Coping Strategies Adopted by Public Universities in Kenya in Response to Environmental Changes

Abstract

This study was undertaken to establish strategies adopted by public universities in Kenya in response to changes in the environment. The study design was descriptive and utilized a cross-sectional survey of all the public universities in Kenya through administration of a structured questionnaire to the top management team. Additional primary data were collected through observations and interviews. Secondary data were collected from published works and, universities and government documents in public domain in order to corroborate the data collected from the primary sources. Positive responses were received from 63 respondents out of 91, yielding a 69.4% response rate. The universities adopted Porter's generic competitive strategy model, of cost leadership, differentiation and focus to counter the challenges experienced, and in particular cost leadership and differentiation. The extent of adoption of differentiation strategy was significantly different (p<0.05) between the old and new universities and not among the three categories of public universities, that is, old, new and university colleges. Grand strategies adopted were diversification in related business, expansion and strategic alliances. The major operational strategies adopted included, management leadership in the formulation of response strategies, distributed leadership, benchmarking, and mounting of evening and weekend programmes. Some operational strategies adopted by some universities were, however, unethical and may compromise quality. The results indicate that the coping strategies adopted by public universities in Kenya in response to changes in the environment are more or less similar to those applied by corporate organizations among them, grand strategies and Porter's generic competitive strategy.

Porter’s five competitive forces framework and other factors that influence the choice of response strategies adopted by public universities in Kenya

“…As a result, top managers of these institutions actively construct and enact their environments through experimentation and innovative strategies and are likely to develop proactive logics (strategy to environment) (Nadkarni and Barr, 2008). The higher education industry, like any other industry is highly competitive and, therefore, has to operate like a business enterprise to sustain the competition (Anand, 2012;Mathooko and Ogutu, 2013). In higher education industry, three key factors of sustainable competitive advantage have been identified, namely, branding and image, the physical aspect of higher education including location and facilities, and the mode of delivery (Hua, 2011).…”

“…High technological investment has in some instances replaced physical infrastructure and thus changed the cost of doing business (Martinez and Wolverton, 2009a). Public universities in Kenya are slowly adopting this model to circumvent the challenges of physical infrastructure observed earlier (Mathooko, 2013). Thus, the new business models emerging in higher education world over are brick (physical campus), brick and click (physical as well as virtual campuses) and click only (virtual campus) (Pathak and Pathak, 2010).…”

Deans in Kenyan Universities : their leadership styles and impacts on staff commitment

“…not professionally prepared for these positions beforehand (Mwiria, 2003;Kamaara, 2011, Mathooko, & Ogutu, 2014. These impressions from the literature suggest that deans may not be able to deploy the level of behavioural complexity as is depicted by the outcomes of their responses regarding their performance of the leadership roles.…”

“…The government of Kenya launched a strategy for performance improvement in public universities through performance contracts requiring university leaders to work towards predetermined objectives, outputs and results(Letangule & Letting, 2012). This is aimed at institutionalizing performance and improving service delivery by ensuring that university leaders are accountable for results and resource utilization (Republic ofKenya, 2001;Mathooko, & Ogutu, 2014). The mandates of deans in Kenyan universities have also recently been expanded as a result of decentralization of several activities and responsibilities from central university management to the levels of the deans.…”

The Role of Networking Capability on Organization Performance: A Perspective of Private Universities in Kenya

“…Due to the growing pressures related to declining quality of educational programs, quality of research, authenticity of degrees granted, flexibility of the university programs, innovations created, and the utilization of resources, private universities in Kenya have been reporting poor performance [14]. Despite the increasing number of students seeking higher education, these numbers have not translated to better performance of the private Universities.…”