Strategic management practices at the Kenya Red Cross Society

Abstract

Strategic Management is a concept that concerns with the formulating, implementing, and evaluating cross-functional decisions that enable an organization to achieve its objectives. Generally strategic management practices can improve efficiency in various organizations. Strategic management involves the analysis of both present and future environment. Success which is the survival and prosperity for KRCS depends on how the Society relates to the environment. What truly brings value to the Society is how the strategic management concept is formulated, implemented and evaluated so as to adopt to the turbulent environment KRCS internal strengths are deployed to take advantage of external opportunities and enhance performance. The objective of this case study was to establish the strategic management practices adopted by the Kenya Red Cross Society Limited. The study used both primary and secondary data for the study. Primary data was obtained through an interview guide with seven top management. Secondary data was obtained from published reports, organization’s internal articles and publications. The data obtained was analyzed using content analysis to present the findings of the study. The findings acknowledged that the organization formulated vision, mission statements, core values and strategic pillars and did environmental scanning and there was evidence of strategic planning, objectives setting and monitoring of strategy implementation. The study concludes that KRCS management should guide its employees on the importance of strategic plan in the organization. This should include strategic management practices anchored by the environmental dependency theory such as formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of strategic plans that are affected by the internal and external environment. Furthermore, a formal succession plans in all its departments should be initiated, provide equal priorities to both strategy formulation and strategy implementation and conduct periodic monitoring and evaluation of strategic plans. The study recommends research on the effectiveness of the strategic plans at KRCS particularly the effectiveness of 2011 to 2015 strategic plan and to evaluate and find out whether the objectives were met.