Strategic Responses to Changing Environmental Conditions in Not-for-Profit Organizations : A Case Study of African Economic Research Consortium

Project submitted in partial fulfillment for the award of Masters In Business Administration MBA--USIU-AThe research focuses on strategic management in not-for-profit organizations. The research was based on the fact that the environment surrounding not-for-profit organizations had changed and the organizations in the sector were increasingly under pressure to justify their existence. The research was carried out of AERC, a public not-for-profit organization devoted to advance economic policy research and training. AERC is an organization that was started ten years ago, and whose revenues, funders and clients have continued to grow over the years, in a unique area of economic research. The main objectives of the study were to identify the strategies that AERC has adopted to meet changes in its environment. Thus the study aimed to determine the environmental factors that AERC had considered to have changed, the impact of the changes and the strategic responses to the changes. The research was designed as a case study using primary data obtained from personal interviews with a sample of the staff of the organization. The data was analyzed using both content analysis and descriptive statistics. The results found that the major environmental factor that the interviewees considered to have changed was the internal environment. Though there were other factors that had also changed including donor requirements, technology, economic conditions, political/legal factors, economic policy makers and researchers’ requirements. None of the changes were deemed to have an impact on AERC’s mission, though the objectives had been affected. AERC had adopted certain strategies to deal with changes in the environment, including developing new products, going into strategic alliances, developing programs for evaluating successful products and developing continuation programs for the successful products. This means that AERC does carry out strategic management and is responsive to its environment. Though the strategies did not appear to be very aggressive, it may be concluded that they are for the environment which AERC operates