ETHICAL DISCLOSURES AND STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION IN NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS IN THE ENVIRONMENT SECTOR IN KENYA
Abstract
The implementation of strategy has been a challenge in the environment sector of Non-Governmental Organizations in Kenya, where only about half of environmental NGOs have implemented their strategic plans despite the fact that many organizations have adopted sustainability reporting, and the effect of ethical transparency on this challenge of strategy implementation has received limited empirical attention in developing economies. This paper has explored the impact of ethical disclosure in the implementation of strategies in non-governmental organizations in the environment sector in Kenya. The null hypothesis of the paper was that there is no statistically significant difference between ethical disclosure and strategy implementation. It was based on Virtue Ethics Theory, which sees organizational effectiveness as a matter of character, integrity and moral consistency, not just rule-following. The paradigm used was a positivist paradigm and the design used was cross-sectional survey. A total of 150 environmental NGOs were randomly selected from 217 registered NGOs in Kenya and one key informant (Programme Manager or Sustainability Officer) was interviewed in each of the selected NGOs using a structured questionnaire with five-point Likert scale. There were 138 questionnaires completed and returned, resulting in a 92 percent return. The Cronbach alpha of the ethical disclosure scale was 0.825 which was acceptable for instrument reliability. The mean of statement is ranged from 3.71 to 3.79 and the overall average mean is 3.75 and standard deviation is 0.93, which showed a positive perception towards ethical disclosure through descriptive analysis. A strong, positive and significant relationship was found between ethical disclosure and strategy implementation through the correlation analysis (r = 0.715, p < 0.01). The results of the regression analysis showed the effect was positive and significant (B = 0.312, β = 0.314, t = 9.723, p < 0.001) and the model accounted for 90.2 percent of the variance in strategy implementation. The null hypothesis was rejected because the test statistic was greater than the critical value. The paper concludes that ethical disclosure can happen at the same time as a moral commitment and as a strategic resource, and suggests that environmental NGOs should consider introducing codes of conduct, whistleblower protection mechanisms and publicly available anti-corruption frameworks, along with regular ethics audits.
Keywords: Ethical Disclosure, Strategy Implementation, Sustainability Disclosures, Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations, Kenya
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