Efficiency-and-Effectiveness in Project Management, an Impetus for Accountability to Stakeholders: Evidence from Non-Governmental Organizations in Kenya

Abstract

Against the backdrop of a fast shrinking resource-base, most organizations strive to implement project activities in a timely manner, while incurring minimum cost as possible. In the process, client needs and corporate priorities should be balanced. The objective of this study, therefore, is to assess the extent to which efficiency-and-effectiveness influence accountability to stakeholders by NGOs in Kenya. The research is anchored on the normative stakeholder theory. As adopted in this study, the normative stakeholder theory holds that NGOs in Kenya ought to balance the interests of founders, donors, development partners, the government, regulatory board, the target beneficiaries of projects undertaken by NGOs, and the general public. Probability proportional to size (PPS) sampling method was used to sample NGOs from which respondents to the questionnaire were drawn. The study also sought to establish the relationship between accountability to stakeholders and efficiency-and-effectiveness of the respondents in serving their stakeholders by testing the alternate hypothesis. The ANOVA results showed a statistical significance p= .043 while the p value was set to be significant at p< 0.05 level. There is a significant association between accountability to stakeholders and efficiency-and-effectiveness (p<0.043). It was found out that having efficient and effective systems and approaches in serving the project beneficiary community enhances accountability to the stakeholders. The null hypothesis was thus rejected at 95% confidence interval and concluded that efficiency and effectiveness in project governance has influence on accountability to stakeholders.

Keywords: Project management, Efficiency and effectiveness, Accountability to stakeholders, NGOs, Kenya