Influence of Participative Management Strategies on the Success of Implementation of One Village One Product Project in Kisii County

Abstract

One village one product (OVOP) is a development concept promoted by the Japanese Government for facilitating rural economic development in developing countries. OVOP was popularly adopted in Japan in 1980’s and 1990’s and successfully created an economic development model for rural areas. OVOP as a development model is aimed at producing competitive products by utilizing local resources that the area has a comparative advantage. The OVOP model starts from creating a network in the community and comes up with a vision of transforming its socio- economic outlook to the one that can produce more Value added products that can effectively compete in the global market. The OVOP development concept is rooted in utilization of local resources including raw materials, commodities, technology and human resource in a manner that creates a sense of self belief, ownership and strong will to create competitive advantage by exploiting the community core competence. OVOP was introduced in all of Oita’s fifty eight cities, towns and villages. Ever since, the ever-growing, highly successful movement has not only brought prosperity and countless specialties to the regions of Oita, but also gave birth to a number of new events and cultural experiences in these regions. The model has also been replicated in other parts of the world under different names but same concept. Among the countries that have adopted the OVOP concept is China under One Factory One Product, and Thailand as One Tambon One Product and Malaysia as one District One Product. In Africa the concept has been introduced in Malawi as one village One Product. OVOP program has no clear structure on how it is managed at local project level by the groups implementing it, hence creating a gap that needed to be filled. OVOP was to address the three pillars of economic growth, human security and the prevention of global warming by promoting group activity development and export. The research objective sought to determine the influence of participative training, leadership, policy formulation and planning including monitoring and evaluation of OVOP projects, which was achieved through research questions and hypothesis. The study was conducted within Kisii County which involved a target population of 200 group members. A sample size of 127 respondents was carefully and randomly selected from 10 active groups within the County. 127 questionnaires were distributed whereby 109 questionnaires were returned yielding a response rate of 85.8% while 18 questionnaires representing 14.2% were not returned. Face-to-face interviews were used to collect the data and which was quantitatively tabulated and analyzed using SPSS and Excel softwares. Research findings were presented in percentages. The study intended to analyze the influence of participative management strategies on the success in implementation of one village one product project in Kisii county Kenya. The researcher proposes further research to be carried out to better the understanding or improve the management practices employed and geared to improving the performance of OVOP projects.