Alignment of Strategy and Organizational Culture in the Mobile Phone Service Providers in Kenya

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the alignment of organizational culture and strategy in the mobile phone service firms in Kenya. The objectives were two fold, namely, to establish the extent to which there is strategy organizational culture alignment in the mobile phone service firms in Kenya and to identify the nature of organizational culture in the mobile phone service firms in Kenya. The research is based on the concept of alignment of strategy and culture in order to achieve organizational effectiveness. This is particularly important to the mobile phone service firms in Kenya in that they all have a foreign ownership stake that informs their vision and way of conducting business. This situation poses a potential cultural conflict between the owners and the workforce who are largely Kenyan. To avoid such a conflict, facets of the national culture and the foreign culture ought to be harmonized in the strategy formulation, implementation and evaluation to enable organizations achieve their vision. The study employed survey design. The population of study was all the organizations licensed to provide mobile phone service in Kenya. Data was collected by means of questionnaire. Data analysis comprised of quantitative and factor analysis to effectively analyze the variables to present findings, draw conclusions and recommendations. Chapter four presents data findings and discussions and chapter five presents the summary, conclusions and recommendations. The key finding was that there was culture strategy alignment through formal strategy planning process that communicates and clarifies strategy to the whole organization. However, the organizations seem to face challenges in terms of integrating the various organizational functions and they lack a well coordinated decision making mechanism to effectively support their strategy.