Mediating Role of Competitive Advantage on Organisational Resources and Performance in Telecommunication Industries in Kenya

Abstract

An Industry's performance is a function of how well managers strive to gain competitive advantage by building the organizational resources within their reach. Resource Based View regards a firm's specific resources as the fundamental source of superior performance. Resources must be valuable, rare, inimitable, and lack of substitutes to give competitive advantage and hence superior performance. Empirical studies indicate that the telecommunication industry has been dominated by one player for the last six years. Despite strategies and effort of other players such as lowering tariffs, coming up with cheaper money transfer, other attractive offers like free calls and messages, they have not managed to get a competitive edge leading to one company continuing to dominate the market. For this reason, homogeneity in performance for the companies operating in similar competitive conditions and industrial environment has not been explained. This study examined the mediating role of competitive advantage on organizational resources and performance of telecommunication industries in Kenya. To achieve the objectives, the study used a combination of explanatory design and descriptive survey research design, specifically cross sectional design. The target population consisted of 381 respondents and the sample size was 170 respondents from the telecommunication industries in Kenya. The research adopted stratified random sampling technique. The study used mainly primary data which was collected using self-administered questionnaires. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics was used to summarize data while inferential statistics, specifically multiple linear regression was used to test hypotheses. The analysis used strata statistical package version 11.0 to aid data analysis. The results were presented using tables. Competitive advantage had a partial mediating effect on the influence of organizational resources on performance. Finally, the study recommended that further research be done by replicating the same study in other companies or industries like banks.