Leadership Approaches and Its Influence on Performance of Selected Private Security Firms in Nairobi City County, Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

coordination between the private security firms and the police forces and poor pay for the guards may lead to them being easily lured by the criminal elements. The private security firms suffer challenges including poor payment of staff, high employee turnover, and employee involvement in crime (Githinji, 2014). While Busolo, Ogolla, and Were (2016) noted the long work hours, poor career prospects for employees, low salaries, and poor health among employees. The operating area of a single private security was small –mostly one town as shared by Abrahamsen and Williams (2015). Furthermore, most of the security firms employed low-skilled staff for manning and guarding services and Tabo (2013) found that poor coordination, poor and improper communication and poor definition of strategy implementation . These challenges in performance are linked to strategy implementation and its leadership approach. Strategy implementation is about formulating plans and bringing the plans to life. It is an important element since over 70% chief executive officers (CEOs) failures were linked to poor strategy implementation (Carruci, 2017). Strategy Abstract: The private security industry suffers adversely from performance-related problems, due to lack of professionalism, managers failure in vetting the security guards, guards lacking basic skills to secure crime scenes, reporting the crime and demotivated staff who earn little salaries. The worsening security situation within the Nairobi Metropolitan area has led to the increase of private security firms. Some of the firms are not licensed and regulated leading to low performance standards. This study focus was how to improve performances in the private security firms through leadership approaches. The study employed descriptive research design and targeted 30 private security firms and its 312 employees. The sample size is 96 staffs which is 30% of the targeted population. Primary data was collected using self-administered questionnaires that had closed-ended questions hence having quantitative data. The data was analyzed using descriptive, correlation and regression analysis and results showed that leadership approaches had positive and significant effect to performance of the private security firms. The study concluded that leadership approaches had positive significant effect to performance.