An Assessment of Role of Middle Level Management in Strategy Implementation in State Corporations in Kenya: A Case of Kenya Power, West Region

Organizations need to devote as much energy into getting strategy execution right as they spend on crafting the direction for their business. Planning and implementation are inevitably joined at the hip, with the success at both these aspects insuring the success of the business. The sphere in which public companies operate is profit driven by nature, which requires thorough planning and communication throughout the organization. Middlelevel management plays a central role in these companies and, if this group is a weak link, failure is likely to occur. In order to be able to study the middle managements’ role in an organization susceptible to the challenges, Kenya Power West region, was identified as a case study.The objective of the study was to assess the middle-level managements’ involvement in strategy implementation. On the other hand, middle management’s involvement was the independent variablewhile strategy implementation was the dependent variable. The study was carried out at Kenya Power, West Region. The study adopted survey method as part of descriptive research design. The population of the study comprised of the middle level management in Kenya’s state corporations while the target population constituted middle-level managers working at Kenya Power West Region. The researcher considered a sample of 137 middle-level managers working at Kenya Power West Region which was arrived at through stratified random sampling. Structured questionnaires were employed for collecting data. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS Version 21.0) software was used to process and analyze the collected data. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data processing and analysis. The findings were presented in form of frequency tables and tables reflecting summary statistics. According to the findings it was established that middle level managers’ involvement in strategy implementation was unclear. Also, middle-level managers’ involvement, was found to positively and strongly affect strategy implementation. It is recommended that middle-level managers should be more involved in strategy implementation.