INFLUENCE OF PERCEIVED OWNERS’ PRESSURE ON INNOVATION IN THE TEA SUBSECTOR IN KENYA
Abstract
Tea subsector in Kenya is very critical to the overall economy. It is one of the major foreign exchange earners and supports 10 % of the Kenyan population. The viability of the tea subsector however has been under threat in the recent past. The subsector has experienced declining margins due to the double impact of rising cost of production and drop in global tea prices. The main driver of the cost of production in tea business is the wage bill as the tea crop is largely labour intensive. Since innovation has been identified as one of the vehicles that make organizations achieve competitiveness, the tea industry in Kenya has identified a type of process innovation which is comparatively cheaper i.e. mechanical tea harvesting technology to mitigate the high labour cost. The perplexing thing however is that the uptake of this technology is low despite its cost advantages. This study therefore provided an opportunity to empirically test the theoretical basis of this contradiction and also identify the drivers of innovation by seeking to establish the influence of perceived owner stakeholder pressure on innovation in the context of adoption of mechanical tea harvesting technology in Kenya’s tea subsector. In the study, diagnostic survey research design was employed as it was the most appropriate because it was about relationship or associations between variables. The target population was all tea plantation firms in Kenya with managers in charge of these business units being the respondents. A census enquiry was used due the small nature of the target population. Data collection was done using a semi-structured questionnaire that targeted both quantitative and qualitative data. Data processing and analysis employed content analysis for qualitative data and logistic regression analysis for the quantitative. The results of the study indicated perceived owners’ pressure was positively significant at 5% level of significance. The beta coefficients were 3.043 whereas p values were 0.001. The goodness of fit based on Nagelkerke R square of the individual models was 0.588. The findings suggest that managers in the tea subsector in Kenya perceive owners as a very important stakeholder group to consider in decisions of innovation in the context of mechanical tea harvesting technology. The findings are in consonance with expectation from both theory and past empirical research which envisage a significant positive relationship between owners and innovation.
Key words: Stakeholder pressure, Perceived owners pressure, Innovation, MTH technology, Adoption
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Agle, B. R., Mitchell, R. K. & Sonnenfeld, J. A. (1999). Who matters to CEOs? An investigation of stakeholder attributes & salience, corporate performance, and CEO values. Academy of Management Journal, 42(5), 507-525.
Baldwin, J. R., Sabourin, D. (2000). Innovative activity in Canadian food processing establishments: The importance of engineering practices. International Journal of Technology Management, 20(5), 511-527.
Brown, J. D., Earle, J. S., Vakhitova, H. & Zheka, V. (2010). Innovation, Adoption, Ownership, and Productivity: Evidence from Ukraine, ESCIRRU Working Paper No. 18
Child, J. (1972). Organization Structure, Environment, and Performance - the role of strategic choice. Sociology, 6, 1-22
Crespi, G., Criscuolo, C. & Haskel, J. (2007). Information Technology, Organizational Change and Productivity Growth: Evidence from UK Firms, CEP Discussion Paper No. 783.
Crossan, M. M. & Apaydin, M. (2010). A Multi-Dimensional Framework of Organizational Innovation: A Systematic Review of the Literature, Journal of Management Studies, 47(6), 1154-1191.
Donaldson, T. & Preston, L. (1995). The stakeholder theory of the corporation: Concepts, evidence, and implications. Academy of Management Review, 20, 65-91
Foss, N. J., Laursen, K. & Pedersen, T. (2011). Linking Customer Interaction and Innovation: The mediating role of new organizational practices. Organization Science, 22,(4), 980-999.
Freeman, R. E. (1984). Strategic management: A stakeholder approach. Boston: Pitman.
Frooman, J. (1999). Stakeholder influence strategies. Academy of Management Review, 24, 191-205.
Gamal, D.,Salah, T. & Elrayyes, N. (2011). How to measure organization innovativeness. An overview of innovation measurement framework and innovation audit/management tools. TIEC.
