Abstract
This sought to establish the influence of Strategic leadership on a firm’s competitive advantage of commercial banks in Kenya. The study was guided by the following Specific objectives; to examine the Influence of strategic direction on a firm’s competitive advantage of commercial banks in Kenya, to establish the Influence of Strategic Communication on a firm’s competitive advantage over commercial banks in Kenya, to determine the Influence of Change Management on a firm’s competitive advantage of commercial banks in Kenya and to evaluate the Influence of Employee Empowerment on a firm’s competitive advantage of commercial banks in Kenya. The theories underpinning the study were resource-based view theory, dynamic capabilities theory, Kotter’s theory of change, and behavioral leadership theory. The study adopted a descriptive research design to measure the influence of strategic leadership on the competitive advantage of commercial banks in Nairobi County, The target population was 39 commercial banks in Nairobi Kenya with respondents being business unit managers. The study used purposive sampling to determine the sample size. A pilot study was carried out using 10% of the sample.24 questionnaires were used to test the reliability and validity of the study. The reliability and validity test results showed that all the items of the questionnaire assessing the independent variables against the dependent variable had a Cronbach Alpha value of above 0.7 and factor loadings above 0.4; thus no item was deleted. This implied that the questionnaire was reliable and valid to gather data for the main study. The study used a structured questionnaire to collect primary data and SPSS was used to analyze data. Descriptive and Inferential statistics were used to establish the relationships that exist between the variables. The correlation coefficient was used to measure the relationship between independent variables and dependent variables, while the regression analysis was used to measure the strength of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Data was presented in the form of tables. Descriptive statistics, such as mean, frequencies, standard deviation, and percentages, were used to profile major patterns emerging from the data. The relationships between the variables were determined using inferential statistics. The correlation analysis showed that there exists a significant positive correlation between the independent variables of the study and the competitive advantage of commercial banks in Kenya. Inferential analysis showed a statistically significant relationship between strategic leadership and the competitive advantage of commercial banks in Kenya. Based on the R–squared, the model can explain 77.4 % of the changes in the dependent variable. Regression results showed that a unit increase in any independent variable will lead to an increase in the competitive advantage of commercial banks in Kenya.
Keywords: Strategic leadership, strategic direction, strategic communication, change management, employee empowerment, competitive advantage, commercial banks, Kenya