Electronic leadership has been embraced by different organizations with the onset of corona virus to aid in executing roles remotely. Due to changing leadership styles, there has been a significant shift from the traditional leadership approaches, needing more diverse skills, changes on leadership practices, and other dynamics like leadership styles coming into play. This study was based on the paradigm shift caused by covid-19 pandemic in learning institutions leadership roles, where many institutions adopted electronic leadership to keep running, diversifying roles of administrators. The case study picked was that of University of Nairobi. The main objective was to establish the influence of electronic leadership on staff productivity. The specific e-leadership variables were e-leader communication skills, e-leader social skills and e-leader technological skills, and how they influenced staff productivity. A descriptive survey design was used to explain how the variables correlated with each other, and how electronic leadership influenced staff productivity. The study population was all administrators at the University of Nairobi, and sampling was done using Yamane scientific formula. The main tool for data collection was questionnaire. The analysis method was both descriptive and inferential analyses were done. It was established that most of the staff were satisfied with how staff were handled in getting updates on works in progress or delivery of assigned roles. The staff indicates that the regular online meetings to update staff keeps them abreast of what is happening. It was also established that eleaders acts as a liaison, connecting the staffs and their execution of their roles. Leaders possessed supportive behavior over the electronic platforms and were willing to assist the staffs. Most leaders were able to effectively use technology to delegate tasks. Electronic leadership was equally satisfactory in delivering staff productivity, as the staff were satisfied with the work done and delivered remotely and electronically. Findings further indicate that the three independent variables of e-leader communication skills, e-leader social skills and e-leader technological skills had statistically significant correlation with staff productivity. They had positive influence on staff productivity. It was recommended that learning institutions need to invest in the electronic leadership capacities, by investing in e-communication, e-socializing and e-technology for the administrators. Investment in the three key electronic leadership roles was conceptualized to have a positive significant influence on staff productivity, which translates to improved service delivery.

The purpose of study was to examine the influence of Teacher Performance and Appraisal Development on teachers’ job satisfaction in West Pokot Sub-County. The study’s objectives included; to establish the influence of teachers’ time management aspect of TPAD tool on teachers’ job satisfaction, to establish the influence of teachers’ professional development aspect of TPAD on teachers’ job satisfaction, to establish the influence teachers’ creativity and innovation aspect of TPAD on teachers’ job satisfaction and to establish the influence of teachers’ promotion of co-curricular activities aspect of TPAD on public secondary school teachers’ job satisfaction in West Pokot Sub-County, West Pokot County. This study was guided by the Incentive Theory of Motivation. The proponent of the intrinsic aspect of motivation is Deci (1971).The main points emphasized in this theory are intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The study employed correlation research design. Correlation research design is one of the various types of quantitative research designs. The design was used to determine the relationship between independent variables and a dependent variable within a population. The population of study comprised of all secondary school Students, Teachers, Principals, Sub-County Quality Assurance Officer, and Sub-County Director TSC in West Pokot Sub-County secondary schools. Specifically, the target population 37 principals, 510 teachers, and 3,800 form four students. The sub-county also comprised of one (1) SubCounty Director (TSC). The study sample size was study was students 827, teachers, 125 and principals 32. The study instruments were questionnaires for students, teachers, and principals and face-to-face interview comprised of open-ended questions for Sub County director. The statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze data collected using questionnaires and interviews. Descriptive statistics was calculated and presented in frequencies, percentages and tables while the inferential statistics was used to test all the hypotheses and Pearson-Product Moment Correlation was utilized. This analysis helped to determine whether a relationship exist between the variables. The study established that there exist a moderate, positive and significant association between teachers’ professional development aspect of TPAD on public secondary school teachers’ job satisfaction with a coefficient of R=0.590 and P<0.000, there exists a moderate, positive and significant association between teachers’ professional development aspect of TPAD on public secondary school teachers’ job satisfaction with the coefficient of R=0.474 and P<0.000and there exists a moderate, positive and significant association between teachers’ creativity and innovation aspect of TPAD on public secondary school teachers’ job satisfaction with a coefficient of R=0.622 and P<0.000.Finally, the study established that there exists a strong, positive and significant association between teachers’ promotion of co-curricular activities aspect of TPAD on public secondary school teachers’ job satisfaction with a coefficient of R=0.709 and P<0.000 in West Pokot Sub-County, West Pokot County. The study recommended; The Ministry of Education and other stakeholders involved need to ensure that TPAD tool in particular teachers’ time management in public secondary schools is effectively implemented through constants visitations by Sub County directors and other educational officers to public secondary schools in West Pokot Sub County. The study also recommends that Ministry of Education and other stakeholders concern implement professional development tool for effective teacher’s job satisfaction in public secondary schools in West Pokot Sub County. The further the study recommends that Ministry of education and other stakeholders ensure there is provision of creativity and innovation in particular ICT technology to be incorporated in public secondary schools in West Pokot Sub County and Finally, the study recommends that Ministry of Education and others stakeholders to promote co-curricular activities by physically and financially supporting co-curricular activities such as sport, music in order to nurture talents of learners and teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools. The study suggests that a similar study to be conducted in private secondary schools in order to do a comparison with outcomes and establish whether TPAD tool influences teachers’ job satisfaction in private secondary schools in West Pokot Sub County. The further, suggest that a similar study to be carried out in other part of the Country in public secondary schools to compare the outcome with public secondary schools in West Pokot Sub County and the study finally, xisuggest that research to be done to establish whether there other aspect of TPAD tool that influences teachers’ job satisfaction in public secondary schools in west Pokot Sub County

