| dc.description.abstract | Organizations operate in increasingly complex, dynamic and very competitive environments. To survive organizations seek to acquire and sustain competitive advantage, which enables them to outperform their rivals in the market. Non Governmental Organizations are not an exception to this and to survive they have to adapt to change in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. The research objective with regards to the gaps identified from previous studies was to determine how Practical Action Eastern Africa, a development based INGO, is using organizational change as a strategy for competitive advantage. The research design was a case study, with the interview guide questions modeled on McKinsey‟s 7S model. Qualitative data was collected from the regional management team, middle level management and general staff of PAEA, with respondents drawn from the various departments of the organization. Primary data was collected through email and skype interviews. Secondary data was collected from the organization‟s strategic plan, annual report, programme documents and quarterly review reports. The collected data was analyzed using content analysis. The study findings showed that PAEA is an INGO that uses technology to challenge poverty in the Eastern Africa region and offers the following services, access to renewable Energy, Food and Agriculture and Disaster Risk Reduction, and Urban Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Waste Management. It also has cross-cutting themes of Markets, Gender and Climate Change. Further, leveraging on its programme work, PAEA provides consultancy and knowledge brokering services. Findings of the study note that PAEA competes for reducing donor funding, geographical footprint, staff, recognition in the sector, credibility, profile and visibility within the international development space. The study findings show that PAEA has deliberately and consciously undergone changes its strategy, structure, systems, skills, style, staff and shared values with an aim of strengthening its competitive advantage. The respondents confirmed that by undergoing change in the above elements, PAEA has been able to strengthen its competitive advantage by using its internal resources in a more efficient and effective way thus achieving impact at scale at a lower cost than rivals. However challenges such as limited resources, disruption to programme delivery, resistance to change, staff turnover and related loss in institutional memory affect the effectiveness of the organizational changes on its competitive advantage. The study has recommended that other development INGOs should deliberately and consciously anticipate and adopt organizational change so as to reap related benefits on their competitiveness. The sudy suggests that a cross sectional survey should be done across the NGO sector to establish how other INGOs are using organizational change to drive their competitive advantage. Limitations of the study include inability to generalize findings across all NGOs given the diverse nature of the sector, limited institutional memory and competing time priorities during data collection | en_US |
