Relationship between training and development and competitive advantage in the micro finance

Abstract

This study sought to establish the relationship between training and development and competitive advantage among micro finance institutions in Kenya. This study adopted a descriptive cross sectional survey research design. The target population for this study consisted of all micro finance industry players duly registered by AMFIK . A census survey was carried out on all the 54 micro finance institutions. Primary data was used in this research. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics such as frequency distributions, mean, standard deviation and percentages. Data was presented in the form of tables. The respondents stated that their training and development policy is geared towards enhancing the organizational competitive advantage, training and development policy is reviewed regularly thus enabling the organization link the business strategy with fundamental finance and capital markets constantly. Training and development programs have given their organization competitive advantage by developing new products to retain and build customer base and training and development programs achieve the required outcomes by enabling the organization to focus on information about value added products and services regularly aspect were applied to a large extent in their organizations. The aspect training and development programs lead to increased performance and productivity because the organization has clarity of goals, training and development policies incorporate systems of assessing and measuring the results that are facilitated by the experience and skills of top managers aspect. In conclusion job training and development is one of the most crucial functions for any organization seeking to improve its productivity and gaining competitive advantage. Delivering sustained success to organizations by improving the performance of the people who work in them and by developing the capabilities of teams and individual contributors. Training is a vital component in organizational process of cultural change, a behavioural device that can be used to secure workforce commitment and to realize the potential of employees. The researcher came to the decision that there should be training and development in every organization if competitive advantage is to be achieved. Training and development is very important for an organization to compete with this challenging and changing world. Training and development is directly related to employee but its ultimate effect goes to organization because the end user is organization itself. Before delivering training, design of the training should be prepared in the manner which is effective and most useful for organizations. Feedback of the experienced participants is very necessary for the outcome of training program and before the conduction of training program the trainer must know ab