Change management practices adopted by the City Council of Nairobi

Abstract

Change is the single most important element of successful business management and has become an accepted part of business. Understanding and managing change are the dominant themes of management today. The Local Government sector is not immune to the accelerating pace of change. It is against this background that this study was designed to establish the change management practices adopted by the City Council of Nairobi. The case study examined the change management practices using Kotter's (1996) eight steps change management model. The researcher conducted personal interviews and held group discussions with the top management team of the Council who were involved in the change programme. The researcher then analyzed the collected data through the conceptual content analysis technique. From the research findings, change in the Council is part of the wider change taking place in the Kenya, and to some extent, globally, for the demand of better services and accountabuity-As some respondents put it, change at the Council was bound to happen. The change, which is still going on, is participatory and involves the staff, government and the private sector. The staff have been trained on change management through workshops and seminars, while the opinion and guidance of the both the government and private sectors have always been sought. The study, however established that the change programme implementation experienced some challenges. These included resistance to change and scarce resources. Resistance was overcome through

trainings and the achievement of the "short term wins". The reforms going on have made revenue collection more efficient hence strengthening the resource base. Overall, the participatory approach and conducive political environment is making the change implementation to succeed. The researcher noted that the change monitoring and evaluation systems being put in place will make the changes permanent and there was no chance of the Council sliding back to the" business as usual" status. The Kotter model was appropriate in the evaluation of the Council change management practices because it provides a logical and in-depth approach to the change process. The researcher found out that the model provided a good framework which was applicabe to the Council. However, other models, could in future be used to evaluate the change process.