Strategic Leadership and Service Delivery : Evidence from Devolved Governments in Kenya

Abstract

Strategic leadership is an important concept as it enables leaders to empowers teams through envisioning, anticipating and creation of changes strategically. However, the key challenge in the African context, with regard to political leaders, is that when they assume their state offices, they fail to follow through the promises they made to the electorate. The main objective of the devolved governments is to bring improved services closer to the people. However, despite the Government of Kenya’s endeavour to devolve funds to the grassroots, the economic welfare of the people is still poor. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of strategic leadership on service delivery by County Governments in Kenya. The study was based on the upper echelon theory. This study used positivism research philosophy where quantitative approaches were utilized in a cross-sectional survey. The unit of analysis was the 47 Counties in Kenya. Six respondents were purposively selected from six key departments in the counties and thus the study had a sample size of 282. The study used primary data collected using questionnaires. Data analysis was through descriptive and inferential statistics. The study regression results showed that strategic leadership had a significant influence on service delivery. It was therefore recommended that County Governments must understand the county leadership has to be more strategic and train employees on innovations for better service delivery. The study recommended that the law enforcement agencies should enforce sanction on unethical leaders and employees to ensure more effective service delivery.