Today's 21st-century organizations are impinged by continuous innovation, complex technology and globalization, which has created a new norm of constant change. Thus, differing environmental challenges pressure organizations to seek strategies to enable their survival and sustainability. Various change management methods have been developed to help organizations manage change at the operational or strategic level to handle the increased volume of change. This study sought to establish change management as practiced in the devolved public healthcare services in Kisumu County due to its devolved functions. Devolved health services in Kisumu County were the focus of this research. Its goals included identifying the change management strategies implemented and determining the associated obstacles of managing change in these services. Interview guidelines were used to obtain primary data through a case design methodology. Content analysis was used to sift through in-depth replies from interviews about change management that formed the study's primary data. According to the research results, training and communication, creating a positive work environment, employee participation and involvement, and gathering and analyzing feedback were the essential change management practices adopted by the devolved public healthcare services in Kisumu County. The study recommended that the devolved healthcare services in Kisumu County should be flexible and that all employees and stakeholders should be involved in the change management process. The study recommended enacting relevant policies and human resource strategies to enable effective human resource management in the healthcare segment. Devolution of healthcare services could only be successful with fixing the problems of late and insufficient funding for the county.

The success of medium enterprises is heavily influenced by a variety of factors, especially those championed by the CAMEL framework. The larger corporations are flourishing while the smaller ones are struggling. The general objective of this study was to establish the relationship between corporate governance practices and performance of medium enterprises in the county of Mombasa. The study was anchored on agency theory, Stewardship Theory, Stakeholder Theory and Resources Dependency theory. The study adopted a descriptive research approach. This research used 86 medium enterprises in Mombasa County. This study used primary data. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to demonstrate the relationship between variables. Regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between corporate governance practices and performance of medium enterprises in the county of Mombasa The findings showed that there is a weak positive significant relationship between performance of medium enterprises in Mombasa County and board independence (rho=0.463). Also, there was a significant positive relationship between board size and performance of medium enterprises in Mombasa County (rho=0.618). Further, unit increase in Board Meetings, while holding other factors constant, will lead to an increase in Performance of medium enterprises in the county of Mombasa by 0.101 (p = 0.021). Number of board meetings also drew positive relationship in that the operating efficiency of medium enterprises improved over the years consequently leading to higher financial performance. These findings were in line with the objective of establishing the effect of corporate governance practices on the financial performance of medium enterprises. The study conclude that the regulators should improve on the mechanisms of ensuring that the corporate governance disclosures in the annual reports are not simply statement of good intentions but are actually implemented at firm level. This will greatly improve the level of corporate governance and by extension firm performance. That generally corporate governance has positive impact on all the performance indicators of an organization. The study recommends that the researcher, management, and policy development of training in the medium enterprises sector needs to be more open and flexible in order to address corporate governance issues. Research, management and policy instruments of training support will need to interact with, and be responsive to, the subtle distinctions of context that will moderate what is more appropriate, and more likely to be welcomed, in the small business sector.

