Strategic leadership and its influence on competitive advantage in strategic collaborations between universities and teaching hospitals in Kenya

Abstract

Kenya lags behind in the attainment of universal healthcare goals and targets despite envisioningcollaborations in healthcare as being critical to the realization of the universal health goals. The general objective of the study was to establish the influence of strategic leadership on strategiccollaboration competitive advantage among universities and teaching hospitals in Kenya. This studyadopted a positivist philosophy and a descriptive cross sectional research design. The study populationcomprised 10 universities and 10 teaching hospitals as approved by the Kenya Medical Practitionersand Dentists Council, respectively. The census technique was deployed to make use of all the elementsin the population with primary data collected by use of a structured questionnaire, while secondarydata was collected using a document review guide. Frequencies, measures of central tendency anddispersal were used in descriptive statistical analysis, while correlations, cross tabulations and ordinallogistic regression were used for inferential statistical analysis. Ordinal logistic regression helpeddetermine the significance of relationships between the predictor and outcome variables. The studyestablished that strategic leadership was significant for collaboration competitive advantage.Competitive advantage was operationalized using financial outcomes and learning and growth.Strategic leadership was a significant predictor of financial outcomes in universities (β = 1.524, p <0.05), teaching hospitals (β = 1.7, p < 0.05) and combined (β = 1.556, p < 0.05). Strategic leadershipwas also a significant predictor of learning and growth in universities (β = 0.981, p < 0.05), teachinghospitals (β = 1.186, p < 0.05) and combined (β = 1.037, p < 0.05).