Top Management Diversity and Performance of Kenya Pipeline Company

Abstract

Top management team diversity is a concept that firms are recently embracing to ensure that they have a competent top management team that can set strategies and decisions to drive the firm towards achieving performance. This research was set out to establish the relationship between top management diversity and the performance of Kenya Pipeline Company Limited. A case study design was employed to enable the researcher to conduct an in-depth investigation of Kenya Pipeline Company Limited through establishing the influence of top management team diversity and performance of Kenya Pipeline Company Limited. An interview guide was applied to collect primary data by interviewing eight Heads of the following Departments: human resource, finance, marketing, procurement,business development, engineering, operations, and directorate divisions, making it a total of eight participants and data analysis was done using content analysis. The study concluded that the most commonly applied top management team diversity practices were functional experiences, educational qualifications, gender, and age. Through top management team diversity practices, the company made better decisions and strategies, which propelled the firm towards enhancing performance. The study further established that using top management team diversity practices enabled the firm to enhance its performance by producing undervaluing products and services that resulted in customer satisfaction, minimising customer complaints. Being a state corporation that has the responsibility of transporting, storing, and delivering petroleum products to the consumers of Kenya by its pipeline system and oil depot network, the interviewees largely attributed this achievement to TMT diversity, which resulted to quality of decisions and strategies that led to the success of the corporation. This research was limited to scope because of resource and it me constraints forcing the researcher to conduct a case study of Kenya Pipeline Company Limited. Thus, it would be advisable for future researchers interested in this field to replicate this study to include all oil industry firms in Kenya; findings can then be compared, and conclusion will be drawn based on facts.