Im Mbeche

The role of institutions in the development process of African countries

This paper examines the role of institutions in the development process of African countries. It has been shown that, whereas institutions have played a greater role in the economic development of several East Asian countries, in Africa they are weaker and ineffective because of poor enforcement of the rule of law, corruption, mismanagement, absence of strong civil society and political interference. It is argued that well‐functioning institutions can promote growth and reduce poverty in Africa by providing a conducive environment for implementation and sustainable development programmes. Therefore, African countries should endeavor to establish effective, responsive and democratic institutions that will promote accountable and transparent governance and sustainable socioeconomic development.

A Survey of Benchmarking Practices in Higher Education in Kenya: The Case of Public Universities

Benchmarking has been used as a tool, a methodology and a technique for continuous improvements in sectoral operations to gain and maintain competitive advantage. This was a survey of benchmarking practices in higher education in Kenya, the case of public universities, whose objectives were; to document the benchmarking activities in the public universities; to establish the challenges facing the public universities in benchmarking. Cross sectional survey was used in this study to collect data from the six public universities with their respective campuses/schools in the population of interest. The respondents were senior administrators and the academic staff. Of the 53 informants who were sampled, 31 responded, thus, a response rate was of 58 percent. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze and summarize the data before presenting it in the form of proportions, means, tables and graphs. This was in line with the first and second objectives, which were actually answered in relation to the benchmarking practices in the academic function of public universities in Kenya. The study found out that continuous improvement systems in Kenyan public universities are good, not excellent. The external drivers of change/continuous improvements in public universities are the customers/students as opposed to legislation, while the major internal trigger of change is the actual performance. The public universities effectively and successfully benchmark for continuous improvement. The Kenyan public universities use action research and performance indicators as the sources of referencing information on benchmarks. The most common type of benchmarking in use is development/improvement benchmarking and planning to make use of international benchmarking. Finally, the three critical factors that have influenced the success of benchmarking practices are: time and resource availability: limited duration, comparability and compatibility, which are reasons why the institutions don’t practice international benchmarking.

The relationship between supply chain strategies and supply chain performance among large-scale manufacturing firms: the moderating effect of supply chain technology

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating role of supply chain technology in the relationship between supply chain strategies and supply chain performance. A sample of 138 firms was drawn using proportionate sampling from a total population of 627 large scale manufacturing firms in Kenya firms. The descriptive statistics, reliability and validity tests of the constructs, correlation analysis and factor analysis and regression analysis models were used to test the hypotheses. The study findings indicate that there is a very strong significant relationship between supply chain strategies, supply chain technology, and firm supply chain performance outcome whereby the supply chain strategies and supply chain technology explain 92.9% of the changes in the firms supply chain performance outcome. This study cleared a number of contradictions to support the position that firms should invest in supply chain configurations and technologies that lead to improved service delivery accompanied with enhanced operational and supply performance.

Management by Projects: Factors which affect the Performance of Project Managers in a developing Country

Many organizations in Kenya have adopted and tried to implement the total quality management (TQM) programmes. Many of these firms have failed to achieve the expected results for various reasons. This study examines how TQM implementation is influenced by leadership in a large organization. The result show that control systems, involvement of employees in decision making and the provision of a conducive psychological environment are quiet difficult to provide for by the leadership in a large organization. It is suggested that creating smaller organization and/or autonomous Divisions of firm will help to address these challenges.