Strategic Capabilities And Organizational Performance: A Case Of Private Universities In Kenya

Private Universities in Kenya have continuously faced a number of challenges such as declining quality of educational programs, quality of research, authenticity of degrees granted, flexibility of the university programs, innovations created and efficient utilization of resources at their disposal. Despite the increasing number of students seeking higher education, these numbers have not translated to better performance in these Universities. Modern business environment calls for organizations, including private Universities to identify and exploit strategic capabilities for them to effectively compete and boost their performance. These universities need to harness their resources, and exploit their competences in order to gain competitive advantage. This study sought to establish the effect of strategic capabilities on performance of private Universities in Kenya. Specifically, it sought to determine the effect of information technology capability, human capital capability, networking capability, and intellectual capability on performance of private Universities in Kenya. The study also sought to determine the mediating effect of competitive advantage and the moderating effect of organizational culture on the relationship between strategic capabilities and performance of private Universities in Kenya. The study was anchored on Resource-based view theory, organizational learning theory, intellectual capital theory, human capital theory, balanced scorecard model and the institutional theory. Further, the study was founded on positivism philosophy and adopted a descriptive survey research design. The target population for the study was the 31 private universities in Kenya while a sample size of 153 respondents was selected using stratified random sampling technique. The respondents included the faculty deans, registrar administration and finance, human resources managers and ICT managers. Primary data was collected using semi structured questionnaire.