The Effect of Strategic Management Practices on the institutional Performance; the case of Dedebit credit and saving institution in Eastern Tigray
Authors: Meres Meseret 
Published: December 2019

Strategic management was first originated in the Military and adopted to the business sector as important management tool in response to the unpredictable, turbulent, and chaotic world. It is the process of determining what an organization intends to be in the future and how it will get there. It is a tool which helps to define the best future for the organization and the best path to reach that destination. The overall objective of the study is to examine the Effect of Strategic Management Practices on the institutional Performance; the case of Dedebit credit and saving institution in Eastern Tigray. This study the Effect of Strategic Management Practices among 128 sampled Dedebit credit and saving institution out of 346-targeted population at eastern Tigray. Stratified sampling was employed to select the respondents in this study. The study utilized both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Data was collected through questionnaires and documents of the organization also SPSS was used to analyze data. Data analysis was carried out using descriptive statistics and multi regression model. The descriptive part presents the stages of effect of strategic management Dedebit credit and saving institution using graphs and table based on the position held and experience. The empirical study shows strategic management implementation was found to be of more challenging than the designing process. Most respondents confirmed their capability of translating the strategic into action plans also self-initiated to prepare a comprehensive strategic plan rather than considering as an imposition of their donors. Findings showed that most DECSI try to manage strategically by aligning Initiatives with Strategy, engaging staff fully in strategy implementation, keeping staff fully informed about corporate strategic direction, monitoring strategy and implementation in order to adapt it where necessary to meet the challenges and realities of the times and structuring the organization to be effective in its strategy implementation. The study also showed that all the strategic management practices had significant positive effects on organization performance. Furthermore, the study showed that the most ensnaring pitfall of strategic management is the inability of organizations to translate strategy into a corporate purpose. This was followed by short term planning, failure to create accountability for results, inability to foster belief in the strategy, ignoring external trends, overconfidence based on existing success and failure to respond to structural changes in the market. Finally, the study showed that strategic management practices have direct positive relationship with corporate performance. Based on the findings, the study recommended that managements of savings and loans companies factor into their strategic management decisions, the marketing environment and the prevailing macro conditions in order to come out with an effective strategic plan that would have positive impact on institutional performance.
Keywords: strategic management practices, performance, DECSI, Eastern Zone.