Strategic Alignment on Medical Employees’ Performance: Does Innovative Work Behavior. A Reflection from County Referral Hospitals Kenya

This research aimed at establishing the influence of strategic alignment on medical employees’ performance in county referral hospitals in CEREB, Kenya. Positivism paradigm was the guiding philosophy while convergent parallel mixed methods design was employed in the study. The target population comprised of 1804 medical employees from the 10-referral hospitals in central regional economic bloc, Kenya. Stratified sampling and simple random sampling from the probability sampling approach was used in getting 327 employees. This study used both closed-ended and open-ended questionnaires. Validity and reliability of the research instruments was tested using appropriate methods like piloting and expert knowledge for validity while Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient was determined for reliability. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages, means and standard deviation.  kurtosis, skewness and normality tests were carried out to ensure data was amenable to analysis.  Results showed that strategic alignment had significant and positive effect on medical employees’ performance in county referral hospitals. Results also revealed that innovative work behaviour significantly mediated the relationship between strategic alignment and medical employees’ performance in county referral hospitals. This underscores the importance of aligning organizational strategies with employee roles while fostering a culture of innovation to amplify performance outcomes. To capitalize on these insights, hospital management should prioritize initiatives that promote creativity and innovation, such as providing targeted training, establishing reward systems for innovative contributions, and fostering supportive leadership. Keywords: Innovative Work Behaviour, Strategic Alignment, Medical Employees’ Performance County, Referral Hospitals.