Strategic Implementation Influence on Organizational Performance: Case of Lake Victoria North Water Service Board, Kenya

The purpose of the study was to establish strategic implementation influence on organizational performance of Lake Victoria North Water Service Board (LVNWSB) in Kenya. The specific objectives of the study were to establish the relationships between strategic leadership; organizational structure; culture; and resource allocation with organizational performance. The target population of the study compromised of all the 977 employees and management of LVNWSB. A sample of 284 respondents was selected purposively for the study. Cross sectional research design and proportional stratified random sampling were adopted to obtain employees from each department. Descriptive and inferential statics were used to analyze data and the results indicated that strategic leadership and resource allocation had no significant influence on strategic implementation while organizational structure and culture had significant influence on strategic implementation at LVNWSB. The study recommended that experts be involved in regular reviews of adopted organizational structures, institutional management units take note of policies and procedures so that an absolutely new slate of practices is enacted and that management is sensitized on the significance of collective participation in formulating policies and procedures and value of the resulting synergy during implementation. Lastly, it is recommended that top managers undergo executive capacity building sessions to realize their corporate objectives through team work and not through just supervision and issuance of instructions. Key Words: Strategy Implementation, Strategic Leadership, Organization Structure, Resource Allocation, Organizational Culture, Organization Performance, Lake Victoria North Water Service Boar

Leadership for the electronic age: Towards a development-oriented, socio-technical ontology of leadership.

The idea of an ontology of leadership for the electronic age raises “big questions” from the perspective of leadership as a broad interdisciplinary practice. This article aims to capture the current dilemma in leadership research and practice that Hackman and Wageman (2007) concluded is “curiously unformed”. It aims to add a socio-technical voice, rarely heard in a fiercely behavioural school, even where global advances in ICT have tipped the scales towards reifying a more integrative view of leadership. It does not claim to present an integrated theory of leadership; rather, it seeks to elevate the socio-technical school within leadership theory and shift the discourse on leadership to be more inclusive of socio-technical thinking. The concept of “regional ontology”, derived from Heidegger, to refer to “as lived” practices and experiences of a particular social group (in this case Africa), is extended to discuss a development-oriented ontology of leadership. This enables us to recognise that effective organisational leadership in Africa and other developing countries should be anchored in local values; encourage netrepreneurship, take into account opportunities afforded by mobile computing platforms and high diffusion of mobile applications; focus on ethical leadership engagement to spur e-particpation and e-democracy; and develop national and regional innovation systems to enable Africa and other developing regions to participate in global knowledge flows

The perceptions of volunteers regarding their motives, rewards, and challenges at the Saint Anthony Foundation in San Francisco, California

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Emergence of the E-Government Artifact in an Environment of Social Exclusion in Kenya

Purpose: E-Government, introduced in African countries under the banner of New Public Management (NPM), is envisaged to fundamentally aid in improving governance in developing countries. The imported model of E-Government is therefore transferred to African countries as a panacea to bad governance by carriers such as international donor agencies, consultants, Information Technology vendors and Western-trained civil servants. Improved governance is expected to impact on the socio-economic development of these countries implementing E-Government, as an NPM instrument. This article recognizes that E-Government success, which is critically dependent on the World Wide Web, requires socially inclusive national information infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical analysis into the emerging E-Government artifact in the context of a developing country. By combining three independent research streams related to governance, social exclusion, and national information infrastructure, the emerging E-Government artifact was explored from a supply-side perspective. Design/methodology/approach: The research approach was critical in its philosophical orientation. The case study research strategy was adopted, which relied on various sources of data on E-Government policy and its related strategies in Kenya. Theoretical discourse analysis was employed as the predominant mode of analysis. Findings: The findings reveal that the emergent meanings of E-Government have strong managerialist intentions pointing to a thinly veiled control agenda couched in the language of a desire for efficiency in governance. An unexpected consequence of this conceptualization of E-Government is to help in solidifying and possibly exacerbating the social exclusion problem

Grassroots community participation as a key to e-governance sustainability in Africa

This article explores the theoretical sustainability of e-governance in Africa by assessing the nature of participation of stakeholders. It adopts an explanatory critique, drawing on perspectives debated in scholarly literature and based on reviews of country approaches. The exploration takes into account historical antecedents to participation in e-governance in Africa, revealing that dominant stakeholder interests effectively lock out the majority of citizens from active participation in e-governance, except as consumers of public services delivered through e-government. It considers the nature of attachment of stakeholders to e-governance projects. Global stakeholders increasingly have a low degree of attachment, while there is a relatively high degree of enrolment of local actors. The concept of e-governance remains solid, but is dispensable, since although government agencies have “embraced” the message of e-government, certain local actors are weakly mobilised. The policy process has failed to nurture the heterogeneity of actors, specifically grassroots actors, that is required for effective e-governance.http://link.wits.ac.za/journal/journal.htmlam201