Jacobs, G., Wittesloostuijn, A. & Chiste-Zeyse, J. (2013). A theoretical framework of organizational change, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 26(5), 772-92.
Jensen, M. C. (2000). Value maximization and the corporate objective function. In M. Beer & N. Nohria (Eds.), Breaking the code of change (pp. 37–58). Boston: Harvard Business School Press. [Reprinted (2002) as: Value maximization, stakeholder theory, and the corporate objective function. Business Ethics Quarterly, 12 (2), 235-256.
Johannessen, J. A. (2009). A systemic approach to innovation: The interactive innovation model. Kybernetes, 38(1/2), 158-176.
Kelley, H.H. & Michela, J.L. (1980). Attribution theory and research. Annual Reviews Psychology, 31,457-901
Košmely, K., & Vadnal, K. (2003). Comparison of two generalized logistic regression models: A case study. Paper presented at the 25th International Conference on Information Technology Interfaces (ITI) 2003, June 1619, 2003, Cavtat, Croatia.
Kothari, C.R. & Garg, G. (2014). Research Methodology: Methods and techniques, 3rd ed. New Age International: New Delhi
MacGregor, S.P. & Fontrodona, J. (2008), “Exploring the fit between CSR and innovation”, Working Paper WP-759, IESE Business School – Center for Business in Society, University of Navarra, Barcelona
Maina, J. & Kaluli, W. (2013). Assessment of mechanical harvesting of tea and its viability for use in Kenya, Unpublished thesis.
Misoi, M. & Wario, G. (2014). Institutional factors influencing strategic choice in tea subsector in Kenya. Strategic Journal of Business and Change Management 2(34), 663-677.
Misoi, K. M., Wario, G., Orwa, G. (2015). The role of firm ownership type in the adoption of mechanical tea harvesting technology in the tea subsector in Kenya. European Journal of Business Management, 2 (3), 87-103.
Mitchell, R. K., Agle, B. R. & Wood, D. J. (1997). Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: Defining the principle of who and what really counts. Academy of Management Review, 22(4), 853-886.
Mugenda, O. M. & Mugenda, A. G. (2003). Research methods: Quantitative & qualitative approaches. Nairobi, Kenya: ACTS.
Ndah, H. T. , Schuler, J., Uthes, S. & Zander, P. (2010). Adoption decision theories and conceptual models of innovations systems, Session 3, Overview of existing modeling approaches, CA2 Africa Inception Workshop
Neuman, W.L (2000). Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Boston: Allyn and Bacon Publishers.
OECD (2005). Oslo Manuals, Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Innovation Data, 3rd edition, OECD, Paris.
Ongonga, J. O. & Ochieng, A. (2013). Innovation in the tea industry: The case of Kericho tea, Kenya. Global Journal of Management and Business Research, 13 (1), 52-68
Pfeffer, J. & Salancik, G. R. (1978). The external control of organizations: A resource dependence perspective. New York: Harper & Row.
Rodgers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations, (5th ed.). New York: Free Press
Republic of Kenya (2015). Economic Survey. Nairobi Kenya: Government Printers
Schiavone, F. (2012). Resistance to industry technological change in communities of practice: The “ambivalent” case of radio amateurs. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 25(6), 784-97.
Sekaran, U. (2010). Research Methods for business: A skill Building Approach, 5th ed. USA, John Wiley & Sons Publisher
Van de Wal S. (2008). Comparative study of the tea sector in Kenya: A case of large scale tea estates, Netherlands. Retrieved 15th May, 2014 from http://somo.nl./publications-en/Publication_3096/view
Zakić, N., Jovanovic, A. & Stamatović, M. (2008), External and internal factors аffеcting the product and business process innovation. Economics and Organization, 5,(1) 17-29.
Zerenler, M., Hasiloglu, S. B. & Sezgin, M. (2008). Intellectual Capital and Innovation Performance: Empirical Evidence in the Turkish Automotive Supplier. Journal of Technology Management & Innovation, 3(4), 31-40.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.61426/sjbcm.v3i2.256
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
PAST ISSUES:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.