ASSESSMENT OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PRACTICES; THE CASE OF ETHIOPIAN ROADS AUTHORITY

Abstract

Strategic management emerged as an important management tool in or to cope up with the dynamism and retain competitive advantage. Strategic management is a series of decisions taken to determine long term objectives and includes the phases of environmental scanning, strategy formulation, strategy implementation and strategy monitoring and evaluation. The major objective of this study was to describe the strategic management practices of Ethiopian Roads Authority. The study compares strategic management practices of Ethiopian Roads Authority with the widely accepted theoretical concepts in the field. As result, its strategic management has been determined by selecting four major strategic component variables and other related concepts. This research has a descriptive nature which describes the existing phenomenon as it exists. Furthermore, managerial and non-managerial employees were selected based on their proportion to the population size. Out of 410 employees, 201 employees were taken as a sample. Qualitative data was collected via interview from two members of the organization intensively involved in the strategic management. Quantitative data was collected based on the questionnaires distributed to the management and employees. Secondary sources of data including strategic plans and budget preparation guidelines were also used. Under the section dealing with analysis and interpretation of data, the four phases of the strategic management process in Ethiopian Roads Authority are assessed as per prior literature. Results of the study based on the analysis showed that, lack of trained professionals with some environmental scanning, the strategic plan preparation is not aligned with strategy of other economic sectors, employee and management aren’t rewarded for achieving the strategic plan, the strategy monitoring and evaluation tools based on which implementation of strategies are evaluated are not clear and the major challenges are over ambition, unexpected issues, un expected weather condition, poor coordination between Federal Infrastructure Development Cooperation Agency and the effect of delay. The recommendation based on the results from the study is that, the management should also be regularly scheduled formal reviews processes to ensure the plan is performing as designed and fulfill the SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely), to reflect the specific desired accomplishments.