Influence of Stakeholders Involvement on Implementation of Projects in the Aviation Industry: a Case of Kenya Airways

Abstract

Undertaking a stakeholder analysis can be an important first step in managing the human and social capital resources in the project. In the past, Kenya Airways has faced several challenges because employees were not involved in strategy formulation but were only asked to implement leading to poor performance on the set strategies. This has eventually led to frequent employee go slows which have negatively affected the performance of the Airline. Unless this trend is reversed, future performance of the airline remains uncertain. This study therefore sought to investigate the influence of stakeholder’s involvement on the implementation of projects in the aviation industry taking the case of Kenya Airways. The study aimed to achieve the following objectives; to determine the influence of customers involvement in the implementation of projects at Kenya Airways; to examine the influence of employees involvement in the implementation of projects at Kenya Airways; to establish the influence of regulators involvement in the implementation of projects at Kenya Airways and to determine the influence of suppliers involvement in the implementation of projects at the Kenya Airways. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The target population of this study was the customers, employees, regulators and suppliers of Kenya Airways. Due to the homogeneity of the target population, the study adopted a sample size of 40 corporate customers. As for the suppliers, the study used purposive sampling to get data from the 10 main suppliers of Kenya Airways. As for the employees; the study used a sample of 25 of them who were sufficient representative of the population. The sample comprised 5 management employees picked by simple random sampling and 20 junior level employees also randomly chosen. As for the regulators the study used census as the number was only 2. This gave a sample size of 77. The study used questionnaires to collect data from customers and employees and interview guide for regulators and suppliers. The questionnaires were administered through drop and pick later method and respondents interviewed at their places of work. Descriptive statistics was used mainly to summarize the data. The regression findings indicate that stakeholders involvement have a positive influence on project implementation. Employees had the greatest influence on project implementation followed by customers. The influence of all these stakeholders was positive as indicated by the positive beta co-efficient. The study results showed that the various stakeholders have an influence on project implementation at Kenya Airways. It was established that customers and their bargaining power, their preferences and tastes have an influence on the implementation of projects at Kenya Airways. It was further established that changes in customer behaviour oftenly influences project implementation.The researcher concluded that all stakeholders ought to be readily involved in project design, implementation, evaluation and enhancement. This ensures that such projects were accepted by these stakeholders without showing any dysfunctional behavior that may seriously impede their success. Firms ought to ensure that their employees are competitively remunerated to avoid labor strikes and squabbles with labor unions that lead to strikes. Additionally, firms ought to readily involve their customers in project development and evaluation so that significant changes in customers` tastes and preferences can be addressed.