Strategic Management Practices Adopted by Public Benefit Organizations in Homa Bay County, Kenya

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The objective of this study was to determine the strategic management practices adopted by Public Benefit Organizations in Homa Bay County, Kenya. The study employed descriptive research design. The researcher collected both primary and secondary data .Primary data was collected by use of semi-structured questionnaires that had both closed and open ended questions. The target respondents were the senior managers and Coordinators heading PBOs in the County. Secondary data was collected from publications and documents from the PBOs and the PBO Coordination board. The documents collected included minutes of meetings, mission and vision statements, past studies, reports, financial statements among others. The Population comprised 496 public benefit organizations operating in Homa Bay County and are registered by the PBOs coordination Board. The study sample size of 217 was developed using Simple random sampling technique upon which 168 Organizations returned the questionnaires giving a response rate of 77.41. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was applied in analyzing the data and tables were used to summarize responses for further analysis and comparison. The study findings indicated that the majority of the PBOs in Homa Bay County have adopted some form of Strategic management practices. Nonetheless, strategic management seems not to have been prioritized in majority of the organizations because a good number of PBOs do not have designated departments to coordinate strategic issues. It also came out clearly from the study that the international PBOs organizations were largely more active and aware of the strategic management practices than local PBOs.The researcher concludes that PBOs have largely complied with all the five steps of strategic management: Crafting of vision and mission statements , Situational analysis, Strategy formulation, Strategy implementation and Strategy evaluation. There was notable active participation of all the relevant stakeholders in strategic management processes, this was critical in ensuring that the strategies are popular, are well owned and everyone plays a role in ensuring that it is implemented as its critical for organizations success. The study recommends that there is need to have designated personnel or department to manage the strategic Management activities in the PBOs in Homa Bay County. Secondly ,there is need to formalize the strategic management processes within the organizational setup so that they are not done haphazardly and thirdly, Strategic management should be a practice informed by its anticipated benefits and needs of the organization and not asa compliance issue or donor requirement.