LEADERSHIP, STRATEGIC CAPABILITY AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE PERFORMANCE OF EAST AFRICAN COMMUNITY ORGANS AND INSTITUTIONS

The study is focused on an evaluation of leadership, strategic capability and their resultant influence on performance of EAC organs and institutions. The study was undertaken between December, 2018 and April, 2023 involving staff of EAC organs and institutions in the categories of executive, professional and general staff.The study is based on transformational and transactional leadership theory to understand leadership dynamics in an organisation while resource dependency theory and stewardship theory to help in the understanding of existing capabilities and the nature of their deployment to influence desired outcomes.In terms of data collection, Questionnaires are used to collect data from professional and general staff while interview schedule is used to collect data from executives. A descriptive research design is used to generate inferential statistics while explanatory research design is used to provide explanations behind such relationships. Quantitative data is analysed using SPSS while Qualitative data is thematically analysed and presented as narratives for all study objectives.Results of the study show a strong relationship between leadership, strategic capability and performance. A few conclusions are made which include; that the performance of an organisation does not  entirely depend on leader’s attributes but other organisational resources and leadership is not limited to follower influence but also deployment of organisational resources. In terms of impacts of the study, the understanding of leadership as a concept is affected and the misconception on the perceived role of the leader in determining performance of an organisation is clarified. The proposed resource driven leadership model can guide restructuring efforts by organisations to ensure that leaders are well equipped to perform to stakeholder expectations. Recommendations for future research resulting from this study include; integrating strategic capability in leadership studies that relate to performance and undertaking further studies to confirm the proposed resource-driven leadership model.