Effects of strategic management practices on performance of tea manufacturing factories in Kenya: A case of KTDA Kangaita Tea factory
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Date
2014-07-22
Authors
Ndumia, Erastus, N
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Abstract
In today's competitive environment and globalized economy, customers are
demanding more varieties and better quality products with faster and reliable
deliveries. New manufacturing technologies are developing rapidly, resulting in
new products, innovations and improvements in the manufacturing process, thus
requiring a proactive approach by organizations. To be proactive, organizations
require innovative methods of performance measurements to assess their progress
towards achieving organizational vision, mission and strategic objectives.
Generally this project sought to investigate the effect of strategic management
practices and scorecards on performance and specifically the effect of strategic
management practices in Kangaita tea factory. The factory had 7 managers and the
production department had 174 employees. All the managers were interviewed and
were selected purposefully for they were in charge of departmental performance.
An interview guide was used to interview the 7 managers and a secondary data
guide was used to collect data on performance. A questionnaire was sent to
employees in each department to fill. Out of the population of 174 employees a
random sample of 82 employees was used for this study. The study established that
Kangaita tea factory had a clearly stated vision and mission which were developed
by top management together with the board and KTDA headquarters and the
adopted by all the tea factories managed by KTDA. Kangaita tea factory adopted
the vision and the mission in the financial year 2006/2007 when it embarked on
ISO 9001:2000 quality management system implementation. The vision and
mission were broken down into outcomes to be achieved hence the objectives. This
was done by top management with the help of ISO implementation consultants.
The introduction of strategic management practices of performance measurement
and use of key performance indicators had improved performance. The managers
felt that there was improvement in the system losses, better motivation of staff and
the factory had acquired new markets. Conversion factor of green leaf into
manufactured tea had improved and the top grade percent had also improved. It
was also established that energy use efficiency had also improved. The researcher
came to conclude that the introduction of strategic management practices lead to
superior performance. Comparative studies of other tea factories would increase
the reliability of the study.
Description
Department of Business Administration, 61p.2010