CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS IN THE PERFORMANCE OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT AMONG PETROLEUM MARKETING FIRMS IN KENYA

Abstract

Marketing of petroleum products begins with an identification of an opportunity to provide a customer service or product for which a significantly large number of people are ready to buy at a profitable price and the mobilization of resources to provide the service or product. The behavior by the oil marketing companies in Kenya has over the years generated a lot of public concerns on the overall economic efficiency and rationale of unfettered market mechanisms in the retail petroleum market in Kenya and literally re-kindled agitations for re-introduction of price controls. To manage this, the oil marketing companies have embarked on projects to achieve their core objectives. This paper documents critical success factors from existing literature and seeks to investigate why projects still fail or succeed subject to known critical success factors. Literature has identified success factors required to address concerns on recurrent project cost escalation, schedule delays and customer satisfaction in the project management. Previous studies have found out that companies that place emphasis on key managerial components, such as customers, stakeholders, employees and leadership in project management outperform those that do not have these cultural characteristics. It is also found out that there is positive linear relationship between team-leader effectiveness and team satisfaction and the organizational culture that supports communication and cooperation among teams and that there is significant relationship between organizational climate and cooperative learning in project success. Further legal policies challenge to the change in any legislation or agreement set by the government related to the following issues: pricing, taxation, royalties, ownership, arbitration, convertibility, corporate law, accounting rules, funds remittances, process regulation, and environment issue affected project success