Turnaround Strategies and Performance of Private Universities in Kenya
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Date
2025-04
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Reviewed Journal International of Business Management
Abstract
The focus
of this study
was
on turnaround strategies
and performance and specifically on management, asset and
financial restructuring and staff rationalization as elements affecting private universities’ performance. Stage theory of
successful turnaround anchor
ed
the research as supported by
resource
-
based
view theory and the balanced scorecard
model. This study adopt
ed
a descriptive research design
and
target
ed
the top five
private universities
in Kenya
based on
uni
-
ranking
. The
study respondents
were
principals of colleges and directors
, the sample size wa
s 83 respondents and 64
filled and returned the questionnaire, making a response rate of 77%. There was collection of primary data from semi
-
structured questionnaires but the instrument was first pilot tested using 8
respondents from
Daystar University
. Th
e
aggregate Cronbach Alpha of
0.788,
confirmed
the reliability of the instrument as it was above the threshold of 0.7. For
the collected quantitative data, descriptive and inferential analysis was done and revealed positive
association between
the variable
s.
The findings showed that staff rationalization had the biggest effect on performance of the private
universities in Kenya. Management restructuring had the second largest effect to performance, followed by asset
restructuring and financial restructuring
. For the qualitative data, the conducted content analysis established that
respondents agreed that these
four types of
turnaround strategies affected performance
. The study concluded that the top
five private universities have adopted and implemented turn
around strategies by restructuring its management structure
to a leaner and efficient
operation system. It has also reduced and laid
-
off excess number of employees and retained only
the most competent and qualified staff to handle different tasks at the un
iversity. The study further concludes that
restructuring the assets, selling off the assets that are not needed and optimal use of financial resources resulted in high
performance in terms of high enrolment and graduation numbers of students. The study rec
ommended the custom
-
making
management structure, and recruiting and retaining highly skilled and talented employees to handle different
assignments at the university. The recommendations further suggested disposing off obsolete assets and prudent
managemen
t and use of financial resources for attaining the university’s mandate.
It also shows the valu
e of private
universities and through utilizing the turnaround strategies, the universities can offer quality higher education. Quality
graduates will contribute
to socio
-
economic growth and development of the nation through innovations and inventions
that can solve the problems facing the general public.
Description
Article
Keywords
Citation
Toromo, C. J., & Mutinda, J. (2025). Turnaround strategies and performance of private universities in Kenya. Reviewed Journal International of Business Management, 6 (1), 409–429. https://doi.org/10.61426/business.v6i1.336