Relationship between Strategic Planning Process and Financial Performance of Professional Service SMES in Kenya: Moderating Role of Innovation Practices (Published)
This paper investigates the relationship between Strategic planning process and financial performance of professional service SMEs in Kenya. Specifically, the study had two specific objectives of the study: first, to analyze the effect of strategic planning process on the financial performance of professional service SMEs in Kenya and secondly, to test the moderating effect of innovation practices on the relationship between strategic planning process and financial performance of professional service SMEs in Kenya. The study targeted 384 SMEs as the sample size, with data collected from managers/owners through questionnaire. SMEs were randomly selected while respondents were selected through purposive sampling. The study findings indicated that innovation practices have a moderating effect on the relationship between strategic planning process and the financial performance of professional service SMEs in Kenya. From the findings, it can be concluded that SMEs with strategic planning practices and innovative practices are likely to have better performance than SMEs that have adopted strategic planning process only.
Keywords: Environmental Scanning, Innovation Practices, Small Medium Enterprises, Strategic Management, Strategy Evaluation, Strategy Formulation, Strategy Implementation
STRATEGIC FOCUS ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION (Published)
The aim of vocational education is oriented toward sustainable performance that can contribute to the country development. A mission is of great importance to the organizations as well as for vocational high schools since it promotes vision, values and its goals. It communicates not only to the employees but to the stakeholders and provides the basis for the priorities, strategic plans and work tasks of the organization. The paper focuses on the mission statements of Macedonian vocational high schools posted on their web sites. By content analysis, the research has the aim to evident the presence of mission statement and its elements – words that support entrepreneurial spirit, like: entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity, self-employment. Aside from determining the focus of interest of vocational high schools and their readiness to develop entrepreneurial skills, the research results can contribute to promoting the quality of the mission statements of the vocational high schools.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Mission statements content analysis, Strategic Management, Vocational education