Integrated Marketing Communications Mix and Adoption of a Sports Culture by Academic Staff of Chartered Public Universities in Nairobi City County, Kenya
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Date
2025-11
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Kenyatta University
Abstract
The practice of using ideas from the experience of others in the making and implementation of
policy locally is not new. It can be an effective way for governments to learn what to pursue and
what to avoid. Governments discovered that instead them to engage in the slow process of
learning by doing, they can simply learn by observing the policy experience of others. Therefore,
it should be possible for one government to pick policy ideas, in whole or parts, with the view to
using it to help solve an existing policy challenge in their own system. Scholars have ascribed
different names to explain this process. These include diffusion, transfer, lesson drawing, policy
mobilities and translation among various cognates. While slightly different, what these related
fields of studies have in common is that they attempt to trace the movement of policies from one
setting to another, helping to address questions such as: why and how policies move, who is
involved in this movement, what actually is moved, and who is involved in this process.
However, despite the extensive nature of the literature, gaps still exist in relation to the capacity
of the policy receptors to incorporate borrowed lessons. Similarly, agency, motive, cognition,
capacity and time are all in need of further development. This thesis is designed to help fill these
gaps. It draws on Punctuated Equilibrium Theory to complement the Policy Transfer heuristic to
provide a theoretical prism to investigate the phenomenon. Inductive-interpretive method was
used to extend Critical Realism research to study the interaction of agency and structure. Thus,
two main data collection approaches were used: primary document review and semi-structured
interviews. Based on interviews with 24 Task Force members, sourced through purposive and
snow-ball techniques (complemented primarily by official publications of Kenya‘s Ministry of
Health, and the World Health Organization), this study inductively conducted Braun and
Clarke‘s Six-Step thematic analysis. The findings showed that lessons have been offered to
Kenya Task Force by the WHO, the former utilized the lessons in coming up with Kenya‘s
COVID-19 measures; and that the WHO advice was combined with ideas borrowed from other
sources. The study also found that the Task Force members actively (and willingly) participated
in the transfer process; thus they had a positive relation with the WHO. Furthermore, despite
some delays in declaring the pandemic and in generating Kenya‘s initial responses, the WHO
was generally prompt in guiding Kenya to enact national guidelines. This study discovered that,
after the initial transfer, the transfer actors have improved their response time for the integration
of lessons in the second wave. However, it slowed in the third. Other findings were: there were
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varied choices among Task Force members on specific choices, the Task Force members had the
needed agency to determine the transfer and no conflict was found between the sending actors
and the receiving actors of the IPC. Finally, the study also found that the capacity of Kenya at the
outset of the pandemic was mixed: it had a pre-existing IPC but suffered the dearth of key
infrastructure and supplies. Despite this, Kenya provided support to its contiguous neighbors
(Seychelles, Somalia and South Sudan) who were in much dire needs. The study thus concluded
that the transfer of the IPC measures from the WHO was instrumental to Kenya‘s COVID-19
policies. Therefore, this thesis recommends reducing the number of Task Forces in future
pandemics, sustaining the voluntary nature of international health regulation, making timely
decisions, encouraging accountability and transparency within Task Force membership and
robust investment in Kenya‘s health sector
Description
A Thesis Submitted to the School of Business, Economics and Tourism in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration (Marketing) of Kenyatta University. November, 2025
Supervisor
Samuel Maina
Reuben Njuguna