Strategy implementation at Kenya Power and Lightning Company Limited
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Date
2009Author
Mulila, Nicholas
Type
ThesisLanguage
en_USMetadata
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The Public Corporations have been criticized for inefficiencies and mismanagement. They are said to contribute to many of the problems hindering economic growth such as Public sector deficits, domestic debt and misallocation of resources. In as much as public corporations are important to the Kenyan economy, little research has been done on them. Therefore, it was important to conduct a study to examine strategy implementation and its challenges in Public Corporations in particular KPLC. The objective of the study was to examine strategy implementation and its challenges among Public Corporations with reference to KPLC. The population of interest consisted of eight employees in senior and middle level management at KPLC situated at the company's Nairobi headquarters.
The data was collected using both structured and unstructured questionnaires. The findings of this study established that Strategy implementation, no doubt appears to be the most difficult part of strategic planning process, and many strategies fail at the implementation stage. It is clear that, for an organization to successfully implement its strategy it must ensure the existence and alignment of all strategy supportive aspects of the organization. This means that for an organization to experience successful strategy implementation and achieve its targeted performance, there must be a proper alignment between strategy and the organizational skills and competences; between strategy and the budgets; between strategy and internal policies, procedures and support systems, between strategy and reward systems, and between strategy and the corporate culture. Failure to align strategy to any of the above will certainly lead to the failure of the strategy at the implementation stage.
Alignment of these strategy supportive aspects of an organization cannot, and should not be undertaken piecemeal. Kenya Power and Lightning Co. Ltd initial focus on cost cutting, and subsequently alignment of only some of the strategy supportive aspects of an organization are critical and must all be aligned with the strategy for an organization to experience successful strategy, implementation and consequential, sustainability and prosperity .
The results of the study indicate that, the Kenya Power and Lightning Co. Ltd inability to match its resources, reward systems policies, procedures and support systems with its strategic plans posed a major challenge to its strategy implementation process and, indeed, led to failure of its strategies. It is however, important to note that Kenya Power and Lightning Co. Ltd operated under restrictions like many other state corporations that were expected to emulate the private sector, and operate competitively. Although the researcher carried out an in depth study, it was broad and dealt with various challenges that affect strategy implementation.
Further research should be conducted on each challenge independently. However, this was an in-depth study on Kenya Power and Lightning Co. Ltd, which is just one corporation owned by the government. There are other government owned corporations that can be researched. A survey on the strategy implementation challenges in these corporations could be conducted in future research.
Publisher
University of Nairobi, Kenya