Moderating Influence of Organizational Structure on the Association between Strategic Leadership and Service Delivery in the County Government of Busia, Kenya

Abstract

The controller of budget in his 2019 report identified the issues of inadequate capacity building for staff, inadequate citizen public participation on essential county projects and programs, poor key stakeholder involvement in project decisions and poor project relevance as the major challenges facing the county government of Busia. The County Government of Busia was also faulted for poor absorption of development and recurrent funds at a rate of 48.3% and 58.2% respectively. These disparities could be accredited to poor leadership in the County Government of Busia. The purpose of the study was to determine the moderating influence of organizational structure on the association between strategic leadership and service delivery (SD) in the county government of Busia, Kenya. From the results, when organizational structure was introduced into the model, that is, on the link between strategic leadership and SD in county government of Busia, it reduced the influence of the strategic leadership on SD in county government of Busia. The influence of visionary leadership decreased from β = 0.372 to β = -0.048, transactional contingent reward from β = 0.384 to β = 0.098 while decentralization from β = 0.368 to β = -0.004. The study concluded that organizational structure moderated positively the strategic leadership-service delivery relationship. The study recommends that Busia County government ought to be visionary by developing relevant sustainable development plans, setting clear performance targets and rewards as well as ensure that services meet all residents’ needs and expectations. These study findings are helpful in policy formulation Busia County governments, industry practice by county government leadership and will add to existing scholarly works in this area.