Factors influencing strategy implementation at Kenya commercial bank limited in Kenya

Abstract

Strategy has its historical roots in military activities from the early times of Chinese general and strategist Sun Tzu, through to the Italian philosopher, Niccolo Machiavelli. Organizations initiate strategies to survive and achieve competitive advantage. Strategy implementation is how a firm creates the organizational arrangement that allows it to pursue its strategy most effectively in order to create sustainable competitive advantage. It is the manner an organization develops, utilizes and amalgamates organizational structure, control systems and culture to follow strategies that lead to competitive advantage and better performance. The strategy implementation process involves application of management process to obtain desired results by designing organization structure, allocation of resources, utilizing information for quality decision-making and effective management of human resources. This study had two objectives namely to establish the factors influencing strategy implementation at Kenya Commercial Bank Limited and secondly, to determine the influence of such factors on strategy implementation at Kenya Commercial Bank Limited. The case study on KCB Group found out that a number of factors that affect strategy implementation such as leadership, communication, resources, budgets, staff, systems, structure and culture were very critical for implementation by guiding and transforming the shared values to be aligned with the strategic objectives. Top management is the critical guiding element in facilitating strategy implementation at KCB Group. Leadership is key to implementation success since it is more heavily involved in strategy formulation and control processes. Leadership is delegated to middle and lower level management to afford delegation and ownership of the implementation process. The bank favours top-down strategy implementation and control so as to guide the implementation process in line with the strategic objectives and the organization’s values and vision.