Background: The study examined the influence of implementation of employee empowerment on competitive advantage in hospitals within Nairobi. The study looked at the following aspects of employee empowerment; competence, teamwork, motivation, reward and recognition. Employee empowerment is derived from the Total Quality Management (TQM) principles bringing forth competitive advantage that results from high customer satisfaction levels, employee satisfaction and operations efficiency. Methods: A descriptive correlational research design that applied positivism philosophy. Data was collected from both private and public hospitals within Nairobi targeting patients who were admitted in these hospitals for more than three days during the study period and senior employees of the respective hospitals. There were 308 participants, 154 hospital employees and 154 patients from 31 hospitals within Nairobi. After institutional and individual consent was obtained, participants filled a self-administered questionnaire. The collected data was coded into SPSS Version 23 software and the analysis was done using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: The findings illustrated that employee empowerment significantly predicted competitive advantage. High responsiveness and good attitude, being reliable, empathy and assuring the patients of their state best enhance patients’ and employee satisfaction. Conclusion: This brings out the importance of realigning the staff inputs towards improving patient experiences, as well as considering employees’ performance as individual instead of considering them as teams.

The study examined the influence of leadership commitment on patients' satisfaction with hospitals in Nairobi. A positivist research philosophy was applied in this study. A mixed research design was used to target employees and patients of hospitals within Nairobi, from whom data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire. The target population was the hospital employees and patients of level-four, levelfive, and level-six public and private hospitals within Nairobi. Simple random sampling was used to select hospitals, while stratified random sampling was used to select the employees and patients. The data were collected from the closed-ended questionnaire, which was coded, analyzed, and presented in tables. The study findings showed that leadership commitment (β = −0.254, p = 0.001) and organization factors (β = 0.142, p = 0.00) had a significant influence on customer satisfaction. The leadership in healthcare should realign the staff inputs toward improving patient experiences.

The study examined the influence of implementation of continuous quality improvement (CQI) on patient satisfaction in hospitals within Nairobi. Literature from developed countries indicates that the application of continuous quality improvement has a significant influence on customer satisfaction. However, there is limited literature originating from developing countries. This study aimed at understanding the influence of continuous quality improvements such as Innovativeness, Quality Indicators, Information sharing and Risk management on customer (patient) satisfaction. To reinforce the study, theoretical and empirical review on the CQI and customer (patient) satisfaction was conducted from current and classical literature adopting the total quality management theory of profound knowledge, and the expectation confirmation theory. The mixed research design was used to target employees and patients of hospitals within Nairobi, from whom data was collected through a self-administered questionnaire. Simple random sampling was used to select hospital employees while stratified random sampling was used to select the patients. The questions were placed on a five-point Likert scale. The results of this study showed that innovativeness, information sharing, and risk management significantly influenced patients’ satisfaction, while quality indicators had no significant influence on patients’ satisfaction. This study, therefore, concluded that continuous quality improvement positively and significantly predicted patients’ satisfaction within the hospitals in Nairobi. The study findings guided the researcher to recommend among other things, leaders in the healthcare industry to draw customer satisfaction through the CQI application. Achieved through feedback from the patients and utilizing such information to improve the patient experiences. The researcher proposes that future studies be carried to cut across other industries that were not captured.