Data set collected from Kenyan State Corporations to measure whether top management support influences the performance of procurement in Kenya

Title: Top Management Support and Public Procurement Performance: Evidence from State Corporations in KenyaDescriptionThis dataset supports a quantitative cross-sectional study examining the relationship between top management support (TMS) and public procurement performance across state corporations in Kenya. The study was motivated by persistent procurement inefficiencies in Kenyan state corporations despite repeated legislative and regulatory reforms, most notably the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act of 2015. Rather than examining procurement regulations or systems in isolation, the study focused on whether the commitment and actions of senior organizational leadership — specifically in allocating resources, building staff capacity, and assigning procurement duties — are associated with better procurement outcomes.Top management support was operationalized through three dimensions: resource allocation (the degree to which senior leaders commit financial and human resources to the procurement function), capacity building (the extent to which leaders sponsor training and professional development for procurement staff), and allocation of duties (the clarity and deliberateness with which leaders assign procurement responsibilities and enforce accountability). Procurement performance was measured across three dimensions: quality assurance, service delivery, and value for money. All items were rated on a five-point Likert scale. Data were collected from 167 senior procurement officers drawn from state corporations spanning 19 of 21 Kenyan ministry categories, using a drop-and-pick questionnaire administered at a single time point.Contrary to the expectation derived from governance theory, institutional theory, and upper echelons theory, the analysis found no positive association between top management support and procurement performance at the composite level (r = −.145, p = .062). The model explained only 2.1% of variance in performance (R² = .021). None of the three TMS dimensions was positively and significantly associated with performance; officer experience emerged as the more consistent positive correlate. The findings are interpreted through the theory of substitutes for leadership and the concept of means–ends decoupling: in a tightly regulated, procedurally routinised procurement environment, task structure and officer professionalisation may reduce the marginal influence of executive support, and formal leadership endorsement may not translate into enacted procurement outcomes.The dataset was collected under ethical clearance from the Institutional Review Board of the host university and with a data collection permit from the National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (NACOSTI), Kenya. Participation was voluntary, and all responses were anonymised at the point of collection. The SPSS data file (.sav) contains responses from 167 participants across all study variables, including composite and item-level scores for top management support and procurement performance, as well as respondent demographic variables (education level, years of experience, and ministry category).Keywords: public procurement, top management support, procurement performance, state corporations, Kenya, leadership, governance, institutional theory, upper echelons theory, substitutes for leadership, decoupling, cross-sectional survey, sub-Saharan Africa