Effects of Strategic Management on Performance of Auctioneer Firms in kenya

Abstract

Organizations today have increasingly become aware of the importance of strategic management. This awareness in a system is a critical dimension in the performance of organizations. Given that the auction sector of business is increasingly growing and an increasing dependence on auctioneering services has arisen, strategic management provides an approach to aid organizations in determining appropriate goals and how to reach them. While strategic management is widely practiced by firms and other profit oriented organizations in Kenya, its adoption by auctioneering firms is less understood. There is paucity of research on strategic management practices in auctioneering firms. This study was undertaken to fill this knowledge gap. The general objective of this study was to investigate the effect of strategic management practice on performance of auctioneer firms in Kenya. This study used descriptive survey design. The target population was all management employees of auctioneering firms in Kenya. Due to the location of the researcher, time and budgetary limitations, the accessible population of the study was only management employees based within Mombasa County. Stratified and simple random sampling method was used to identify the study respondents. Primary sources of information were used and were gathered by using questionnaires. Finally data from the questionnaires was sorted, coded and input into a software for analysis. Data was analysed using statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) to generate diagrams, frequencies, descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The general objective of this study was to investigate the effect of strategic management on performance of auctioneer firms in Kenya. The specific objectives of this study were to establish the extent to which strategic planning influence performance of auctioneer firms in Kenya, to establish whether strategy implementation influences performance of auctioneer firms in Kenya to investigate the effect of environmental characteristics on performance of auctioneer firms in Kenya and to establish the effect of organization structure on performance of auctioneer firms in Kenya. Results indicated that strategic planning had influence on performance of the auctioneering firms. This was evidenced by the majority of the respondents who indicated that they strongly agreed and agreed with the statements related to strategic planning and performance of the auctioneering firms. Additional results also indicated that environmental characteristics affect performance of the auctioneering firms. It can be concluded that strategy implementation methods such as monitoring the progress of strategy implementation, aggressive implementation of strategies, having annual actions and targets, having annul performance contracts lead to better performance of a firm. A further study is recommended on the effect of leadership qualities and styles on the performance of auctioneering firms.