Urbanus Mwendwa^1,, Stephen Makau Muathe¹

Sustainable performance is still a critical bottleneck in many agricultural ventures. Driven by consumer awareness, it has become a primary benchmark for organizational longevity, compelling modern enterprises to align financial metrics with environmental and social governance. Within Kiambu County, however, the sustainable performance of agribusiness firms remains severely compromised, threatening sector viability due to land fragmentation, shifting regulatory frameworks, market inefficiencies, and increasing operational costs. Such challenges call for appropriate strategic leadership practices that can effectively utilize organizational resources in enhancing sustainable performance. This study focused on the impact of organizational direction, defined as strategic leadership that involves the sharing of organizational vision, on sustainable performance amongst agribusiness companies in Kiambu County, Kenya. Based on the Resource-Based View and supported by the Transformational Leadership, and Contingency theories, the study used an explanatory research design. The target population involved 200 members of management team from 15 purposely selected agribusiness firms in Kiambu County. A sample size of 130 respondents was identified through the Yamane formula, with 122 responses translating to a response rate of 93.8%. The data was collected through the use of structured questionnaires and analyzed using SPSS which involved descriptive statistics for baseline profiling, alongside correlation and multiple regression analysis for hypothesis testing. The results indicated that the organizational direction has a statistically significant impact on sustainable performance (β = .324, p = .001). The study demonstrated that the strategic leadership role in enhancing sustainable performance is significantly increased through effective vision sharing. Based on these outcomes, this research recommends that the agribusiness organizations should develop internal strategic communication systems to guarantee constant and consistent alignment of vision within the organization.

Strategic leadership, organizational direction, sustainable performance, vision sharing, agribusiness, Kiambu County, strategic alignment