Top Executive Characteristics, Turnaround Strategies, and Firm Performance: Insights From Kenya’s Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

In today’s turbulent business environment, manufacturing firms face persistent challenges ranging from regulatory pressures and global competition to supply-chain fragility and post-pandemic disruptions. These dynamics often result in organizational decline, manifested in reduced profitability, weakened competitiveness, and operational inefficiencies. Corporate turnaround strategies have therefore become critical in reversing such decline and restoring firm performance. While much of the existing literature explores turnaround strategies, limited attention has been paid to the mediating role of leadership particularly CEO characteristics within emerging economy contexts such as Kenya. This study undertakes a systematic review of theoretical and empirical literature to examine how CEO attributes shape the effectiveness of turnaround strategies in manufacturing firms. Drawing on the Resource-Based View and Upper Echelons Theory, the paper conceptualizes CEO characteristics as tenure, educational background, age, gender, and nationality as pivotal mediators influencing the link between strategic interventions and firm outcomes. Turnaround strategies are operationalized through four dimensions: financial restructuring, strategic repositioning, market refocusing, and organizational reconfiguration. Firm performance is assessed across financial, operational, and innovation-based indicators such as return on investment, product quality, market growth, and competitiveness. Findings highlight that while turnaround strategies provide a pathway for recovery, their success is significantly contingent upon the strategic vision, decision-making capacity, and adaptability of CEOs. Case illustrations from the Kenyan manufacturing sector, such as Mumias Sugar, Eveready East Africa, and Bidco Africa, demonstrate how leadership stability, experience, and foresight can either hinder or accelerate organizational recovery. By proposing a theoretical framework that positions CEO characteristics as mediating variables, this study advances understanding of the interplay between leadership and strategy in turbulent environments. The paper contributes to strategic management scholarship and offers practical insights for policymakers and industry leaders seeking to revitalize Kenya’s manufacturing sector in line with the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA). Future empirical research is recommended to validate and refine the proposed model across diverse contexts.