Planning a Needs-Assessment-Based Approach to Continuing Education Programs for Seventh-day Adventist Clergy in the Eastern Africa Division

Problem. This study attempts to determine the extent to which the needs-assessment-based approach to educational planning can be validated and used in planning continuing-education programs for the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) ministers serving in the Eastern Africa Division (EAD). Method. The sample of the population for this study was drawn from the SDA clergy and a selected group of laity in the EAD. The data were gathered through a two-part questionnaire. The first part sought the demographic profiles of respondents. The second part was designed to enable the respondents to rank each one of the thirty items for preparation and importance. Two questionnaires, one for clergy and one for laity were administered to the respondents by the researcher using a purposive sample. Chi square and medians were computed to determine any significant relationship between groups and cutoffs for preparation and importance of items. Results. The highly significant correlation within and between groups in the way they perceived the importance and preparation of the items support the assumption that a list of needed specific competencies can be found through needs-assessment approach to educational planning and used in the development of continuing-education programs in the EAD. The openness and intelligent participation of all groups in discussing their needs through interviews was a great factor in the support of the assumption. Conclusions. Needs-assessment can be used to determine the role and objectives for continuing-education programs as well as each course taught to meet the needs and interests of learners. The cost of needs-assessment may be justified by its value as a guide in both the development and evaluation of continuing-education programs. From the data it was concluded that respondents in the study felt they were not well prepared in all the skill and knowledge areas in the instrument. The study also revealed that respondents considered twenty-five of the thirty questionnaire items as very important to be included in continuing-education programs. Five other items were considered important. There were none considered optional or not important enough for inclusion in a continuing-education planning program model. Recommendations. Based on the needs revealed by this study, it was recommended that (1) the University College of eastern Africa in Kenya serve as the main center of continuing-education program planning for the EAD, while junior colleges in each union serve as subcampuses; (2) East Africa Division executive committee appoint a division director for the continuing-education program; (3) the whole program of continuing-education should be planned with the consideration of the needs of the youthful laity in the EAD

Potentials and Challenges of Student Progress Portfolio Innovation Assessment for Quality in an ODL Context: A Case of The Open University of Tanzania

This paper aims at stimulating discussion on Students Progress Portfolio (SPP) Innovation in assessment. It analyses the potential and challenges of SPP as well as how it can be harnessed to improve assessment practices and its contribution to quality education. The paper is based on a recent qualitative research which used The Open University of Tanzania as a case study. The objectives of the study were to identify the knowledge of tutors and students on SPP innovation; analyse the information that student needed to fill in the SPP; and to examine the views of the students and tutors on SPP. Participants included: 23 students and 7 academic staff. Already filled 10 SPP forms were also analysed. The findings indicated that the potentials of SPP included that: it empowers students to participate in their own assessment; instils in students a desire to learn; enhances students’ better understanding of their learning skills and the need for improvement. SPP also allow tutors to identify gaps in students learning. The challenges found included: Lack/limited knowledge on SPP; discussions focused more on content rather than learning process. The conclusion was that SPP potentials outweighed challenges. The recommendations were that knowledge on SPP should be enhanced amongst students and teachers; SPP assessment should focus more on developing and improving students’ capacities for learning to learn; SPP should be graded; and there should be regular evaluation of tutors and students experiences with SPP

National Culture and Organizational Capabilities of IT Offshoring Services in Kenya

The concept of outsourcing is a central narrative employed by Friedman (2005) to underscore the fact that globalization is principally driven by the Internet which enables a level playing field for various economic activities. From an information management perspective, the pervasive adoption of Information Technology (IT) with close to 80% of IT services outsourced in one way or the other (Lacity & Willcocks, 2001), has made the multi-billion dollar Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) industry become important not only to individual organizations, but to governments as well (Cullen, Seddon & Willcocks, 2005). The ITO market is thus continuing to mature, with an increasing number of suppliers of outsourced service providers and advancements in IT that are enabling the management, implementation and operations in IT-enabled services and relocation of firm value chains to other countries (Cullen et al, 2005; Hutzchenreuter, Lewin and Dresel, 2011).The global potential for offshoring remains huge, with estimates of the outsourcing market standing at $77 billion per year, with U.S. companies accounting for about$44 billion (Tucci, 2007). The concept of offshoring elevates the importance of country destinations where IT services are sent to or outsourced. India has been the leading Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services provider for a number of years, but is being threatened by a myriad of challenges. Key among these challenges is the labor crunch with rising wages and costs, which are converging towards the client levels of organizations that the BPO firms serve (Jorek, Gott & Battat, 2009). The other two top countries (China & Malaysia) in the 2009 and 2011 Global Services Location Index (GSLI) also face similar changes as India (Jorek, Gott & Battat, 2009; Kearney, 2011). Other destinations enumerated in the report as emerging offshore outsourcing destinations include African countries such as Ghana, Mauritius, Egypt and Senegal