STRATEGIC PLANNING AND STRATEGIC THINKING COMPETENCIES OF KAZAKHSTAN’S MANAGERS IN THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR

The present study explores the impact of organizational and individual factors: length of managerial tenure, leader’s gender, firm’s age, and size, on the tax-payment dynamics among grain companies in Kazakhstan (N = 127) that relates to managers’ strategic thinking orientation. The article aims at identifying what firm- and leader-level variables significantly correlate with an agricultural company’s tax-payment increase. Tax‐payment data for 2014-2024 were sourced from the Kazakh Grain Union website, while firm metadata (registration dates, headcounts, and managers’ gender and tenure) were obtained from the Paragraph Information System. Each enterprise’s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of tax payments was computed, and a multiple regression with heteroskedasticity‐consistent standard errors was estimated. Managerial tenure significantly predicted higher CAGR (β = 0.113, p = 0.023), however, firm age failed to support the hypothesized positive relationship, exhibiting only a marginally non-significant negative effect (β = -0.095, p = 0.080), whereas leaders’ gender and workforce size did not influence the tax-payment dynamics. The model explained 6.6% of the variance in growth. The evidence suggests that retaining leaders in agribusiness for longer periods will bring larger financial returns due to their strategic focus on growth.