Strategic Thinking and the Performance of Land Administration Function in Kenya

Abstract

There exists a systematic failure in land administration as well as land delivery procedures in Kenya. The Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning has over-centralised structures and functions at the National level. The existing land rights and land administration delivery systems are undemocratic, bureaucratic, and uneconomical in terms of transaction costs. They are often, liable to abuse, leading to inordinate delays in land administration. Ordinary Kenyans are not able to access essential information on land ownership as well as land transactions. It is suggested that the use of intuition, foresight, and monetary techniques, strategic thinking would promote strategic agility in the land Administration function in Kenya. The study, therefore, sought to investigate the influence of strategic thinking on the performance of land administration function in Kenya. Moreover, the study used both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The target population was 2880 staff who work on land administration and sampled customers who access their services. The Slovin's Formula was employed to estimate the sample. The sample size of 351 was arrived at through a stratified random sampling method. In addition, the research employed document analysis at the respective headquarters of the National Land Commission and the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning. Inferential and descriptive statistics were deployed to analyse quantitative data with the assistance of SPSS version 22. Included in the descriptive statistics are frequency distribution, mean (the measure of dispersion), standard deviation, and percentages. Besides, inferential statistics included univariate regression analysis, Pearson correlation, and multivariate regression analysis. Thematic content analysis was employed for qualitative analysis and results presented in a narrative form. The study has a 95 percent confidence interval with a level of significance of 0.05. The study revealed that strategic thinking positively affects the performance of the land administration function in Kenya (β=0.577, p-value=0.000). Therefore, the study recommends that top management in both the National Land Commission and the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning should consider implementing consistent Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis to identify potential ways of improving the quality-of-service delivery. The management in the two organizations should, in addition, always be on endeavour to identify and respond to potential opportunities that can improve service delivery.