| dc.description.abstract | The quest for productivity, quality and speed has spawned a remarkable number of
management tools and techniques such as total quality management, benchmarking,
re-engineering, change management and performance contracting. Performance
contracting is a management tool to help public sector executives and policy makers
in strategic planning which identifies clear and measurable objectives, selects
indicators and sets explicit targets. Performance contracting has been around for more
than a decade. The strategic use is intended to help drive change efforts from process
to results orientation in the public service. It establishes clarity and consensus about
priorities and ensures that systems are established to promote equality of all users of
public service. The culture of non-performance and lack of accountability fights back
to resist the change that comes with performance contracting raising questions as to
whether performance contracting is good enough. It is agreeable that the challenges
facing many organizations today are both operational and institutional on how to
match and align performance measures with business strategy, structures and
corporate culture. The objective of this study was to determine whether tertiary public
colleges in Kakamega County were involved in the implementation of performance
contracting and the perceived challenges of implementing performance contracting.
The open and closed ended questionnaire was used to collect data since it allows
systematic data collection on the research problem and it also gives a deep
understanding of the issues. The sample population for this study comprised of fortyfive
administrators. The data collected was analyzed using on sample t-test where
standard deviation and means were derived; percentage and frequency were also
calculated. Key findings of the study were that most respondents hold a first degree, a
few hold a master’s degree and most respondents had worked in the college for more than 6 years. Majority of the respondents agreed to a moderate extent that tertiary
public colleges in Kakamega County participate in performance contracting process.
Results from the study also showed that most respondents agreed that performance
contracting faced operational and institutional challenges. The challenges identified
included the lack of political goodwill to drive the process, lack of conformity to the
requirements of the sub-systems of performance contracts and lack of provision for
the impact of external factors such as changes in government policy, inflation and
exchange rate fluctuations. The study concluded that the implementers of the
performance contract at all levels of the college, from the administrators to the
lectures and non teaching staff need to set the targets. In addition the implementers
need to be fully aware of the performance contract process. The study recommends
that for effective implementation of performance contracting in tertiary public
institutions in Kakamega County all employees need to be included in setting the
performance targets for their respective work areas. The study also recommends that,
attention needs to increase on stakeholder needs in terms of the social, political,
cultural and legal environment so as to raise the profile of service delivery. To
minimize ignorance of how performance contracting implementation is to be
undertaken, the study recommends training of all implementers to bring them to terms
with critical performance contracting matrices. The study also recommends that the
tertiary public colleges in Kakamega County should fast track for ISO certification
which will improve implementation of performance contract. Further research should be carried out to establish the external factors affecting implementation of
performance contract in vocational colleges. Further study needs to be carried out on
aspects that lead to successful implementation of performance contracting in the
tertiary public colleges in Kenya | en_US |
