Decision Making Approaches and Operational Performance of Large Manufacturing Firms in Nairobi County
Abstract
The decision-making processes and operational effectiveness of large industrial enterprises in
Nairobi County were the main subjects of this study. The study's goals were to iassess ithe iextent
ito iwhich large manufacturing companies in Nairobi County use decision-making techniques
when making operational decisions and to ascertain the impact of these approaches ion ithe
ioperational iperformance iof imanufacturing companies in Nairobi County. The study employed
a idescriptive icross-sectional iresearch approach and conducted a survey. Data were gathered
from operations managers, production managers, or their counterparts at significant
manufacturing enterprises in Nairobi City County using web-based google form surveys. 46
people were included in the sample, stratified by manufacturing subsectors. To individual
managers, all of the surveys were distributed by email and WhatsApp. There were forty
responses in total, and it was decided that they could be analyzed. Both descriptive and
inferential statistics were employed in the study's analysis. According to the respondents'
background data, we had more men than women working in the targeted departments. The
respondents were in a good position to supply the information the researcher was looking for
because they had a decent degree of education and had worked for the individual companies for
long periods of time. Findings show that significant manufacturing enterprises in Nairobi City
County apply the identified decision-making processes to a moderate to a considerable level, as
indicated by three or more. Dependent decision-making models are the most often employed,
whereas avoidant decision-making models are the least. The second goal was to investigate the
connection between large manufacturers' operational success and their decision-making
processes. According to the study's multiple regression model's positive coefficients, the
dependent and rational decision-making techniques and operational performance are positively
correlated. Though the latter was not statistically significant, it was discovered that intuitive
and avoidant decision-making processes had a negative association with operational
performance. The methods used to make decisions have a greater overall impact on operational
performance. The study recommends that manufacturing firms avoid using an intuitive
decision-making approach but instead rely on multi-criteria methods by employing methods
and tools available for aiding decision-making. They could also use ia igroup idecision isupport
isystem i(GDSS), ian iinteractive icomputer-based tool that helps ia inumber iof idecision-makers
i(working itogether iin ia igroup) discover answers to situations that are inherently unstructured, to
improve dependent decision-making. The study's main shortcoming is that it used a simple
multiple regression model to determine the relationship between decision-making strategies and
operational performance, despite the fact that there are other factors that can influence this
relationship and should be considered in the research. Future studies should strengthen this
model by integrating environmental dynamism or complexity as a moderating or intervening
variable to offer it greater explanatory power
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
- School of Business [1342]
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