Decentralisation of shared services is an important strategic tool because it standardises business processes and operational procedures, reduces costs and optimises operational efficiency in a way that enhances compliance with regulatory requirements and better services to the customers. The purpose of this study was to assess the employees‘ perceptions on decentralisation of shared services model for ICRAF. The study used a case study of ICRAF to bring out the benefits of decentralising shared services, determine the criteria that should guide decentralisation, establish the challenges to decentralisation, determine the factors that influence effectiveness of decentralisation and to craft strategies that can enhance decentralisation of shared services. Stratified random sampling was used to select 118 employees from ICRAF payroll of whom 84 responded to the survey. Data was analyzed by use of descriptive statistics and one way ANOVA. The study shows that the benefits of decentralisation are standardization of operations, streamlining, and consolidating common business functions and processes in an organisation in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness with both cost reduction and overall profitability in mind. Other benefits include enhanced cross-regional collaborations, performance without strong supervision, staff motivation and reduced bureaucracy. The study further discloses the criteria that should guide decentralisation as providing staff with clearly defined objectives, clarity on services that are to be shared, identified core competencies, agreed tasks to be identified and ensuring that qualified and capable team leaders are available among others.
Publication year
2018
Authors
Language
English
Keywords
peatlands, tropics, mapping
