| dc.description.abstract | Business Process Outsourcing is one of the six priority sectors in the economic pillar
of the Kenya Vision 2030. The vision envisages that the country becomes the top
business process outsourcing destination in Africa. However, this has not been
achieved since some other countries like South Africa, Ghana, Morocco, and Egypt
have been more preferred destinations than Kenya. Statistics have also shown that the
global business process outsourcing destination position for Kenya has deteriorated. It
is in this regard that this study sought to establish the influence of macro environment
on the performance of the business process outsourcing companies in Kenya. The
study was underpinned by four theories, namely, Open systems, Porters Diamond,
Contingency and Macro Environment model. Pragmatic paradigm was used to support
the mixed research approach used in the study. The target population consisted of all
118 registered business process outsourcing companies in Kenya. Primary data was
collected using a questionnaire with a Likert-type interval using a five-point scale.
Additionally, secondary data from 2014 to 2017 on performance, namely, the number
of services and return on assets was collected. To improve the reliability and validity
of data, pretesting of the research instrument was carried out on 12 companies.
Cronbach's reliability coefficients ranged from 0.740 to 0.891 which was more than
0.7 and thus the research instrument was found to be reliable and valid for the study.
Tests on assumptions of the regression models namely, linearity, multicollinearity,
autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity were all met. Descriptive statistics showed the
features and patterns of the data. Analysis of variance showed that there was a
significant relationship between all the independent variables with the dependent
variable. The regression analysis was carried out through testing of five null
hypotheses which were all rejected since there was a statistically significant influence
of political, economic, technological, and legal environments on the performance of
business process outsourcing companies in Kenya. Further, there was a moderating
influence of firm strategy on the performance of the business process outsourcing
companies in Kenya. The study recommends that the companies adopt new
technology, come up with innovations of doing business, expand their offshore
business by positioning themselves internationally and diversify their services.
Regarding policy, the study recommends that the cybercrimes legislation be reviewed
and amended continuously to address the emerging cybercrimes to ensure the security
of customer data in possession of the business process outsourcing companies. The
study recommends that other studies be replicated in other sectors and countries to
establish whether the results would be similar. In addition, studies may be carried out
on the combined influence of both micro and macro environments while other
variables be considered as moderators between macro environment and performance
while the firm strategy may be considered as one of the independent variables to
establish its influence on performance. The study has provided contribution to the
Contingency Theory by establishing a positive influence of external environment on
performance and particularly the economic and technological environments. | en_US |
