Influence of Board Diversity on Organizational Performance: A Case Study of East African Breweries Ltd

A Project Report Submitted to the School of Business in partial fulfillment for the requirement for the Degree of Masters in Business Administration (MBA)The main purpose of this study was to investigate the factors affecting board diversity Kenya'with a specific reference to EABL. This study was guided by the following three research questions: How does age diversity on the board affect performance of how does gender diversity on the board affect performance of EABL? And how academic diversity on the board affect performance of EABL? A descriptive and'an inferential research design were adopted for this study. dependent variable of the study was board performance while the independent variables of the study were gender, age and academic qualifications. The targeted population consisted of thirty board members and top management. Proportionate stratified random sampling technique was used for this study. The primary data collection tool used administered questionnaires. A pilot test was conducted with a few respondents before questionnaire was reviewed and then distributed to the selected sample. The collected in this study was analysed using descriptive statistics through SPSS windows to provide simple summaries in form of tables, figures and explore relationships between responses to different questions, correlation and regression was used substantiate the relationship between the independent and dependent variable. The findings regarding the demographics characteristics indicate that men dominate top management as much as the women with a ratio of equal women and men. indicators clearly showed that most of them are aware of gender inclusion at the level. Regarding the second research question for the age affecting performance of indicates that most of the board members were above fifty years of age. Conversely, employees could move up the hierarchy and so many of the employees had worked for many years. Finally, on the third research question on academic qualification affecting performance shows that majority of the strategies that foster high performance in EABL aren't necessarily on the diversity of a candidate's career during recruitment. Majority of board members and top management still trend in their major career paths. They agreed that specialization and academic focus was important in certain areas. Lastly, the value of R=squared indicated a high confidence level of EABL performance predicated on age, gender and academic qualification data and that F-value was relevant. The model is fit for all age, gender and academic qualification data since significantly predicts EABL performance hence there is a relationship. The results revealed that board diversity accounts only for a small percentage of variation in the performance of EABL. This study reveals that a huge percentage of variation in the performance of E A B L is explained by other factors. The conclusions made are that age, gender and academic qualification have a positive effect on EABL performance Moreover, the study showed that diversity affects performance and in this regard, companies should implement various forms of diversity to increase their overall performance. The recommendations that were made are that companies in FMCG sector in Kenya should pay more attention to all the above-mentioned diversity factors in order to remain relevant and competitive in the market while at the same time conforming to the human resource best practice