Critics of New Public Management argue that differences between public and private organizations are so great that business practices should not be transferred to the public sector. In this paper the theoretical arguments on the differences between private firms and public agencies are reviewed, and 13 hypotheses are identified on the impact of publicness on organizational environments, goals, structures and managerial values. Evidence from 34 empirical studies of differences between public agencies and private firms is critically evaluated. Only three of the publicness hypotheses are supported by a majority of the empirical studies: public organizations are more bureaucratic, and public managers are less materialistic and have weaker organizational commitment than their private sector counterparts. However, most of the statistical evidence is derived from studies that use narrow measures of publicness and fail to control for other relevant explanatory variables. Whether the existing evidence understates or overstates the distinctiveness of public agencies is therefore unclear. A research agenda and methods are identified for better comparisons of management in public and private organizations.

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Institutional theory suggests that organizations pursue legitimacy by conforming to isomorphic pressures in their environment. We extend previous research on institutional theory by distinguishing between two definitions of conformity (compliance and convergence) and by taking a comprehensive view of the organizational characteristics that might be subject to isomorphic pressures. This framework is applied to change between 2001 and 2004 in the internal characteristics of 101 public organizations in England. We find substantial evidence of compliance but more limited support for convergence. Furthermore, the impact of isomorphic pressures was stronger on organizational strategies and culture than on structures and processes. Thus, the relevance of institutional theory to change in the public sector depends on the definition of conformity that is used and the organizational characteristics that are examined.

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This study presents the first empirical test of the proposition that strategy content is a key determinant of organizational performance in the public sector. Strategy content comprises two dimensions: strategic stance (the extent to which an organization is a prospector, defender, or reactor) and strategic actions (the relative emphasis on changes in markets, services, revenues, external relationships, and internal characteristics). Data were drawn from a multiple‐informant survey of 119 English local authorities. Measures of strategy content are included in a multivariate model of interauthority variations in performance. The statistical results show that strategy content matters. Organizational performance is positively associated with a prospector stance and negatively with a reactor stance. Furthermore, local authorities that seek new markets for their services are more likely to perform well. These results suggest that measures of strategy content must be included in valid theoretical and empirical models of organizational performance in the public sector.

Existing classifications of organizational strategy have limited relevance to public agencies. They confuse strategy processes and strategy content, consist of simplistic taxonomies, and do not take sufficient account of the constraints faced by public organizations. In this article we attempt to remedy these problems by developing a strategy content matrix that comprises two dimensions: strategic stance (the extent to which an organization is a prospector, defender, or reactor) and strategic actions (the relative emphasis on changes in markets, services, revenues, external relationships, and internal characteristics). This matrix is used to generate hypotheses on the strategies that are likely to be pursued by public organizations. The need for a clearer understanding of the strategies of public service organizations is urgent. Programs of management reform frequently require public managers to develop new strategies that will lead to better performance. These expectations are clearly seen in the National Performance Review in the United States (Thompson 2000) and in the ''Modernisation Agenda'' in the United Kingdom (Boyne, Kitchener, and Kirkpatrick 2001). The aim of this article is to develop a framework to classify the strategies pursued by public organizations. Strategy content can be defined as the patterns of service provision that are selected and implemented by organizations. In contrast to the case in the private sector, strategy need not be viewed as a ''weapon'' that is used to defeat rivals in a competitive struggle (Greer and Hoggett 1999). Rather, strategy can be interpreted more broadly as a means to improve public services, whether these are provided by one agency or whole networks of organizations (Boyne 2003). Various strategic management frameworks seek to classify the strategies of public and private organizations (Ketchen,

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