| dc.description.abstract | Purpose: For any organization to succeed in the present
competitive and ever-changing business environment,
understanding the risks, opportunities, and strength posed
by the external environment is inevitable. Organizations
must exploit opportunities and avoid risks by applying
relevant strategies and developing various strategic
approaches that will improve their competitive edge and
overall performance. One of the possible ways to
improve business efficiency and performance is through
diversification. The purpose of this study was to assess
the applicability of a diversification strategy as a game
plan to motivate and develop resilience against
organizational and environmental forces in business
operations to improve organizational performance in star
rated hotels in the Coastal Kenya. The specific objectives
was; to determine the impact of related diversification
strategies on organizational performance among star
rated hotels in coastal Kenya Coastal.
Materials and Methods: Notably, 36 star rated hotels
were selected while 419 respondents were involved
which comprised; strategic managers, tactical and
operational managers. This represented a response rate of
92.4% and 80.6% for the questionnaires and interviews
respectively. Stratified sampling was used to select the
hotels while purposive sampling was used to select the
managers. Questionnaires and interview schedules were
used during data collection. Data analyze was both
analyzed using both descriptive and inferential analysis.
The mean for overall adoption of horizontal
diversification strategies was 3.94 (std. dev=0.92) while
vertical diversification strategies was 3.28 (std.
dev=1.13) which was significant. The mean on overall
adoption of related diversification strategies was 3.60
(std. dev=0.95), demonstrating that related
diversification strategies have on overall been adopted to
a large extent.
Findings: The model summary results indicates that RSquare=0.598; this implies that 59.8% of performance is
explained by vertical and horizontal diversification
strategies. This implies that, both horizontal and vertical
diversification strategies were significantly adopted in
the operation and management of hotel business in the
coast region of Kenya. The null hypothesis stating,
“There is no significant relationship between vertical
diversification strategies and performance of star rated
hotels along the Kenyan Coast” was rejected. This means
that horizontal and vertical diversification strategies are
significant predictors of performance of star rated hotels
in the Kenyan Coast. From the regression model,
horizontal and vertical diversification were found to have
a positive effect that was statistically significant on
performance of star rated hotels in the Kenyan Coast.
Implications to Theory, Practice and Policy: Policy
makers should initiate policies that motivate
organizations such as hotels to practice diversification to
minimize negative impact on both financial and nonfinancial performance aspects. | en_US |
