Abstract
The study was necessitated by the observation that despite that
state-owned universities in developing countries have self-sustaining business
approaches; however, they are continuously failing to generate enough financial
resources, resulting in over depending on government grants. Consequently, the
inefficiencies have adverse impacts on students' academic life. Therefore, the current study explored the implications and contributions of yield
management to the performance of the Accommodation departments in state-owned
universities. The
explorative study employed a quantitative research design. Yield management
practice is the independent variable and financial performance is the dependent
variable. The sample size was comprised of three managers and 357 operational
staff to make a total of n (360) from multiple-case studies of three largest
universities in Zimbabwe. Simple random sampling
was employed on non-management staff, while purposive sampling was done on
managers. Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 22 was used to test
factor analysis, regression analysis and mean rankings. The key result confirmed a positive correlation between yield
management and the financial performance of Accommodation departments of the
selected state-owned universities. The practical implication is that state-owned
universities have to invest heavily in manpower training and technological
infrastructure for easy data storage, processing, and transfer. The
recommendations points for a need to motivate employees through reward systems
for successful yield management adoption. The study limitations are skewed
towards the usage of three state universities out of ten state universities in
one developing country in the Southern African higher education. Therefore,
further studies should be focusing on all higher institutions for better
contribution to policy and decision making as regulated by the governments in
developing states.
