ABSTRACT

Project performance is assessed by the timely delivery of project objectives, budget constraints and scope of intervention, along with the satisfaction of the customer and end-user. However, several studies show that projects often fail to achieve one or more of these. This failure is attributable to internal and external factors of an organisation such as competency of project teams, stakeholder engagement, and project funds disbursement procedures. Although organisational initiatives are regarded as avenues for successful completion of projects, previous research has not identified any connection among these factors. Previous evaluations have raised some issues but not a large extent, hence the study. This study is aimed at bringing out these organisational factors which include the evaluation of organisational culture, project manager’s competency, stakeholder engagement and funds disbursement procedures and how they affect the performance of projects by World Agroforestry regional office for the Eastern and Southern Africa region. The study was based on five theories namely: resource-based view of an organisation, resource dependence theory, theory of constraints, stakeholder theory and general systems theory. Descriptive research design was adopted. Accordingly, a target population of 91 projects was considered. 94 employees and partners were the respondents from which data was collected using semi-structured questionnaires. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics (frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations) to summarise the variables, information and multiple regression model. The results of the study were presented using tables and Charts. The study results indicated that organisational culture and project manager’s competence, have a positive and significant effect on the performance of projects while funds disbursement procedure and stakeholder engagement have positive but not significant effect on the performance of projects by World Agroforestry regional office for the Eastern and Southern Africa region. The study recommended the following: understanding of the organisational culture at project initiation, need for capacity building and training for project managers or recruitment of a qualified project manager; strengthening the engagement of partners such as government, media, primary and secondary beneficiaries to solicit their buyin and involvement throughout the project life-cycle and need to improve funds disbursement procedures for timely disbursement of funds to mitigate the risk of mistrust and lack of confidence by the donor which could result in loss of funding for future projects. There is also need for a review of the bureaucracies and red tapes involving the disbursement of project funds to allow the necessary flexibility given the realities of project management and to enhance their successful delivery. The study identified areas for further research to include the other regional offices and research units of World Agroforestry due to their unique geographical, political, socio-economic and donor preference landscapes.