| dc.description.abstract | In order to redeem the public sector from poor performance and mismanagement, the
Kenya government initiated reform programs, which targeted both the civil service and
state owned enterprises. The reforms recommended the re-organization and restructuring
of all state owned enterprises, to make them more competitive and generate revenue.
Although the reforms have achieved their objectives, a number of problems related to
these changes are yet to be addressed. Among them are the declining opportunities for
employees‟ promotions, leading to the problems of employee motivation and retention.
The poor morale and high labor turnover can work against the general performance of
these organizations, thus eroding the gains intended by these reform measures. It is
imperative therefore, for the state owned enterprises to design strategic responses, to
address the problems of motivation and retention as a result of declining opportunities for
promotion. This study sought to determine how state owned enterprises were responding
to problems emanating from declining opportunities for promotion and how successful
the said responses have been.
The population of interest was all the 54 State owned enterprises in Nairobi that have
restructured. A closed ended questionnaire was used to collect data. For the purpose of
showing the relationships among various responses, quantitative analysis was done using
descriptive statistics, consisting of; percentages, arithmetic mean, standard deviations.
Further, chi-square test was used to determine the association between the responses to
declining opportunities for employee promotions on one hand and motivation and
retention on the other hand.
Findings from the study indicate that; ensuring good work conditions; enhancing good
work relations; giving annual salary increments and guaranteeing job security are some
of the major strategic responses used by state corporations to effectively deal with the
declining opportunities for employee promotions
The major conclusions were that, state corporations should embrace more useful
responses to declining employee promotion opportunities, such as; paying employees
based on performance; improve employee remunerations; enrich and enlarge employee
tasks and duties in order to mitigate motivation and employee retention challenges as a
result of declining opportunities for employee promotions. Consequently, this will not
only minimize the increasing labour turnover, but also improve employee job satisfaction
and commitment. | en |
