Influence of Process Adaptation on Sustainable Competitiveness of Tea Firms in Kenya

Abstract

There is concern to produce and process tea in an environmentally friendly manner through collaboration with the stakeholders, in a way that guarantees sustainable competitiveness. Tea is one of the leading foreign exchange earners for the Kenyan economy; however, the process adaptation and sustainable competitiveness in tea firms is inadequate. The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of process adaptation and sustainable competitiveness in tea firms. This research utilized the resource based view theory. The study targeted 878 respondents from 107 registered tea firms in Kenya and multistage sampling method was used to get sample size of 484. Primary data was collected using questionnaires. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The process adaptation (r=0.739) influence sustainable competiveness in tea firms. The process corporate environmental practices positively influence the sustainable competitiveness in tea firms in Kenya. The findings indicated that policy makers of tea firms should pay close attention to the process strategies of product adaptation which enhance sustainable competitiveness and their moderating roles as they were negative and significant in this study.