Strategic Change Management In Childfund Kenya
Abstract
Organizational change management is normally eminent in all types of organizations
irrespective of their form during their lifetime. The research objective was to determine
the context, nature and practices of strategic change management that ChildFund Kenya
has adopted over the last eight years and the challenges it has faced during the process.
ChildFund Kenya is part of ChildFund Inc., an international child development
Organization with it’s headquarter in Richmond, Virginia and having operations in more
than 35 countries. ChildFund started working in Kenya in 1960 and the National Office is
in Westland Nairobi was established in 1973.This was a cases study since the unit of
analysis was one organization. Both primary and secondary data collection methods were
used. The researcher had a face to face interview with the country director, finance
director and program director. Content analysis was employed to analyse the
data.ChildFund Kenya has a strategic plan for years 2012-2016.All staff participate in the
formulation of the strategic plan. Any strategic change done is communicated to all staff
and they all participate and are involved in the process thus they own the process.
Restraining factors that the organization has experienced during change are limited
financial resources, resistance to change, community change fatique and lack of human
resource capacity, that is, some staff could not comprehend the purpose of the change.
The study also established that to minimize challenges of change management that arose
due to organization design, organization culture, resource limitation and staff resistance,
the management defined the agency values and developed training modules that instilled
a sense of collective commitment to agency values, staff were continuously educated and
plan awareness workshops organized. The structure was also changed to accommodate
the changes and communication of the changes made to staff at all levels. Benchmarking
number of processes with peer organizations who had undertaken similar change
processes is also done. Helping employees cope with change is one of the most critical
success factors in change management. Although ChildFund Kenya conducts trainings
and organizes workshops to make employees own the changes, one thing that did not
come out clearly from the study is how the organization motivates staff to keep the newly
acquired behaviour going including rewarding performance, encouragement and
recognition.
Citation
A Research Project Submitted In Partial Fulfillment Of The Requirement For The Award Of The Degree Of Master Of Business Administration School Of Business, University Of NairobiPublisher
University of Nairobi School of Business