Emotional Self-Regulation, Organization Commitment and Strategic Decision Making in Private School Enterprises, Nairobi County, Kenya

Strategic decision making as a salient dimension of a firm’s strategy shapes the plausible attainment of organization goals. Private school managers are therefore expected to possess strategic thinking skills and competency so as to articulate a firm’s vision. While many researches have focused on antecedents of strategic decision making, there is minute empirical substantiation on emotional self-regulation as key predictor of a private school managers strategic thinking. Many researches on the effect of emotional self-regulation on strategic decision making have also focused on emotional self-regulation in marketing, military, manufacturing firms with little reference to private school enterprises which engage in tuition pricing, social and production unit enterprise strategies to gain competitive advantage hence the need for this study that researched on the effect of emotional self-regulation and strategic decision making; the moderating role of organization commitment in private school enterprise in Nairobi County, Kenya. The specific objectives were; (i) to examine the effect of emotional self-regulation on strategic decision making and (ii) to study the moderating role of organizational commitment in effect of emotional self-regulation on strategic decision making. The research was grounded on emotional intelligence theory, Bandura social cognitive theory and decision theories. The study employed explanatory research design and collected data using a structured questionnaire. The target population was 1130 respondents from which a sample size of 504 respondents was drawn. Stratified sampling technique was used to select school directors, principals, deputy principals and heads of departments then simple random sampling was used to select respondents that participated in the study. A pilot study was carried out in private school enterprises in Kiambu County, Kenya and all the instruments reliability had a Cronbachs alpha above 0.6. Data was coded and entered into SPSS 20 program for computation. Factor analysis was done to ensure content, construct and discriminant validity. Multiple regression results indicated that emotional self-regulation significantly influenced strategic decision making (beta=.119, p=.014) and organization commitment significantly moderated the relationship between emotional self-regulation and strategic decision making (beta=.101, p=.041). In conclusion, emotional self-regulation and organization commitment of a manager plays a prediction and moderation role respectively in strategic decision making. The findings are vital to the private school enterprises in relation to development of emotional self-regulation of the managers which play significant roles in strategic decision making in a firm. The findings as well inform practitioners and investors in the private school enterprises to utilize organization commitment models in the development of private school managers.