Planned and Emergent Change Approaches in Building a Democratic Nation: Lessons from Kenya’s Parliament

Change, Planned Change, Emergent Change, Kenya, Constitution, bicameral, Parliament, Democracy

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January 5, 2017

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This paper reviews the role of parliament in the democratization of a nation through the prism of Organization Development and Leadership using planned and emergent change models. It examines the role of the Kenyan parliament in supporting democracy and good governance for national development due to the planned and emergent changes that have taken place overtime. The paper notes that the processes of legislative development and democratization in Kenya have been long, winding and intertwined. In the year 2000, the approach of planned change is visible when Parliament commenced a
reform process to build the capacity for its members to discharge their constitutional mandate, a project that was supported by State University of New York. During this phase, piecemeal changes were introduced to parliament though with resistance from the politics that was at play. The emergent Change phase came about with the promulgation of a new Constitution in 2010 creating a second chamber of parliament, the Senate, as well as increased the number of the Members of the National Assembly and created the offices of Woman Representatives. The paper concludes that there was interplay between planned
and emergent change hence, a need to use planned and emergent change processes concurrently. Thus, the authors suggest that leaders should no longer be considered solely as initiators and implementers of pre-planned organizational change; nor should they be seen solely as reactive agents to emergent change forces, rather they should develop the ability to connect the two to create synergy. The paper calls for researchers to empirically study this phenomenon in order to authenticate these observations in Kenya and in other democracies.