Project management practices are the fundamental guidelines that should be followed for the effective management of processes, initiatives or projects in organizations. Project management practices have largely been applied by firms to improve their performance, sustainability and competitive advantage. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the influence of project management practices on the competitive advantage of Naivas Supermarkets in Mombasa County, Kenya. The study selected Mombasa County since it had experienced poor performance and closure of various convenience stores in the past five years. The study sought to establish the influence of project leadership, project communication, project risk management and teamwork amongst project staff on the competitive advantage of Naivas Supermarkets in Mombasa County, Kenya. This study applied a descriptive survey research design. The target population was 112 employees in four branches of the supermarkets in Mombasa County, Kenya. The sample size for this study was 88 employees that were selected using stratified random sampling technique. The study used a structured questionnaire to collect the quantitative data required. Prior to the final data collection, the designed questionnaire was subjected to a pilot test that was conducted on 9 employees of Carrefour Supermarket, Mombasa. Data was collected using the drop-and-pick method. The analysis of collected data was done using descriptive statistics including frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations and regression analysis. The study findings determined that project leadership (β = 0.747, t = 8.089, p < 0.05) project communication (β = 0.944, t = 10.388, p < 0.05), project risk management (β = 0.455, t = 2.845, p = 0.006) and teamwork amongst project staff (β = 0.744, t = 11.259, p < 0.05) all had a significant influence on competitive advantage of Naivas Supermarket in Mombasa County. The study concludes that project leadership, teamwork amongst project staff, project communication, and project risk management were all essential project management practices for the competitive advantage of convenience stores in Mombasa County, Kenya. The study recommends to organizations such as Retail Trade Association of Kenya (RETRAK) to ensure that they have a policy that binds organizations in the retail sector into adopting project management practices such as project leadership, teamwork amongst project staff, project risk management and project communication. Moreover, the study makes recommendations to other convenience stores in Mombasa County and also in other parts of the country to adopt project management practices like those adopted by Naivas Supermarkets in Mombasa County. The study provides a recommendation for further research to assess the influence of other project management practices such as project planning, project resource allocation, project culture and project management structure on competitive advantage in the retail sector. This study makes significant contribution to knowledge as it provides empirical evidence of the influence of four project management practices on competitive advantage of a firm in the retail sector. This is because most of the available empirical literature on project management practices is mostly on construction companies that mostly deal with projects. This study therefore provides evidence that firms that are not project oriented can also apply project management practices to enhance their competitiveness in the fast-paced environment.
Daib et al. (Thu,) studied this question.