Strategic planning in cooperative societies in Nairobi

Abstract

One of the tools of transformation of society are people owned institutions in the country. Co-operatives are real agents of transformation because they are problem solving people owned organizations. The objective of this study was to establish the extent of strategic planning and implementation in co-operative societies in Nairobi. Research design refers to the way the study is designed, that is the method used to carry out the research. The Study targeted 98 Cooperative Societies in Nairobi registered under the Sacco Society Regulatory Authority. The sampling method chosen for this study was purposive sampling which is a form of non-probability sampling to select 20 cooperative societies based in Nairobi. The structured and unstructured questionnaire instruments were used to collect the primary data. Descriptive statistics such as means, standard deviation and frequency distribution were used to analyze quantitative data. Content analysis is a research method that is applied to responses given to open –ended questions in order to code those answers into a meaningful set of categories that lend themselves to further quantitative statistical analysis. The study concluded that cooperative societies had embraced strategic planning with a 5 year timeline strategic plan implemented by majority of the cooperative societies where mission and vision statement were reviewed after 5 years. The decisions to implement strategies in strategic plans took 1 to 2 weeks or a month although the implementation depend with the type of decision being implemented where short terms decision usually took shorter period to be implemented while long term decisions took longer to be implemented due to processes involved in the implementation. The study concluded that formulating strategic plans in cooperative societies, was the role of upper management who were involved and that strategy formulation in the organization encompasses the core business, staffing and employees welfare to a very great extent. The study concluded strategic planning in cooperative societies helped in formulating strategies, mission and vision .The cooperative societies engaged in establishing a mission, top management leadership through the board of director, development of the key strategies that contribute to the overall vision, establishing a vision, the benefit that stakeholders can expect and involved in monitoring and evaluation that is measuring achievement against set targets, to a very great extent. The study concluded that cooperative societies engaged in strategic planning due to engaging in development of specific, measurable, realistic and time bound strategic goal, development of short and long term operation goals, Subdividing goals into achievable task, allocating goals to individual staff members based on their qualification and correction action-review and address gaps between current position and targeted goals in strategic planning to a great extent. The study concluded that hiring of staff in accordance to current technology and qualifications, allocating sufficient resources and adopting technologies influence effective strategic planning. The study concluded that majority of cooperative societies had embraced Strategic Planning to a very great extent with a time line of 5 years. Most of the cooperative societies were implementing strategies in their current strategic plans. The study revealed that cooperative societies had embraced strategic planning with a 5 year timeline strategic plan implemented by majority of the cooperative societies where mission and vision statement were reviewed after 5 years. The study recommends that strategic planning in cooperative societies should be effectively implemented as it helped in formulating strategies, mission and vision.