Managing Change in Cities: Transition Kampala Capital City to Kampala Capital City Authority

Kampala city was formally governed as a local government entity under Kampala city council (KCC), due to maladministration characterized by failure in city service delivery, mismanagement of funds among others ignited various institutional pressures to push for its transformation into a semi-autonomous entity that's Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA). The transformation of KCC to KCCA encountered a lot of resistance from different sources that necessitated divergent strategies for positive receptivity for reforms that enabled it to attain institutional legitimacy. The study explores the various sources of resistance during the transformation period and change management practices that were adopted to create positive receptivity for reforms—thus KCCA's attainment of institutional legitimacy. Through an exploratory sequential design, a sample of participants was sequentially selected using purposive and snowball sampling techniques until the saturation point was reached. Data generated through interviews was analyzed using a blend of grounded theory analysis and the Gioia cording method. The findings reveal that the KCCA Act, the populist agenda of elected leaders, and mixing politics and work were major sources of resistance. Secondly, both institutional oriented strategies such as creating a cultural shift, asserting, character of the team leader, galvanizing a team that could deliver, etc and community-oriented strategies such as walking with the community, identifying key stakeholders, and harmonizing power centers were adopted to create positive receptivity for the reforms. The study draws the attention of administrators and policy makers to the need for thorough scrutiny of any law to be made on the transformation of public entities but also to the need for continuous amendment of the KCCA Act, to streamline political activities in the city and regulate the mixing of politics with technical work. In addition to that since the city manager model has proven to be effective in the management of the city, it can be adopted by new cities and develop succession planning for the leadership of KCCA as frequent changes in the leadership had a negative effect on the progress.