Kenya’s university lecturers are generally highly educated. Their capacity to carry out their mandate effectively and their recognition as essential assets to society and world – class institutions depend on their training, experience, commitment and quality of their productivity (Republic of Kenya, 2007). Specific mechanisms ought to be put in place to address the lecturers’ wellbeing, to ensure their motivation, retention and productivity. The author of this paper opines that university management is tasked with the responsibility of facilitating their staff training and development in order to bridge any existing gaps or shortcomings and sharpen their skills. The rationale for training in the work context being to better hone the abilities or skills of the individual and satisfy the short and long term manpower requirements of the organisation. This paper thus focuses on management training and development as a strategic tool to performance management and job satisfaction among Kenyan universities. The study employed convergent parallel mixed methods design with census, random and systematic sampling techniques to select the respondents. Purposive sampling was also used to select information-rich cases. A target population of 2,773 members of university management and lecturers in the chartered public and private universities with their main campuses in Rift Valley Region of Kenya was considered from which a sample of 605 participants was obtained. Questionnaires, interview and document analysis guides were used for data collection. Qualitative data was thematically analysed while quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient, independent-samples t-test, One-way ANOVA and regression coefficients, with the use of the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20. The study found that training and development exhibited the strong association with lecturers’ job satisfaction and performance management in the selected Kenyan Universities. For attainment of higher levels of job satisfaction and performance, the study recommended enhancement of training and development programmes in the Universities.
Keywords: Development, Job Satisfaction, Leadership Strategy, Performance Management., Training
