AN ASSESSMENT OF CHALLENGES INFLUENCING STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION IN PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS IN KENYA: A CASE OF BETTING CONTROL AND LICENSING BOARD

Kenya’s public service sector has experienced redundancies, cost cutting, closure of operations and challenges to the quality of their services. These factors have encouraged and forced public sector organizations to formulate and implement effective business strategies as they are viewed as enablers of organization growth as it streamlines internal operations and stimulate access to business opportunities and markets; enhance business-related efficiencies, increase productivity and profitability. However, strategy implementation is a challenge for most of the public sector organizations in Kenya as there are various soft, hard and mixed factors that have negatively influenced the strategy implementation resulting in poor implementation process. The purpose of the study therefore was to establish the challenges influencing strategy implementation in public sector organizations. The specific objectives of the study included financial resources, human resource skills and information technology. The study targeted all 115 managers and gaming inspectors of Betting Control and Licensing Board. The study employed a descriptive research design using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The study used close ended questionnaires to collect data using simple random sampling. The questionnaire was piloted to ensure validity and reliability. The collected data was coded and analyzed by the aid of Statistical Package for Social Scientists Version 21 and presented in tables. For purposes of establishing the relationship of the variables in the study, both correlation and regression analysis was carried out. The study found a fairly strong positive relationship between availability of financial resources and strategy implementation (r = 0.593). It was established that there was a fairly weak positive relationship between information technology and strategy implementation (r = 0.327). The R2 value of 0.6163 implied that 61.6% of the variations in the effective strategy implementation at can be explained by the variations in independent variables. From the multiple regression analysis, the t-test statistic shows that all the beta coefficients are significant, since p<0.05. Financial resources were found to be the most important factor in enhancing strategy implementation while the least factor was information technology.