Factors influencing strategy implementation at Kenya commercial bank limited in Kenya
Abstract
Strategy has its historical roots in military activities from the early times of Chinese
general and strategist Sun Tzu, through to the Italian philosopher, Niccolo Machiavelli.
Organizations initiate strategies to survive and achieve competitive advantage. Strategy
implementation is how a firm creates the organizational arrangement that allows it to
pursue its strategy most effectively in order to create sustainable competitive advantage.
It is the manner an organization develops, utilizes and amalgamates organizational
structure, control systems and culture to follow strategies that lead to competitive
advantage and better performance. The strategy implementation process involves
application of management process to obtain desired results by designing organization
structure, allocation of resources, utilizing information for quality decision-making and
effective management of human resources. This study had two objectives namely to
establish the factors influencing strategy implementation at Kenya Commercial Bank
Limited and secondly, to determine the influence of such factors on strategy
implementation at Kenya Commercial Bank Limited. The case study on KCB Group
found out that a number of factors that affect strategy implementation such as leadership,
communication, resources, budgets, staff, systems, structure and culture were very critical
for implementation by guiding and transforming the shared values to be aligned with the
strategic objectives. Top management is the critical guiding element in facilitating
strategy implementation at KCB Group. Leadership is key to implementation success
since it is more heavily involved in strategy formulation and control processes.
Leadership is delegated to middle and lower level management to afford delegation and
ownership of the implementation process. The bank favours top-down strategy
implementation and control so as to guide the implementation process in line with the
strategic objectives and the organization’s values and vision.
Publisher
University of Nairobi