Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to assess the practices and challenges in strategic plan implementation
in Dire Dawa Administration Education Bureau. To accomplish this purpose, descriptive design was
employed. In this regard purposive and simple random sampling technique were used to select a
sample of 141 respondents which included 77 school principals, 1 bureau head, 9 process owners, 30
experts and 24 supervisors from Dire Dawa Administration Education Bureau. Questionnaire was the
main data gathering instrument whereas interview and document analysis were also utilized to
substantiate the data obtained through the questionnaire. To analyze the data, the Statistical Package
for Social Science (SPSS) version 25 was used. Frequency distributions, percentage, mean score and
standard deviation were employed in analyzing the results. Qualitative data obtained through
document analysis and interview was analyzed using narration. The findings of the study reflect that
the current practices in strategic plan implementation in Dire Dawa Administration Education
Bureau has been characterized by inadequate resources, lack of regularly update, and review
monitoring data, lack of incentive, lack of management commitment and lack of mechanisms for
monitoring implementation of strategic plan. The participation of stakeholders in implementing
strategic plan was moderate and not up to the expectation. Based on the major findings the main
challenges in strategic plan implementation were lack of stakeholder’s awareness on how to execute
strategic plan, absence of incentive to employees, reluctance of strategic plan team to take feedbacks
for corrective action, inadequate or unreliable data, lack of coordination among education bureau
officers, and lack of top management commitment. Hence, it is recommended that DDAEB should
need to minimize these challenges by providing adequate and relevant trainings on starategic plan
implementation, reward to employeeswho have a better performance, expanding sources of resources
by employing internal income generationg and increasing the participation of all stakeholders in
strategic plan implementation by improving participatory planning, decision making and problem
solving schemes.
