Abstract:
The study sought to examine the role of strategy in influencing performance in institutions of higher learning. The study was guided by the following objectives; to investigate the extent to which strategic plans were formulated in Uganda Management Institute, to determine the extent to which the strategic operational plans were implemented in Uganda Management Institute, to find out how Uganda Management Institute was performing financially and non-financially and to assess the relationship between strategic planning and performance in Uganda Management Institute. 'The purposive non probability sampling technique was used to select 37 respondents; of managers and leaders from the UMI organogram. The limitation to this method was that it seemed biased since not every stakeholder in the institution was given a chance but the researcher focused on stakeholders' representatives that had played key role' in formulating, implementing strategy and those that were knowledge on the concept of strategy. The respondents included 7 top managers, 20 middle managers and 10 student and alumni leaders. Data was collected through administering of structured questionnaires that consisted of closed ended-matrix questions on the Liken scale. Pearson's correlation and Spearman's correlation coefficients were used to assess the relationship between the strategic planning components of formulation and implementation with performance. The ANOVA test was used to test the dependency of performance of UMI on the strategic planning components of formulation and implementation. The key findings revealed that there was a statistically significant relationship between strategic formulation and performance while there was, no statistically significant relationship between strategic implementation and performance. It was recommended that for UMI to boost her performance, she should enhance her monitoring to successfully track execution of all initiatives that are aligned to her strategy and specifically in the operational plans within the given time limits. On addition to this, the institute's budget should facilitate only activities in the stipulated strategy. For future research, we should look into assessing the relationship between strategic formulation and strategic implementation, assessing the relationship between non-financial performance and financial performance, investigating the relationship between monitoring and evaluation with performance, establishing the role of communicating strategy and investigating the role of flexibility in performance of institutions of higher learning.