The art of balancing firm working capital and dividend payments often dictates the success or failure of a business depending on how well disposable resources are managed and on how prudent a firm is when it comes to handling operational issues. As a result of this, the majority of companies have focused a lot of their energy, time, and resources on identifying suboptimal operating levels. At these levels, investment quality is not harmed and financial resources are not being held in fixed assets for no good reason. The unfavorable effects of both overinvesting and underinvesting in working capital have encouraged research on the most effective policy for managing working capital. The main intention of this study was to examine WCM effect on dividend payout of listed energy and petroleum firms in Kenya. The trade-off theory, the Keynesian liquidity preference theory, and the free cash flow theory were adopted to anchor the study. A descriptive research design was utilized in this research. The target population was the 4 listed energy and petroleum firms in Kenya. Secondary data was gotten from the CMA and specific listed energy and petroleumfirms annual financial statements for a 10year period (2012 to 2021). Upon collection of the data, inferential as well as descriptive statistics generated included frequencies and percentages and simple and multiple linear regression respectively. The regression results produced a 0.311 R square which implies that 31.1% of the changes in dividend pay-out among listed energy and petroleum firms can be described by the six selected variables for this research. The overall model was found to be statistically significant as exhibited by a 0.043 p value that was below 0.05. The study further revealed that individually, DIO, DSO and DPO do not have a significant impact on dividend payout of energy and petroleum firms listed at the NSE (β=0.081, p=0.232); (β=0.-101, p=0.133); (β=-0.026, p=0.822). Both firm size and profitability positively affected dividend payout as shown by (β=0.261, p=0.000) and (β=0.214, p=0.000) respectively. Financial leverage exhibited a negative and significant dividend payout influence as shown by (β=-0.202, p=0.008). The research recommends management of listed energy and petroleum firms ought to focus on enhancing their asset base and their profitability as this will enhance dividend payout. The study further recommends the need to for listed energy and petroleum firms to set debt limits as high debt levels might have a negative impact on dividend payout. The research recommends the necessity for further researchers to focus on other dividend payout determinants.

Foot and mouth disease (FMD) is a contagious disease of cloven-hooved domestic and susceptible wild animals. Repeated FMD cases are reported annually throughout the country despite vaccinations being carried out. This has hampered livestock industry development in Kenya due to production losses and that of trade. This study was conducted to investigate if there is a mismatch between the field strains and the vaccine. The study was conducted on 110 epithelial tissues submitted in the year 2019 and 2020 to Foot and Mouth disease laboratory, Embakasi for screening. The samples were collected from outbreaks and suspected clinical cases of FMD in cattle from different counties in Kenya for virus isolation, serotype identification and genetic characterization. All samples (n = 110) exhibited cytopathic effect on infected BHK-21 cell and the viruses were isolated. Serotype A (n=4), SAT 1 (n= 69) and SAT 2 (n= 37) were identified by antigen detection ELISA. Of the total 30 samples selected, 25 were confirmed positive by RT-PCR. Phylogenetic analysis of the isolates VP1 sequences were used to assess the genetic relatedness with the vaccine strain and other viruses retrieved from GenBank. The analysis showed that type A viruses belonged to the genotype VII (G-VII) within the AFRICA topo type. The viruses were closely related topo type A vaccine strain AK5/80 with 99.5%99.8% nucleotide similarity. SAT 1 field isolates were closely related to the vaccine strain SAT1/T155/71 and had 99.7% - 99.9% identity with the vaccine. There was a similarity index of 99% - 100% between all the isolates and the reference vaccine strain in the country and all the isolates clustered together with their respective isolates on the tree. This shows there isn’t much difference between the field strains in the current study and the vaccine strains. Therefore, there is a need to re-look at other factors which may influence vaccine efficacy including vaccine xvstability, vaccination intervals and whether serotype O is similar to vaccine and or not to come up with effective vaccine strategies

