Discussions and Results
Response Rate
A total of 277 Questionnaires were proportionately distributed to all the sampled universities. Out of the
total distributed questionnaire 240 were filled and returned giving a response rate of 86.6% which is as
considered excellent. A response rate of 60% percentage is considered adequate as recommended by
Saunders & Lewis (2012). From the 240 returned questionnaires 10 were rejected during the data
analysis. A total of 230 usable questionnaires were retained for further analysis.
Reliability of People Management
Reliability coefficients normally range from 0.00 to 1.00, the higher the coefficient the reliability.
Cronbach’s alpha is the most widely used measure of reliability (Tavakol & Dennick, 2011). Table 1
shows the reliabilities for the items before factor analysis was 0.852 and 0.922 after factor analysis. All
the Cronbach’s Alpha in both case was above
0.8 this implies in both cases they were reliable, it also demonstrates that the tool is valid based on the
fact that reliability is closely related to validity (Kimberlin & Winterstein, 2008). Reliability test was
undertaken to ensure the instrument for measure can be used with confidence. When an instrument is
reliable it works well under variance conditions and time giving consistence results (Cooper & Schindler,
2006).
Test of Sampling Adequacy
Factor analysis was undertaken to reduce on the number of dimensions and retain the most important for
each variable which informed the most important drivers of performance excellence. Prior to undertaking
factor analysis, Kaiser- Meyer-Oklin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy and Bartlett’s Test of
Sphericity were examined to evaluate the factorability of the components. KMO varies between 0 and 1
(0 < KMO < 1) when KMO >0.5, the sample is termed adequate (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2012). Table 2
shows the KMO was above 0.50 levels implying that the variables had an acceptable degree of sampling
adequacy for factor analysis.
Principal component analysis with varimax rotation was conducted to assess how the 14 items of people
management loaded, 8 out of fourteen (14) were retained. The first step was communality extraction, all
the items with communality above 0.4 as suggested by Costello and Osborne(2005) were retained for
further analysis. Further after rotation, two components were rotated based on the Kaiser Criterion,
eigenvalues over 1. The 8 item retained after rotation loaded between 0.848 and 0.611, factor loading
above 0.4 is recommended (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2012).
Test of Regression Assumptions
The test of independence for people management was undertaken using Durbin-Watson (d) statistic.
Durbin- Watson d statistic tests the presence of autocorrelation with a value near two (2) indicating non-
autocorrelation and a value near 0 indicating positive autocorrelation and a value towards 4 indicating
negative auto-correlation. The result for people management was 1.936 which was within the acceptable
range of 1.5 to 2.5 for independent observation (Garson, 2012). Normality can be assessed using
graphical or visually method or statistically through significance test. The test results showed that a
positive and significant correlation of (r= 0.603) between the stimulus and the response variable. To
assess normality this study used statistical test Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test (Razali & Wah, 2011;
Ghasemi & Zahediasl, 2012).
shows the bivariate model of people management and performance excellence was statistically
significance. This implies the more the university enhances it people management through motivation of
employees and recruiting highly talented employees the more it enhanced the performance excellence.
These findings are consistent with those of Salmi (2009) who identifies concentration of talents as one of
the drivers of superior results in world-class universities. McCormark et al. (2014) also identified good
practice in recruitment, retention, incentives and promotion as some of the highly rated drivers of
performance in HEIs in UK. He further emphasis the importance of recruiting the best staff and how it
significantly influences the performance of HEIs. Similarly, Abdulsalam and Mawoli (2012) argues that
there exists some correlation between lecturers’ motivation and their performances in research and
teaching institution. These findings are intandem with Kipkebut(2010) who established employee
promotion in Kenyan universities influence their commitment and reduce their intention to leave their
institution.
The finding is consistent with the study of Mbirithi (2013) who established heavy teaching work load as
one of the challenges facing Kenya’s public universities and consequently affecting the quality of
education. These study findings contribute to the literature through highlighting the important human
resource through people management in the system theory. The system theory identifies human resource
as one of the component of inputs that facilitates a system to operate to achieve its goals (Daft et al.,
2012). The leading world universities have a common characteristic of high number of highly qualified
faculty members which create a low staff to student ratio. The study findings indicate there is a
significance relationship between the people management (motivation and high talents) and the
performance excellence which point out the relevance of people in an organization.
People management had significant and positive influence on performance excellence in universities in
Kenya, this also supported by theories, excellence models and previous studies. The result implies that the
more universities focus on enhancing people management including employee motivation and
maintaining a highly talented workforce the more favorable is their performance excellence. Laferla,
(2008) observed that motivated employee view work as a pleasure rather than a difficult responsibility.
To motivate staff, the universities should develop fair and transparent promotion criteria, establish reward
and incentives systems that are linked to the performance appraisal, provide feedback upon appraisal for
the employee to know their gaps and consequently work towards improvement. Lack of supportive work
setting such as unsupportive supervisors, inadequate resources and working tools and lack of clear job
description, can result in under performance even of the most qualified employee. The university
managers should ensure lecturers’ have manageable workload and the class sizes are in line with the
recommend guidelines, this will caution them from fatigue and burnout which affect their output. They
should also make effort to provide a conducive working environment for the employees. Payment of part-
time lecturers should be done on time to ensure the lecturers are not demoralized by nonpayment and
consequently affect their service delivery. This can be achieved through proper budgeting where the
department are allocated budget for part-time before they engage the lecturers.
The university as a teaching and research institution should consistently engage highly talented workforce
both local and international. Talented workforce will translate to quality service delivery to its customer.
Due to the limited number of senior lecturers especially in some competitive discipline such as
engineering and medicine, deliberate effort should be made to recruit internationally. This can be
achieved through provision of competitive remunerations and incentives to attract such highly talented
scholars and research from other countries.
