Strategy Implementation at the Teachers Service Commission in Kenya

Abstract

Strategy is concerned with harnessing an array of opposites and seeming contradictions-the long term and the short term; vision and execution, external relationship and internal operations and economic constraints and social purpose (Wilson, 2008). Public service organization are not for profit making but are formed to offer public services, they too like private firms have strategies to better their operations and service delivery. The idea of a strategy in view of a public organization is to improve performance in terms of offering efficient and effective services to the public of a country. Recently there has been deliberate move by the Kenya government to implement numerous strategies designed to achieve vision 2030 inched in the three pillars which includes social, economic and political. The country envisions being a middle level income by the year 2030. With this vision the country follows a multi-pronged approach in reaching this milestone. Organization has been tasked with autonomous authorities to develop and implement their visions and missions and develop strategies in line with new public management initiative and the countries vision. Bowman and Asch (1987) noted that Strategy implementation is crucial to effective strategic management. It is the management responsibility to ensure that an appropriate strategy is both formulated and implemented for without the latter, precise formulation is of little use to the organization. The importance of people in the implementation process should never be underrated. An organization may develop brilliant strategy to achieve its goals, but without proper execution is like a football field without goal posts. Improved performance can only be realized when strategies formulated are fully implemented. Successful strategy implementation is paramount to an organization to achieve its long term goals; success is generally measured by an organizations ability to implement its strategies on time. In order to implement strategies successfully an organization has to be holistic in its approach to its main function and all stakeholders; it is with this reason that an organization has to develop elaborate programs and procedures to guide managers in strategy implementation. The objective of this study is therefore to evaluate strategy implementation at teachers service commission its challenges as well how to address them effectively. A case study was used to achieve the research objective, primary data was collected using interview guide and administered to directors of seven departments in TSC to familiarize with the questions and later personal interview was conducted with the respondents to fill up the interview guide. The study established that TSC is moderate in execution of its strategies considering challenges that it faces has a public organization. The study further noted that TSC faces both internal and external challenges in implementation process. These included lack of inadequate resources, poor communication, lack of strategy-structure and culture fit, ineffective leadership, low employee morale, organization politics, stakeholders interferences and industrial actions. The study provides possible remedies to future challenges in order to ensure successful strategy implementation in TSC