Influence Of Strategic Planning On Corporate Performance: A Case Of National Hospital Insurance Fund, Kenya

ABSTRACT

The overall goal of the government of Kenya is to promote and improve health status of all Kenyans through effective, accessible, and affordable health services. To address major challenges in health sector and to make health care accessible and affordable, the government of Kenya in 1966 set up NHIF to provide medical insurance cover. Stakeholders have raised dissatisfactions on the services being offered citing that the entity has lost sight on its objectives leading to loss for money invested by principals. In the recent cases, regular system failure during on- line payment, laxity in addressing client’s hospital related cases and failure to remit funds to hospital after treating its patient beneficiary like Kenyatta hospital costing 311 million in 2017 suggests lack of strategic plans. While previous studies largely focused on funding, they never considered strategic planning in NHIF in Busia Western Kenya. Moreover, no known studies have focused on Mission, objectives, and Policies which ensures improvement in performance. The purpose of this study was to analyze influence of strategic planning on corporate performance. This study was guided by three objectives; to establish the influence of mission statement on corporate performance, to establish the influence of organization’s objectives on corporate performance and to analyze the influence of organization’s policies on corporate performance. The study covered other researcher’s work on influence of strategic planning on corporate performance and guided by resource based theory. It employed correlational research design and target population was 49 NHIF management staff of whom 4 were used for pilot study and 45 for actual study, Census sampling approach was used as the target population was manageable number. The research instruments were questionnaire and interview schedules. Instrument reliability was ascertained using Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient where all the variables met the threshold of 0.701 implying internal consistency while validity was ascertained by expert judgment from school of Business and Economics. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (percentage) and inferential statistics was used to generate quantitative reports, content analysis was used to analyze quantitative data and presented in tables. Findings revealed that that use of mission statement in strategic decision making was statistically insignificant predictor of corporate performance β1= .038 (p = .269), organization’s objectives was a positive significant predictor of corporate performance (β2 = .429 (p = .000) and organization’s policies was a positive significant predictor of corporate performance (β3 = .432 (p = .000).These values of organization’s objectives and organization’s policies are statistically significant since the p-values are less than 0.05 meaning that a unit change in use of, organization’s objectives and policies intensity leads to an increase in corporate performance of , 0.429 and 0.432respectively, all things being fixed. The study concludes that mission statement should not too embraced in order to increase corporate performance, use organization’s objectives and adoption of organization’s policies in strategic planning should be embraced as they lead to increased corporate performance. The study recommends that NHIF Busia branch should not over embrace mission statement, organization’s objectives and policies in strategic decision making as this was found to improve corporate performance of fund. The importance of the study is that it presents an overview on the influence of strategic planning on corporate performance. This is expected to offer a meaningful insights, increase strategic management knowledge and source of reference to other researchers, readers and NHIF policy makers.