LEADERSHIP STYLE AND SERVICE DELIVERY OF COUNTY GOVERNMENTS OF KENYA: THE ROLE OF INTERNAL POLITICS
Abstract
The absence of quality leadership style in an organizational setting has been found to negatively affect performance. This leads to stagnation in organizational operations, which culminates into the inability to achieve set objectives. In today’s globalized world, with organizations coping with rapidly changing environments, leaders face a new reality. Internal politics (IP) refers to the use of power and social networking within an organization to achieve changes that benefit the organization or individuals within it.The study sought to determine the role of internal politics on the relationship between strategic leadership and service delivery of County Governments in Kenya. The relevant theories reviewed for this study were the upper echelon theory and principal agent theory. This study used a positivism research philosophy. The study used a cross sectional survey. The target population for the study was drawn from the 47 Counties in Kenya as per 2010 constitution. The study used purely primary data which was collected using a structured questionnaire. Data analysis took place at two levels – descriptive statistics level and inferential statistics level. To test the study hypothesis, simple and multiple linear regressions were used. Multiple regression analysis was carried out to predict the dependent variable given the independent variable. P-value was used to check for significance of individual variables in the regression equations, whereby a relationship was considered to be statistically significant if the p-value was ≤ 0.05. The study found that strategic leadership was significant in influencing service delivery among county governments in Kenya. It was therefore recommended that county governments must understand the service delivery dimensions in order to carry out frequent analysis and develop strategic leadership concepts relevant to their counties.
Key words: Leadership Style, Internal Politics, Service delivery, County Governments of Kenya
CITATION: Nyaberi, J. P. L. (2020). Leadership style and service delivery of County governments of Kenya: The role of internal politics. The Strategic Journal of Business & Change Management, 7 (4), 1500 – 1506.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.61426/sjbcm.v7i4.1876
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