Influence of strategic operations on service delivery of village banks in Nandi County, Kenya

Abstract

Village banks are put in place to help deliver banking services to members living in rural communities. However, they have been marred by a number of complaints from the clients due to their feeble service delivery. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to investigate influence of strategic operations on service delivery among village banks in Nandi County. The study was guided by the following research questions; to what extent does technological advancement, management skills, capacity management and organization design influence service delivery among village banks in Nandi County? The study was guided by Institutional Theory by Hoffman. Ex- post-facto research design was adopted in the study. The target population of the study was 257 with a sample size of 154. Simple and systematic sampling techniques were used as sampling methods. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used as data collection instruments. Content validity was established through consultation with experts while Cronbach’s alpha method was employed to test the reliability of the data collection instruments. Qualitative data was analyzed by use of thematic analysis while quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics were presented in form of frequencies, percentages and means. Multiple regression analysis was employed to test the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. The study found out that there was a significant and positive relationship between technological advancement at (p=0.000), management skills at (p=0.039) and capacity management at (p=0.000) and service delivery among village banks. However, there was no significant relationship between organization design and service delivery at (p=0.849).The study concluded that on technological advancement, consumer choices and preferences in transaction-based e- services change with technology in service delivery, management skills on service delivery, the role of leadership in organizations was to put structure and order, To ensure customer retention and improve on competitiveness, banks had to regularly provide access to funds to the consumers and on organization design and service delivery, employee satisfaction was significantly related to service quality and to customer satisfaction. The study recommended that there should continuous improvement of the available technologies, employment of competent managers and capacity management of available resources to improve on the service delivery of village banks.