Strategic Planning and Performance of the State Corporations of the Government of Kenya

Abstract

Strategic planning is a vital step in the process of decision making in an organization. It is useful in the identification of the strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats facing an organization.it enabled the organization to achieve its desired goal in line with its objectives, mission and vision. Therefore, it is significant in the determination of performance of an organization. This aims of this study is to assess the strategic planning practices that is applied by the state corporations of the government of Kenya, it also sought to establish a link between strategic planning, practices and performances in state corporations of the government of Kenya. This was based on the theory and practice of the open system theory and dynamic capability theory on the strategic management. The study was conducted on 40 different corporations which are regulatory, service, tertiary, public universities and financial corporations. The findings of the finding form the study established that most companies used forecasting as s practice in the formulation of their strategy other than the environmental aspects at the time of formulation, their vision and mission also gets reviewed either for every 3-1 years or 5-3 years. In addition, the directors are the most significant people in the corporations that make the decisions, strategic planning process is mainly controlled by the management of an organization for most corporations; implementations plans is always a well formalized process and all departments are involved in the planning of a strategy. Performance of the companies is based on quality, Relationship among the staff, staff turnover, customer satisfaction, efficiency of the operations, financial performance, market share and capital and debt. The study also established that the efficiency of the planning for strategy and performance is increased when the strategies are linked to the corporations mandate, prioritized goals are set, organizational performance and capacity in production is improved and finally the capacity in building the staff of the corporation. The study recommends that further research will need to be conducted in order to establish the evidence based link and practice of planning and performance of corporations.