Managerial Ties and Performance of County Assemblies in Kenya

Abstract

constitution of a country is a supreme law that governs the affairs the nation states all over the world. The Constitution of Kenya 2020 is the implementation of a system of devolved Government in which Articles 174 and 175 envisions the power of self-governance by the people and their enhanced participation in decision-making. Hence, County Assemblies discharge important mandates within the county governments’ set-up comprising legislation, representation and oversight. However, there is scarce literature on the relationship between managerial ties and performance of legislative organisations such as Kenya’s County assemblies as constitutionally specified in their mandates. We assessed the relationship between managerial ties (institutional, political and social ties) and performance (legislation, oversight and representation) of county assemblies in Kenya using a descriptive structured questionnaire census survey of 98 respondents from the 46 County assemblies in Kenya comprising the County Assemblies Speakers, Clerks and Deputy Clerks. Data was analysed to generate both descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 22) software. Correlation analysis was used to assess the strength and direction of the relationship between managerial ties and performance and the t-test was used to test the significance of individual correlation coefficients. The findings were that the performance of the county assemblies was moderate while managerial ties were weak. Further, there was a negative significant relationship between institutional ties and performance (r = - 0.409, <0.001) while a positive significant relationship existed between social ties and performance (r = 0.205, p < 0.05). Political ties had no significant relationship with performance of county assemblies (r = 0.127, p = 0.211 > 0.05). However, political ties were positively and significantly related with oversight by county assemblies (r = .276, p < 0.01). These findings are important to the county assembles and other stakeholders in making informed decisions on the role of managerial ties on the effective performance of County Governments in Kenya and other organisations in general.