Effect Of Strategic Digital Transformation on Organizational Performance of Marsabit County Government, Kenya

Abstract

Despite the establishment of strategic digital transformation processes in county governments in Kenya, weak policies, poor strategic decision-making and inflexible governance structure in Marsabit County, have resulted to low organizational performance. The purpose of the study was to determine the effect of strategic digital transformation on the organizational performance of the Marsabit County Government, Kenya. The specific objectives were to examine the effect of digitizing operations, institutional culture transformation, strategic leadership support, and strategic centricity on organizational performance of the Marsabit County Government, Kenya. Theory of Reasoned Action was the anchor theory on which the technology acceptance model is directly based. Other theories of the study were the upper echelon and stewardship theories. The study adopted descriptive research design and included 69 managers and 220 officers. The departmental managers answered both closed- and open-ended questionnaires, whereas the officers answered the closed-ended questionnaires. A pilot study was done in Samburu County government. Descriptive and inferential analyses were done through SPSS, whereby frequency, percentages, and mean represented descriptive analysis, while Pearson correlation, model summary, analysis of variance, and regression coefficients represented the inferential analysis. Digitizing operations (R = 0.487, Sig = 0.003), institutional culture (R = 0.746, Sig = 0.002), and strategic leadership support (R = 0.638, Sig = 0.000) had strong positive influences on organizational performance, while strategic centricity (R = 0.304, Sig = 0.001) showed a weak but positive correlation. The study recommends that the information and technology departmental managers should conduct sensitization to other county departments in Marsabit, explaining the relevance of data in decision-making. Furthermore, the county administrators are also recommended to ensure that there is a culture of support and empathy towards each other, across all departments.