Influence of strategy implementation on service delivery by water works development agencies in Kenya

Abstract

The successful implementation of strategy allows firms to actualize their vision and objectives. This study's overall objective was to assess the influence of strategy implementation on service delivery by Kenya’s WWDAs. The specific objectives were; to determine the influence of short-term objectives, resource allocation, organization structure, and organization culture on service delivery by Kenyan WWDAs. The Kenyan government strives for every Kenyan to have access to water and sanitation services, primarily through WWDAs. However, their performance has been below anticipated levels. In effect, this has necessitated a look at strategy implementation by WWDAs as one possible avenue that may explain this discrepancy. The influence of strategy implementation on service delivery across Kenya's eight (8) WWDAs was evaluated. A census of all the agencies was done, and 71 employees out of the sample of 80 employees across these agencies responded to the questionnaire. Primary data was collected through questionnaires; the data was cleaned up and coded into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS Version 26). Descriptive statistical measures of central tendency, including frequencies, percentages, medians, and modes, were used to analyze and interpret the data, while skewness and kurtosis were used to test for the normal distribution of the data. Inferential statistics in ordinal regression tested for possible relationships between the independent and dependent variables. The findings of the study indicated that inadequate resources, unclear evaluation criteria, and inadequately trained personnel were some of the challenges faced by WWDAs in Kenya in the discharge of their mandate. The combined ordinal logistic regression output showed that Nagelkerke’s pseudo-R-square was .635 meaning that the total variability in service delivery by WWDAs in Kenya was significantly likely to be explained by short-term objectives, resource allocation, organizational structure, and organizational culture by 63.5%. Therefore, this study recommends the adoption of these factors by WWDAs in Kenya, as they positively influence service delivery by WWDAs in Kenya. According to the findings of the study, short-term objectives, resource allocation, and organizational structure had a moderate positive impact on service delivery, while organizational culture had a weak positive impact on service delivery. The study recommends further research into other contexts to establish if the results can be generalized. In addition, the study utilized only four factors from Higgins 8’s model, including short-term objectives, resource allocation, organizational structure, and organizational culture. As a result, a comparable study might be conducted with a different set of factors.