Management Practices And Project Outcomes Of Selected Projects At Catholic Churches In Nakuru County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

For a long time, the Catholic Church, Nakuru Diocese has been facing the challenge of not

achieving intended goals of their projects due to the over runs in time and budgets in most

Catholic Churches’ projects, it become necessary to examine the influence of project

management practices on project outcomes at catholic churches. The study was therefore

carried out to establish the influence of selected project management practices on project

outcomes at Catholic Churches Nakuru diocese, Nakuru County, Kenya. Specific objectives

included; to establish the influence of Stakeholder participation on project outcomes at

Catholic Churches in Nakuru county; to find out the influence of Project resource planning on

project outcomes at Catholic Churches in Nakuru county; to examine the influence of project

leadership on project outcomes at Catholic Churches in Nakuru county, to investigate the

influence of Project control and evaluation on project outcomes at Catholic Churches Nakuru

county. This study employed descriptive survey design. The target population comprised

three projects, that is; rehabilitation of street children project, (Mwangaza street children

rehabilitation project), Rehabilitation of commercial sex workers project (Women of destiny)

and Integrated programs for the handicapped with a total of 162 staff including project

management staff, project non-management staff and Church project planning and

Development office staff. The research utilized stratified random sampling to select a sample

size of 115 respondents. Structured Questionnaires were used to collect information from the

sampled respondents. Data collected was checked for completeness and thereafter coded and

entered into SPSS version 22 for analysis. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were

used in data analysis. For descriptive statistics, mean, standard deviation, frequency,

percentages were employed while for inferential analysis bivariate Pearson correlation

coefficient and Multi regression analysis were used. Data was presented using tables and

associated explanations. It was established that all the selected project management practices

that included: project resource planning, project leadership, stakeholder involvement and

project monitoring and evaluation had positive significant influence on project outcomes at catholic churches in Nakuru County, Kenya.