Strategy development at Bamburi cement limited Kenya

Abstract

The process of strategy development in an organisation is often less understood and taken for granted. This is probably because many organisations assume that strategy will be automatically developed by management and passed down for implementation. The way. that managers approach their strategy development in organisations differs and is determined by both the environment and organisational factors. The research was undertaken in order to understand the strategy development process of Bamburi cement Limited because of its continued good performance despite the ever changing business environment the world over. The objectives of the study were three the first one being to determine the strategy development process of Bamburi cement limited. The second one was to establish the factors influencing Bamburi' s strategy development process and the third one was to establish the challenges faced by Bamburi cement in its strategy development process. The study employed the case study design which facilitated the collection of complete and corroborative information from several sources within the organisation. The study primarily involved personal interviews using an interview guide and the secondary data from the existing company documents. From the research findings, it is clear that there exists a process of strategy development in the company, which is highly formalised. The strategy development process of Bamburi is logical, deliberate and proactive. This is due to the fact that the strategic decisions made by managers are outcomes of deliberate planning efforts and rational analysis of the company undertaken by the managers. The strategic decisions made by the managers are then communicated to the rest of the staff in the company. The findings show that the strategy development of Bamburi has for the ( ix most part been a combination of planning, design and emergence. Bamburi' s strategy development process includes defining the corporate mission, specifying achievable objectives, developing strategies and setting policy guidelines. The findings established that the formal process of strategy development that prevails at Bamburi has been influenced by the following contextual factors: ownership structure, vision, mission and scope of the organisation, the turbulent environment and the stakeholder expectations. All these factors contribute in the determination of strategy to be adopted by Bamburi at anyone given time. The major challenges as revealed by the study are: the high cost of production due to frequent fluctuations of fuel and oil prices, stakeholder expectations whereby they exert a lot of pressure hence influencing the decision making process within the organisation. Competition, stockholding costs, high labour turnover and the environmental turbulence are also cited as posing a great challenge to the strategy development process of the firm. Finally the study has come up with discussions on the findings about. the objectives, a summary of the findings, conclusions, suggestions for further research and recommendations for policy and practice.