PRACTICES AND CHALLENGES IN STRATEGIC PLAN IMPLEMENTATION IN DIRE DAWA ADMINISTRATION EDUCATION BUREAU

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.