Transparency as a Determinant of Financial Performance in State-Owned Commercial Enterprises in Kenya

State-owned commercial enterprises (SOCEs) in Kenya register below-par output in fiscal standards. Many explanations have been proffered for this state of affairs, including competition and fluctuations in the local and global economies. Additionally, it is important to examine how factors internal to these enterprises shape their financial performance. As such, this study aimed to examine the role of transparency as a corporate governance strategy in the fiscal output of state-owned commercial enterprises as anchored by legitimacy theory. Further, the study adopted explanatory research design. It targeted 476 board members and 379 corporate executives from 46 SOCEs in Kenya. The sample size was 295, consisting of 142 corporate executives and 153 board members, who were selected via stratified random sampling. To collect primary data, a questionnaire and document analysis were deployed. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics. Test for relationship between variables was done using covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM) along with Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) software. The study results revealed that transparency (estimate = 1.946, critical ratio = 3.676, p < 0.001) positively and significantly influenced the financial performance of SOCEs. It was thus deduced that transparency was a determinant of SOCEs’ fiscal output in Kenya. Therefore, SOCEs should deploy centralized real-time monitoring of financial performance through dashboards, build data management capacities and adopt business intelligence and data analytics technologies that allow for data driven and intelligence-based decision-making by the SOCEs’ board and corporate executives.