ORGANIZATIONAL CAPABILITIES AND MARKET PERFORMANCE OF MOBILE OPERATORS IN KENYA: A CASE OF SAFARICOM PUBLIC LIMITED COMPANY

Abstract

Due to the intense competitive environment in the mobile communications industry, most organizations are compiled to review their strategies to align with use of technology, appropriate leadership style and business innovation in order to compete both locally and globally. The aim and justification of this study was to examine, investigate and determine the influence of technology adoption, leadership style, business innovation and the firm competitiveness on market performance of mobile operators in Kenya. The study was anchored on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) theory, supported by Stakeholder theory and Michael Porter Five Forces Model. The study targeted a population of 402 respondents. Stratified random and simple random sampling techniques were adopted to arrive at a sample size of 197 respondents. The study adopted the descriptive research design; the primary data was collected using structured questionnaire as a tool from a sample size of 197 respondents. The data collected was then be verified, coded and analyzed by use of software SPSS version 26. From the reliability statistics the tool had a Cronbach's Alpha 0.886 which confirmed that the tool was reliable and valid from the pilot test done with 20 respondents who did not participate in the final data collection. From the study findings, technology adoption, leadership style, business innovation and firm competitiveness, all had positive correlation with the market performance. Both correlation and Regression analysis established that leadership style, business innovation and firm competitiveness had a strong positive significance to the market performance with (p=0.000). The regression analysis showed that there was a positive significant correlation to market performance. Technology adoption (p = 0.294) had a weak significance on market performance while leadership style (p = 0.004), business innovation (p = 0.002) and firm competitiveness (p = 0.000) had a strong positive significance on market performance since the p-values were less than 0.05. Due to financial and time constraints, the research could not be conducted with the other two mobile operators, Airtel Kenya and Telkom Kenya, to have a comparative study to determine whether the results of the study could be in line with the findings from the Safaricom PLC one. It was noted that the study faced some challenges during data collection due to the effect of Covid-19 pandemic which in many cases delayed consent for data collection and could not allow other methods of data collection to be adopted such as one-one interview and explanations about the research to the respondents. It is recommended that more study need to be done on the other factors that influence market performance other than the four variables. Likewise, the impact of technology adoption on the market performance needs to be investigated further as it had lower coefficient and was established not to be significant.