impact the MNC has on the culture of the local residents, which has led to its improved performance. This research took a bias approach and relied more on qualitative aspects with a little qualitative aspect to confirm some results. The study was facilitated by the Kiambu County and specifically the office of the Thika sub county which harbors the Delmonte Corporation.