The nexus between managerial overconfidence and financial leverage among state corporations listed at the NSE, Kenya was explored in this inquiry. Descriptive survey and correlational design were adopted targeting seven listed State Corporations and census was adopted. Information was obtained from auxiliary sources of 5 years (2017-2021). SPSS tool was critical in processing the evidence supported by means and standard deviations, correlation and regression model. Tables were handy in presentation of results. It was noted that managerial overconfidence, asset tangibility, firm profitability and firm size all had p-values (p<0.05), implying that they were significant predictors of financial leverage. It was concluded that highly overconfident managers may not necessarily require debts in order to finance the risky investment projects they undertake. It was recommended that te investment and finance managers working in state corporations in Kenya need to undertake more risky projects that would generate more returns for the shareholders. The policy makers working among the listed state corporations in Kenya should formulate and implement relevant debt management policies.

National security is an important construct that permeates social, economic, political, environmental and mental spheres of life. The National Police Service Annual Crime Report (2019) showed a 17% increase in crime rates especially in Nairobi, compared to a 13% increase in 2018 and a 7% increase in 2017. This shows that as the years progress, so is the rates of crimes touching on assault, defilement, theft, conning via economic manipulation, possession of drugs and causing disturbance. Could urban refugees activities be one of the weak links in enhancing national security in Kenya? To ascertain this, the study sought to establish whether there was a relationship between urban refugees activities and Kenya’s national security. More specifically, it sought to establish whether, economic, social and youth radicalization activities by urban refugees has an influence on national security in Kenya. Two theories anchored the present study and they included the securitization theory and the Social Exchange Theory. This study was hinged on a quantitative research approach by specifically utilizing a descriptive survey research. The target population comprised of selected registered urban refugees residing in Nairobi, the staff working at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations(DCI) and staff working at the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) both at their headquarters. To get a manageable sample from the target population, Yamane Formula was used to access 398 urban refugees and 151 security personnel from the DCI and ATPU. The respondents were selected using simple random sampling technique. The study used questionnaires to access data. To ascertain the extent to which the measuring items in the questionnaires measured the actual construct of the research objectives, the questionnaire were given to the supervisor who checked if the items cohered to the objectives. To test the reliability of instruments, a pilot study was done on 10% of the sampled population which brought the respondents to 55. The results from the pilot test were computed against the Cronbach Coefficient Alpha test to see if the results exceeded 0.7 which is the mark of acceptable reliability and a result of 0.712 was noted implying acceptable reliability. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical tools that included means, standard deviation, Pearson Correlations and Regression analysis. The results show that: economic activities (=.223 p-value <0.05), social activities (=.313 p-value <0.05) and youth radicalization activities (=.198 p-value <0.05) have a statistically significant effect on enhanced national security threats in Kenya. The study thus recommends that the security apparatus in Kenya should create a policy that clearly stipulates the proper registration of urban refugees and the supervisory plan for any economic or social activity that they engage in. This will ensure that only those refugees ascertained to pose no security threats are registered and allowed to engage in any activity. The national security apparatus should deny any training done by urban refugees from regions that are terrorist-prone or regions with any religious extremism. This will curb the youth radicalization problem in Kenya. There is need for a consultative forum between the government and other humanitarian agencies to discuss, once and for all, the need for urban refuges and how they should operate. Without such a discussion, national security issues will continue to be a menace in Kenya.

