Effect of Strategic Leadership on the Performance of Devolved Government System in Kakamega County, Kenya

Abstract

Whereas most devolved government systems in Kenya have strategic plans showing their vision, mission and objectives set to be achieved, their service delivery fall below customers’ expectations. Good strategic plans put in place require good implementation which is steered by strategic leadership thus the need for this study. It is on this background that this study was designed to investigate the effect of strategic leadership on the performance of devolved government systems in Kakamega County.  The study was guided by the following specific objective: to establish the effect of strategic leadership on the performance of devolved government systems which was latter formulated into null hypothesis. The study contributes to the body of   knowledge to both academicians and practitioners. The study adopted a descriptive correlation survey research design and the study was carried out in Kakamega County. There are six devolved government systems in Kakamega County and both the primary and secondary data was collected. Primary data was collected by use of key informant method. This being a census study, all the administrative and the public relations officers for every devolved government system was selected to take part in the study as they are perceived to be knowledgeable on the issues under study and for which they are either responsible for their execution or they personally execute them. Validity of the research instruments was attained by administering the instruments to pilot respondents who were not included in the main study and also use of feedback to improve the questionnaire. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used to measure the reliability of the scale, which is also used to assess the interval consistency among the research instrument items. The data collection instruments were administered to all the six devolved government systems. After the data had been collected, the researcher edited them to ensure that they are complete, Coding, classification then entered and analyzed using statistical package for social sciences computer software version 12.0 to generate cumulative frequencies and percentages. The study found out that strategic leadership significantly and positively affect performance with 52.6 percent of the performance (R squared = 0.526) being explained by strategic leadership. There is need for the devolved government systems to employ strategic leadership in their operations as this improves their level of performance. This is mainly because the study found out that performance of devolved systems was dependent to the strategic leadership.

Keywords: Strategic leadership, Performance, Devolved Government System, Kakamega and Kenya