Institutionalization of Devolved Governance Strategy by County Governments in Kenya

Abstract

Institutionalization of devolved governance strategy is a new concept in the Kenyan governance structure. It refers to an assimilation of elements of change into a structured organization resulting into modifying the organization in a stable manner. It is a process through which an organization assimilates innovation into its structure. The ability of organizations to institutionalize strategies has become a central concern in many organizations today. Several studies have been done on devolution in Kenya including that done by, Mutuiri (2012) in which she analyzed administration and performance of the local authority transfer fund (LATF) in Nyeri County, an important devolution mechanism for addressing inequalities across local authorities. Such studies identified the critical challenges that face the implementation of innovative reforms. The studies however did not provide an explanation on the challenges faced in the rolling out of the devolved governance strategy in Kenya. This is probably because being a new governance structure these studies were done earlier than the official start of the full scale implementation of devolved governance while the study others done later focused on small units of devolution. Further, little literature on devolution exists in Kenya. This study therefore was intended to go along way into filling this gap. A descriptive survey study was design to find out how institutionalization of devolved governance strategy by county Governments in Kenya is facing various challenges. The study collected primary data using a questionnaires administered through drop and pick later method in a census of all county transitional authority coordinators. Analysis of the results was done based on the research objectives using statistical tools such as frequency tables, percentages, mean and standard deviation with the aid of SPSS version 17 software. The results showed that the process of institutionalization of devolved governance strategy within the county governments in the country were on course as were observed through appreciable rating of 69.2% of the indicators of the process by the respondents. The process however was dogged by several challenges chief of which was in adequate resource allocation. Mean ranking was applied to show the extent of influence of each of the factors on institutionalization of devolved governance strategy showed that structures, policies and allocated resourced had a negative influence while culture; leadership, support systems and organization autonomy each had an insignificant positive influence. It is therefore recommended that stakeholders, particularly the national government of the Republic of Kenya in consultation with county government put in place a raft of measures that would enable proper institutionalization of devolved governance strategy chief of which is prompt allocation of adequate resources.