The Moderating Effect of Change Management Adoption on Senior Management Support and Customer Service Delivery for IT Projects in the Public Sector

Implementation of IT projects in the public sector continues to face significant challenges primarily due to lack of senior management support and resistance to change (Ahmed & Lodhi, 2022). Due to the limited research in this domain coupled with the high failure rates of public sector IT projects, the discussion still continues on the impact of senior management support on the successful implementation of IT projects (Ahmed et al., 2021). This research therefore sought to examine the relationship between senior management support for major IT projects, change management adoption and the benefits realized from the IT project in form customer service delivery within the public sector in Kenya. The research adopted a quantitative research methodology. Primary data was collected from 309 public organization in Kenya and analyzed. The Pearson's bi-variate correlation results revealed that senior management support and customer service delivery had a significantly moderate correlation. Additionally, change management and customer service delivery after an IT project implementation had a significant, strong positive correlation. Furthermore, there was a statistically significant positive correlation between senior management support and change management adoption. The regression results revealed that change management moderated the effect of senior management support on customer service delivery as a realized benefit from IT investments. These results were consistent with findings from related previous work done by researchers. The research also found the moderating effect of change management adoption on senior management support with the resultant improvement in service delivery to the public. Arising from these therefore, most public sector organizations (96.7%) having been identified as public service driven stood to benefit immensely from these research findings through incorporation of senior management and change management practices in all IT project implementations within the public sector. This research therefore recommends the adoption and practice of change management policies in all public organizations to enable realization of benefits from IT enabled investments. In addition, the research recommends consistent senior management and board level support for all IT projects in the public sector.