In Kenya, interest rates were determined by the market forces without any government intervention for several years. The government's attempt to impose interest rate caps in 2001 failed. For a long period of time Kenyan banks enjoyed higher interest rates and made great profits from interest rate margins, in which banks charged inflated loan rates while reimbursing low savings rates. The law limiting the maximum lending rate to 4% above the central bank rate (CBR) and the minimum deposit rate to 70% received presidential assent and went into effect in September 2016. Proponents of interest rate caps argued that lowering interest rates would increase the economy's money supply, create financial inclusion for lower-income groups, and result in increased economic growth. The goal of this study was to assess the role of interest rate caps on key macroeconomic variables with a specific focus on economic growth rate, unemployment rate, and inflation rate. Data was collected on a quarterly basis and analyzed for a total of 28 quarters, 14 before the interest rate cap (Q1 2013 to Q2 2016) and 14 during the interest rate cap (Q3 2016 to Q4 2019). Data was sourced from the Central bank of Kenya, World bank and the Kenya National Bureau of statistics portals. The study employed a descriptive research design, and the ttest of paired samples was applied in the analysis. The study was undertaken to determine whether there was a significant difference in the means of the chosen variables before the law was implemented and during the time it was in place. SPSS analysis program was applied in the data analysis. The outcomes of the investigation indicated that there was a considerable difference in the means of unemployment rate between the two time periods. However, the difference in the means of the economic growth rate and the inflation rate for the two time periods studied was not statistically significant. The conclusion drawn from these observations is that the government's interest rate regulation was ineffective because it resulted in increased unemployment while economic growth and inflation rates changes were negligible. As evidenced in 2019, the failure of the interest rate ceilings led to the repeal of the law, so the government and Central bank policy makers should learn from the experience and in future should find alternative strategies for regulating the performance of these macro-economic variables.

Lead (Pb) is used in many manufacturing processes due to its useful properties. It is an important component in the manufacturing and recycling of lead batteries, manufacturing of paints and production of glazed pottery among others. However, Pb has no biological function; it is toxic, accumulates in biological systems and persists in the environment. The World Health Organization acknowledged that Pb is among the ten most toxic elements to human health. Pregnant women are vulnerable to the toxic effects of Pb as lead passes via the placenta to the developing fetus. As a result, it negatively affects the intelligence quotient (IQ) of the fetus since there is no brain barrier. Previous studies have indicated high levels of Pb in soil, water, and house dust in informal settlements. There is nonetheless scarce data on Pb exposure levels of mother-child pairs in Kenya despite the concerted efforts of phasing out leaded fuel and recently Pb in paint. The study was aimed at assessing the levels of lead in mothers and their newborns and potential sources of Pb exposure in selected informal settlements in Kenya. Blood from a total of 100 newborns (umbilical cord blood) and their mothers living in informal settlements was collected at the Pumwani Maternity Hospital and analyzed for levels of Pb using Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The method of analysis was validated using ClinChek® Whole Blood Control, lyophilized, for Trace Elements, at different concentrations of Level I, II, III, procured from RECIPE Chemicals +instruments GmbH. A questionnaire was used to capture the likely sources of Pb exposure in the mother‟s environment. The median blood lead levels (BLLs) in newborns and their mothers were 2.1 and 26.7 µg/dL respectively. A high proportion of mothers (97%) had BLLs that exceeded the center for disease control (CDC) reference value of 5 µg/dL whereas, 25% of their newborns had BLLs above the 3.5 µg/dL reference value in children. A positive correlation (rs=0.65, p=0.000) between maternal BLL and newborn BLL, was observed which deduces that maternal BLL may be an important indicator for prenatal lead exposure. Proximity to dumpsite and residence in painted houses were significantly associated (p=0.004 and p=0.000 respectively) with elevated BLLs. The study has highlighted BLLs in mothers and their newborns and the key contributing factors that urgently call for interventions and strategies to reduce these exposures in informal settlements.