INFLUENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ON PERFOMANCE OF LOCAL NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS IN KENYA: A CASE OF NAIROBI COUNTY

Abstract

Although Kenya has pursued economic development through Non-governmental organizations which have the desire to achieve development driven projects to the local communities, lack of organizational development has led to poor performance of these organizations to meet the objectives in Kenya. Engaging in the process of organizational development ensures that an organization meets its objectives within the constraints of time, budget and external forces. It is therefore important that the organizational development system be properly installed from the onset to ensure that it gives proper direction and guidance for an organization. This study dealt on the effects of organizational development on performance of non-governmental organizations in Kenya with a case of Nairobi County as the study area. The specific objectives of the study were to examine how employee development, monitoring and evaluation, resource allocation and systems development affect performance of non-governmental organizations in Kenya. The study adopted a descriptive survey purposively targeted800 employees of the local NGOs situated in Nairobi County. A sample size of 80 respondents was used by use of a stratified sampling technique to collect primary data through the use of questionnaires. The secondary data was obtained from published documents such as journals, periodicals, magazines and reports to supplement the primary data. A pilot study was conducted to test reliability and validity of data collection instruments. The data was analyzed with help of SPSS version 21 and Excel. The analysis showed that employee development had the strongest positive (Pearson correlation coefficient =.744) effects on performance of non-governmental organization. In addition, systems development, resources allocation and monitoring and evaluation are positively correlated to performance of non-governmental organizations (Pearson correlation coefficient =.603, .693 and .651). The study recommends that to improve organizational development on performance of non-governmental organizations, the management should make sure that all the respective heads of departments have full and clear information on organizational development strategies and policies that can promote performance of their organizations. The employee development to be facilitated through leadership development of supervisors and managers of the organizations, staff training and skill on employee development, regular staff appraisals of employees enhances performance of their organization. The organizations should give more resources in terms of financial, human and physical resources to enhance performance of organization and work schedule allocation. The systems development through standard operating systems in organizations, policies, procedures and systems compliance on organizational development will help to improve performance of the non-governmental organizations in Nairobi County. The monitoring and evaluation to be embraced by the NGOs through making informed decisions regarding programme operations and service delivery, make informed decisions regarding programme operations and service delivery as this will go a long way to help the organization to have effective and efficient use of resources, helps organizations to track progress of programmes, to assess extent the programme is having its desired impact, helps the organizations to create transparency and foster public trust and helps the organizations to understand support and meet donor needs and also helps the organization to create institutional memory. Additionally, very little has been undertaken to explore organizational development on performance of organizations reason thus researcher call for similar studies to be undertaken in Kenya for generalization of the findings of this study.