Strategic Consensus And Implementation Of Differentiation Strategy By Habib Bank Ag Zurich-Kenya

Abstract

Strategic consensus is the establishment of common understanding towards strategic priorities and it has been linked to improved coordination and cooperation in the implementation of strategies. Implementing a differentiation strategy requires consensus for the cross functional cooperation which facilitate better strategy implementation. With the intense competition among the commercial banks after the introduction of interest caps bank shifted their focus to non-interest income by trying to be different in from their competition. Habib Bank Ag Zurich which was the unit of analysis was in the process of implementing differentiation strategy and the objective of the study was to establish the factors that moderated the relationship between strategic consensus and implementation of differentiation strategy in the bank. The research design used was a case study and the primary data was collected using interview guides. Ten respondents were interviewed and the data collected was analyzed using content analysis due to the qualitative nature of the data. The findings of the study showed that the Leadership was centered in a way that decision making was only done at the top management leaving out the rest of the management levels piling the decisions to be made hence dragging the implementation process. The findings also revealed that the organization structure was narrow but it only encouraged one way communication which was top down and there was no proper interaction between the departments and no proper convergence of ideas. The findings further revealed that there was some sense of resistance from the workers as they were not involved in the whole process also there was no proper match of the workers competencies and the tasks; all the three factors hindered the implementation process by slowing it down and not responding appropriately to the changing external environment. The study concluded that there was a direct relationship between the factors identified and the outcome of the relationship, there has to be a strategic fit between the strategy, structure, leadership and employees even if consensus had been established earlier, the fit enables further development of strategic consensus which would lead to a successful implementation process.