Generic Strategies and Competitive Advantage of Medical Training Colleges in Nyeri County, Kenya

Abstract

To achieve competitive advantage, organizations must deliberately pursue assortment of strategies or a specific business strategy. Businesses face many challenges, which emanates from the ever-changing dynamics in the environment. These challenges call for businesses to become adaptive in their quest to meet customers’ demands and improve on performance to become competitive. Medical training colleges in Nyeri County, Kenya are experiencing stiff competition. To stand out and achieve competitive advantage, medical training colleges in Nyeri County, Kenya are obliged to create and pursue considerable and calculated strategies. The general objective of this study was to explore the impact of generic strategies on competitive advantage in the medical training colleges in Nyeri County, Kenya. Specifically, the study focused on three objectives; to establish the effect of cost leadership strategy on competitive advantage of medical training colleges in Nyeri County, to determine the influence of differentiation strategy on competitive advantage of medical training colleges in Nyeri County and to evaluate the effect of focus strategy on competitive advantage of the medical training colleges in Nyeri County, Kenya. The research was guided by the Dynamic capabilities’ theory, Resource Based View theory and Knowledge based view theories. The study targeted the four main medical training colleges in Nyeri County, Kenya. These colleges are Kenya Medical Training College- Nyeri campus, Consolata School of Nursing, Nyeri, Tumutumu Medical Training College and Outspan Medical College. The target population was 183 members of staff in four medical training colleges in Nyeri County, Kenya. A sample of 42 participants from the population was chosen. The sample included staff members from the top-level management, middle level management and low-level management in these colleges. Sampling was done through stratified random sampling method. The researcher collected both primary and secondary data. Primary data was collected using semi- structured questionnaires while secondary data was collected from formal institutional publications, like journals, reports and newsletters among others. The research adopted a descriptive research design. To test the reliability and validity of the research instrument, a pilot study of 15 participants was conducted in Nakuru and Nyahururu medical training colleges. Validity of the research was enhanced through several discussions with the supervisor. Reliability of the data collection tool was tested through Cronbach alpha and a 0.7 was applied as the lower acceptable threshold. Quantitative data analysis was conducted by use of descriptive statistics which included mean, mode and standard deviations using statistical packages for social sciences version 22. Additionally, inferential statistical analysis on the observations was carried out. Statistical computation was done using frequencies, percentages, mean and standard deviation. Qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis. The analyzed data revealed that cost leadership, differentiation and focus strategies positively contributed to the colleges’ competitive advantage with cost advantage having the greatest effect on competitive advantage. The study recommends that colleges and other institution to employ the application of porter’s generic strategies since they have proved to be effective in contributing to competitive advantage.