Factors affecting strategy implementation in public secondary schools in Hamisi sub county, Kenya

Abstract

Effective strategies are bound to fail or succeed depending of on how implementing agencies monitor, evaluate and constantly manage factors both in immediate internal and external environment of the organization. In relation to this, the objective sought to investigate the factors that influenced strategy implementation among secondary schools in Hamisi SubCounty in Vihiga County. In achieving this, the study adopted cross-sectional descriptive research design. Data were collected from all the 47 public secondary schools in Hamisi Subcounty from the school principals, their deputies and senior teachers. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and factor analysis. Results of analysis showed that stakeholder involvement in strategy implementation, human resource empowerment, institutional culture and structure, commitment by top management, institutional policies, determination of activity timelines, clear definition of school strategic activities, incorporation of contingency planning, and how strategy implementation roles are shared among the teams, are the most significant factors affecting strategy implementation among public secondary schools in Hamisi Sub-county. The stakeholder involvement factor is composed of rewarding approaches adopted to induce the teachers, internal relationships among the learning parties (students, teachers and parents), internal communication policy, disbursement of funding from the Government and other donor stakeholders, and the health statuses of the parents and institutions in the neighbourhood. Empowerment of human resource component factors include teacher empowerment concerns, quality of directions disseminated from management, easy adoption to strategic changes, and degree of independence among school sections and departments. The cultural orientation factor was found to constitute compatibility between strategy and schools values/beliefs, and the schools’ involvement in corporate social activities, commitment of top level managers in strategy implementation was reflected by the setting of performance indicators by the managers, day-to-day decision making by management, and BoM’s commitment towards group goal realization. The study recommends that schools identify and popularize their strategic priorities by predominantly engaging all of their primary stakeholders in establishing a collective framework towards goal attainment. This advocates for incorporation of stakeholder theory in consolidating internal and external resources towards effective strategy implementation. Moreover, the study recommends emphasis on management commitment by other stakeholders to ensure that deviations from preset target are minimal. Finally, managements in the different schools are advised to drive the strategy implementation exercise on solid formulation foundation and contingency planning, based on stakeholder engagement, resource mobilization, benchmarking, and milestone monitoring and evaluation. Alongside these findings, the study acknowledges limitations of factor-inclusion, limited-contextual scope weaknesses, and size of explained variance which are pertinent considerations for future research in similar contextual and conceptual perspectives