Employee perception towards management of strategic change in the Kenya citizens and foreign Nationals Management Service

Abstract

Strategic change poses a major challenge to managers because it goes beyond designing a structure and processes to put a strategy into effect. Perceptions are the mental process involved in identifying and subjectively interpreting objects, concepts, behavior, insight and understanding. The objectives of the study included determining the perception of employees in managing strategic change at the Kenya Citizens and Foreign Nationals Management Service departments and establishing the factors that influence such perception in the Departments of the Kenya Citizens and Foreign Nationals Management Service in Kenya. This study adopted a cross-sectional survey because the study targets five departments within the larger Ministry of Interior and National Coordination and used descriptive research design because it involved investigating behavior of characteristics of interest in a situation and building of a profile about a phenomenon. The population of study comprised of 963 management employees from the five departments in the former Ministry of State for Immigration and Registration of Persons in Kenya. Simple random sampling was used to select a sample of 69 respondents. The study collected primary data using a questionnaire. The collected data was analyzed using mean, standard deviation, frequencies and percentages. The study established that strategic change was not well communicated to employees at the departments hence the staff were not aware of the change strategy itself. The findings show that there were not enough resources reserved for the implementation of strategic change at the Kenya Citizens and Foreign Nationals Management Service Departments, although there were some resources allocated towards implementation of strategic change. The study concludes that the process of strategic change management at the Kenya Citizens and Foreign Nationals Management Service Departments was affected by various challenges. This study recommends that in future strategic change management at the Kenya Citizens and Foreign Nationals Management Service Departments need to put in place better communication mechanisms that would ensure accurate and timely flow of information to all stakeholders and have an organization –wide involvement of stakeholders that can collectively own the change process and also set aside enough resources to ensure smooth execution and implementation of strategic change. The study recommends that the Kenya Citizens and Foreign Nationals Management Service Departments appoint a change agent to oversee the implementation of strategic change.