Strategies adopted by manufacturing multinational corporations to cope with social cultural challenges in Kenya

Abstract

The study on manufacturing multinational corporations in Kenya, is motivated by a desire to understand how these firms are able to face this changed environment, the challenges they face when dealing with social cultural challenges within their operating environment, and coping strategies given that they are operating in a developing world whose political, economical, technological, social and cultural environment is totally different from home countries. The research was carried out through census survey. This was chosen because it provided comprehensive information necessary for comparison purposes. The population of interest in this study included all manufacturing multinational companies in Kenya. According to the ministry of trade and industry for the year 2005, there were 2069 registered manufacturing firms in Kenya. Most of the respondents were corporate strategy managers or marketing managers who had been in the industry for at least five years. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Mean score and standard deviation were used to test the strength of the association between the challenges faced by manufacturing multinational corporations and ineir coping strategies. The study concludes that the manufacturing multinational corporations were faced by various social cultural challenges. These included organization policies and organizational systems and procedures .In addition, the firms were faced by attitude towards change and total quality management. In addition, the study concludes that the manufacturing multinational corporations in Kenya had adopted various to cope with social cultural challenges within the Kenyan concept. The study recommends that for manufacturing multinational corporations in Kenya to overcome the various social cultural challenges. They need to develop various coping strategies. The study also recommend that manufacturing enterprises need to reconfigure rapidly in response to changing needs and opportunity and develop innovative manufacturing processes and products with a focus on decreasing dimensional scale.