Strategic Management Practices of Firms in the Wines and Spirits Industry in Kenya

Abstract

The business environment within which dealers in the wines and spirits industry operate has experienced several changes. These include: - increased competition, increased government supervision, political reforms and unfavorable economic conditions. All these have greatly affected the growth of the industry. This was a descriptive survey intended to establish the strategic management practices adopted by firms in the wines and spirits industry in Kenya and determine the challenges encountered by those firms in adopting the strategic management practices. The population of this study was all firms in wines and spirits industry in Kenya. There were 31 firms nationwide with the break down of 23 in spirits only, 6 in wines only and 2 in both wines and spirits. Nevertheless, this study targeted all firms in the wines and spirits industry as the setting. The study used primary data collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. Senior officers and where possible, the chief executive officers (CEO) of each of the firms in the wines and spirits industry in Kenya were the key target. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze data. It was found out that chief executive officers were involved to a great extent in the development of corporate goals, missions, objectives, alternative corporate strategies, and evaluation and approval of the corporate plans, and having planning as a philosophy in the firms. The involvement of the board of directors in the corporate planning process in firms dealing in spirits only was low compared to those dealing in both wines and spirits. From the findings, it was recommended that the process of developing organizational strategy in these firms must be iterative. Formulation and implementation of strategy must occur side-by-side rather than sequentially, because strategies are built on assumptions which, in the absence of perfect knowledge, will never be perfectly correct Given that the study focused on one industry, a similar kind of questionnaire and research approach can be used to investigate the strategic management practices of other industries and sector in Kenya such as insurance companies, banking and non banking lending companies, leasing companies etc. vii