Article Published In Vol.6 (Sept-Oct-2018)

The Moderating Effect of Government Policy on Strategic Leadership and Performance of County Governments in North Rift Region, Kenya

Author : Apalia Antony and Ondiek B. Alala

The Constitution of Kenya 2010 reversed the centralized non – participatory governance paradigm by institutionalizing a devolved governance system. A total of 47 counties were created in the constitution. Each county was to receive funding from the National government and at the same time generate funds to sustain themselves. Devolution approaches tailored to sub-national, regional and local circumstances were considered better able to address the continuing problems caused by entrenched territorial inequities in growth, income and employment. These counties are streamlined under government polices where evaluation is done and planned early in the policy development cycle and embedded into all policies. The objectives of the study were to determine the moderating effect of government policy on strategic leadership and performance of county governments in North Rift region, Kenya. The study adopted mixed research design that targeted 539 county governments’ employees in the North Rift region. A sample size of 230 employees was determined and selected by use of stratified random sampling technique. The main study instrument was self-administered questionnaire and interview guide. Validity was determined by population and content validity. Reliability of instruments was tested by use of Cronbach’s alpha. Both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were adopted. It was noted that government policy has a moderating role because in its presence, it accounts for 53% of the performance of county government while in its absence, the performance can only be attributed to 49.2%. The study concluded that government policy has a moderating effect with performance in the county government.

Keywords: Moderating, Government policy, Strategic leadership, Performance, County Governments