Performance Contracting and Service Delivery in County Governments in Kenya: A Case of Kakamega County
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53819/81018102t30147Abstract
County governments have implemented a variety of strategies, including performance contracting, to improve service delivery. However, they have been shown to perform poorly. This is despite receiving a significant portion of the national budget to carry out their mandates. This means that the effects of a performance contracting strategy in counties must be thoroughly examined in order to understand the exact situation on the ground and its true value. Based on these arguments, the study looked into how performance contracting affected service delivery in Kakamega County Government. The study was founded on three theories: expectancy theory, goal setting theory, and the dynamics of service delivery. The study was guided by four specific objectives: determining the impact of target setting on service delivery; establishing the effect of vetting and negotiation on service delivery; determining the effect of execution on service delivery; and determining the impact of monitoring and evaluation on service delivery. The research used a descriptive research design. The study included 142 respondents from Kakamega's Executive and County Assembly. Each respondent was given a questionnaire that they could fill out themselves. The collected data was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The data underwent descriptive analysis and was presented in the form of frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations. To test the hypotheses, we used regression analysis. The findings resulted in the rejection of three null hypotheses: a significant relationship between the independent and dependent variables was identified. As a result, the study concluded that target setting, execution, monitoring, and evaluation all have a positive impact on service delivery. The findings would help policymakers at both levels of government make decisions about how to strengthen performance contracts. The study findings will help the incoming governor of the County Government of Kakamega identify areas for improvement in service delivery, and the task force on performance contracting policy will benefit from the findings.
Keywords: Performance, Contracting, Service Delivery, County Governments, Kakamega County
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