Factors affecting the growth of mobile banking strategic alliances in Kenya

Abstract

Strategic partnership success is very essential to the organizations that enter into alliances with others. Strategic alliances with other companies are some of the methods used by the commercial banks in order to deal with the contemporary market forces of competition. The factors that play in the strategic alliances in the United States may not be similar to those that are at play in Kenya. The characteristics of the buying companies may not be similar to the banking and the mobile telecommunication industry in Kenya. The mobile banking involves strategic alliances between the banking and mobile telecommunication companies. In Kenya, strategic alliances between the commercial banks and the mobile telecommunication companies has not been successful. The objective of the study was to identify the forms of strategic alliances between the banking industry and the telecommunication sector in Kenya and to assess the importance of growth of strategic alliance between the banking industry and the telecommunication sector. Cross sectional research design was used in this study. The target population for the research was employees from the mobile telecommunication companies in Kenya and the Banking institutions that have formed strategic alliances in the use mobile banking. This study used questionnaires and document analysis as the data collection methods. Descriptive statistics approach was adopted for analyzing and presenting the data in this research. The researcher used qualitative and quantitative analysis to interpret the data obtained from the field. The study revealed that corporate culture of companies affected growth of strategic alliance in mobile banking services. The study revealed organization faced impediments when formulating a strategic alliance with other companies such as lack of trust , different in priority interest of the companies, failure by top management to be committed toward strategic alliance and failure by management to allocate sufficient resource toward strategic alliance formulation and legal and regulations government commercial undertakings. The study concluded that corporate culture of companies affected growth of strategic alliance in mobile banking services. The study concluded that commitment of the top leadership in their organization strategic alliance in the mobile banking services was essential to the growth of the strategic alliance in the mobile banking services. The study concluded that companies could improve growth of the strategic partnership between companies and other players in the mobile banking sector through effective utilization of existing market conditions to promote strategic alliance formation such as removing of stringent legal rules, designing of good model s of partnership formulation of that facilitated integration of the mobile phone services and money transfer and execution strategies that enabled the company to get a critical mass market. The study recommends that management of firms should focus on promoting positive corporate culture through improving on work discipline focus, result oriented staff, professional focus of interest, job orientation and employee orientation management commitment which would foster favorable corporate culture that would influence growth of strategic alliances between companies. From the findings, management should ensure commitment of the top leadership in their organization strategic alliance undertaking is achieved to influence success formulation and growth of strategic alliance