The Risk Management Practices and Organizational Performance in Public Institutions: A Case of DUWASA and TANESCO in Dodoma
Abstract
This paper assesses the risk management practices and organizational performance of
public institutions. Specifically, the paper assessed, the types of risks faced by public
institutions, the strategies used in managing them and the role of risk management
practices in improving organizational performance. Probability and non-probability
sampling techniques were employed to select employees from TANESCO and DUWASA. Both
descriptive (multiple responses) and inferential statistics (ordinal regression) were used
for data analysis. The findings revealed that public institutions face procurement risks,
financial risks, and unethical risks. Risk reduction, risk transfer, and risk acceptance were
the preferred strategies to manage risks within organizations. The “Spearman's Rank
Correlation” results show that there is a significant and positive correlation between risk
treatment (r= 0.735, p= 0.05), risk identification (r=0.528, p=0.01), and organizational
performance in TANESCO while there is a significant and positive correlation between risk
treatment (r=0.683, p=0.01), risk identification (r=0.461, p=0.05), risk analysis (r=0.450,
p= 0.05) and organization performance in DUWASA. Ordinal regression results show that
risk management processes (establishing scope, context and criteria = 2.678, risk
identification =2.766, and risk treatment= 3.930) were a significant and positive predictor
of organizational performance in TANESCO at the one percent level, while risk
identification (1.619) and risk treatment (2.158) were significant and positive predictors
of organizational performance in DUWASA at the one and five percent levels respectively.
Therefore, public institutions should integrate risk management processes with other core
functions of the organization if organizational objectives are to be achieved