EFFECT OF STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION DRIVERS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF TEA PROCESSING FACTORIES IN KISII COUNTY, KENYA

ABSTRACT: Various prior studies have concurred that 90% of strategic initiatives fail, not due to formulationbut, due to implementation difficulties. Failure of strategy implementation efforts causes enormous costs in theorganization. Despite the importance of the implementation process within strategic management, it is oftenovershadowed by a focus on the strategy formulation process. The study sought to determine the effect ofstrategy implementation drivers (leadership, organizational culture, organizational structure and human resourcedevelopment) on the performance of tea processing factories in Kisii County. The target population of this studywas 846 employees of five (5) tea processing factories in Kisii County. Both stratified sampling and simplerandom sampling were used to obtain a sample of 264 employees from whom primary quantitative data wascollected and analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression analysis. The correlationanalysis results showed a positive correlation between the strategy implementation drivers and the performanceof tea factories. Leadership was established to have a positive effect on performance which was however notsignificant. Organizational culture, structure and human resource development all had a statistically significantpositive effect on the performance of tea factories. The standardized beta coefficients indicated that humanresource development had the greatest effect size hence the recommendation by the study for tea factories tofocus more on improving its human resource development practices as a precursor to improved performance.

Keywords: Strategy Implementation drivers, performance, leadership, organizational culture, organizationalstructure and human resource development