*4.3. Correlation between Culture and Performance*

The findings in Table 4 indicate a strong positive significant correlation between organization vision and employee habits (r = 0.626, *p* ≤ 0.05). It is also clear from the findings that employees' flexibility positively and strongly impacts employees' ability to adapt to changes (r = 0.689, *p* ≤ 0.05), a correlation that is strongly significant. Organizational management training on dealing with old habits had strong positive and significant correlations with management culture that supports vision, goals, and strategies (r = 0.639, *p* ≤ 0.05). Further correlation analysis was carried out to determine whether management ensures that culture supports vision, goals, and strategies and its effect on how the employees adapt to changes; there was a significant positive correlation (r = 0.743, *p* ≤ 0.05). The findings also indicate that there is a strong positive, significant correlation between management as role models and how employees adapt to changes (r = 0.803, *p* ≤ 0.05). This was planned to establish the overall strength and magnitude of the correlation between organizational culture as a whole and organizational performance.



#### **5. Discussion**

Results show that at Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), management ensures that the organizational culture supports vision, goals, and strategies; managers encourage employees to adapt to changes and are role models for employees in the organization. The organization has very clear, focused, and easily conceptualized vision, goals, and strategies. This is well illustrated by the number of respondents who agreed that management ensures that the organizational culture supports the vision, goals, and strategies. The findings are in accordance with those reported by Indiya et al. (2018) who indicated that the institution had a clear, focused, and easily conceptualized vision, mission, and values. Additionally, the results indicate that managers helped employees to adapt to changes and encouraged employees to care about each other as this was a way of encouraging communication among the employees.

Further, results show Kenya Wildlife Service Nairobi National Park has a culture in place of work that supports the implementation of vision and strategies, and management provides appropriate incentives to employees that work within the organization's work culture. According to Sîrbu and Roúca (2010), when an organization promotes a culture that focuses on vision, goals, and strategies; has clear expectations; has role models; provides continuous feedback; and offers the right recognition to employees and employees can easily understand what is expected of them, the performance of the organization can easily improve. The results also concur with those reported by Anne and Lumwagi (2014). According to Anne and Lumwagi (2014), when employees are involved in decision making, receive incentives, receive constant communication on important issues about the organization, and are free to communicate, then the productivity of the organization increases. A positive and strong culture can make an average individual perform and achieve excellent results, whereas a negative and weak culture may demotivate an outstanding employee, causing them to underperform and end up with no achievement. According to Kandula (2006), the key to good performance is a strong culture, and if culture is not considered, the performance of an organization can be counterproductive (Magee 2002). A culture that allows employees to be open, honest, and independent nurtures efficiency and cooperation within departments and makes employees feel like they are valued and cherished within the organization, which affects their performance positively (Hasan and Nikmah 2020). Hasan and Nikmah (2020) also suggest that organizational culture should generate employee creativity through the creation of freedom and access to resources.

The study also found that managers monitor employees' work habits to ensure consistency with the organization's work culture, ensure that old habits which are not effective are dropped, and encourage employees to adapt to changes. The findings are confirmed by Anne and Lumwagi (2014), who reported a work-oriented culture as a highly preferred mechanism for enhancing organizational performance. Therefore, if a culture that supports work culture for employees exists, then performance is enhanced. The results also revealed that supervisors encourage employees to be flexible when the environment is changing and that supervisors educate employees on how to determine if an existing culture is no more effective.

The findings from the correlation analysis indicate that there is a strong positive significant correlation between organization vision and employee habits (r = 0.626, *p* ≤ 0.05). It is also clear from the findings that employee flexibility positively and strongly impacts employees' ability to adapt to changes (r = 0.689, *p* ≤ 0.05), a correlation that is strongly significant. Further, the relationship between whether management ensures culture supports vision, goals, and strategies and the effect on how the employees adapt to changes showed a significant positive correlation (r = 0.743, *p* ≤ 0.05). The correlation analysis was performed to establish the overall strength and magnitude of the effect organizational culture has on a whole organizational performance. Clearly, an established organizational culture as can be deduced from the correlation analysis illuminates that organizational performance and productivity also depend on the culture of the organization and how employees perceive it

(Wahjudi et al. 2016). According to Indiya et al. (2018), employees' commitment to work, positive attitude toward work, and positive work values can translate to high performance.

This study signifies the importance of organizational culture for performance and concludes that organizational culture aligned with vision, goals, and company strategies has a positive impact on performance. Similarly, we can conclude that employees adopted organizational culture, which was helpful in completing their work efficiently and effortlessly.

Thus, the study suggests that more needs to be done on culture change as an approach to change management. The organizational culture, mission, vision, and strategies are key to performance, and as such, they need to be reviewed from time to time to ensure that the organization continues to live its mission and move towards its vision while applying its strategies. There is also a need for involvement in employee welfare and participation in KWS culture to ensure positive relationships within the organization. The study further recommends a replica of the same trial in other Kenya Wildlife Service branches in order to authenticate these findings and enable the generalization of the results.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, P.A.O.; methodology, P.A.O., S.W. and K.A.; validation, P.A.O.; formal analysis, P.A.O.; investigation, P.A.O.; resources, P.A.O.; writing—original draft preparation, P.A.O.; writing—review and editing, P.A.O., S.W. and K.A.; supervision, S.W. and K.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data presented in this research are part of an MSc study and are available upon request from the corresponding author.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
