Total quality management practices and operational performance of commercial banks in Kenya

The purpose of this project was to examine the total quality management practices and \noperational performance of commercial banks in Kenya. The banking service sector in \nthe entire world is getting competitive every day due to the changes in technology and \nquality issues. In order to be successful total quality management (TQM) practices ought \nto be the integral part of any commercial banking organization’s strategic management. \nThe Kenyan government liberalized the financial sector through reforms that bestowed \nbanking laws that encourage the entry of private banks into the financial system in order \nto stimulate competition with the public banks which significantly promoted the \ndevelopment of the banking sector. A census of all the 43 commercial banks was done for \nthis study. The study relied on data collected through a structured questionnaire to meet \nthe objectives of the study using five point Likert scale. The questionnaire questions \nfocused on the total quality management practices implementation and operational \nperformance of the Kenya commercial banks. The questions were both open ended and \nclosed ended. The process of data analysis involved data clean up and explanation and \nresponses in the questionnaires were tabulated coded and analyzed using Statistical \nPackage for Social Science (SPSS) version 20.0. The results were represented in form of \ntables, pie charts and bar graphs. The study was significant as it will provide the \nmanagement of sampled commercial banks and the rest of the banking sector, \ninformation that they can leverage on to improve on their implementation of total quality \nmanagement. It will also add to the knowledge required to assist policy makers and \nregulatory bodies such as Central Bank of Kenya to make decisions that will change the \nway commercial banks’ operations are carried out in Kenya in terms of quality service \ndelivery. Total Quality Management is expected to reduce total cost and improve service \ndelivery to the end customers at the same time. The reasoning in existing literature is \nhowever seldom underpinned by more rigorous empirical material and becomes therefore \nconceptual and superficial. In this project the perspective of all responding commercial \nbanks was taken into consideration to concretize the implementation of Total Quality \nManagement in service delivery. Lack of empirical data on TQM implementation in \ncommercial banking sector gives a good ground for more research in this area. The \nresearcher strived to find out implementations of Total Quality Management (TQM) \npractices and operational performance among commercial banks in Kenya. The study was \nguided by the following general objective: To determine the total quality management \npractices implementation and operational performance in commercial banking sector in \nKenya.