Strategic Management in Public Administration

Abstract

Strategic management is an approach to strategizing by public organizations or other entities that integrates strategy formulation and implementation, and typically includes strategic planning to formulate strategies, ways of implementing strategies, and continuous strategic learning. Strategic management can help public organizations or other entities achieve important goals and create public value. Strategy is what links capabilities and aspirations. Four broad types of strategists (as individuals, teams, organizations, and collaborations) in public administration exist: the reactor (low aspirations, low capabilities), the dreamer (high aspirations, low capabilities), the underachiever (low aspirations, high capabilities) and the savvy strategist (high aspirations, high capabilities). There are eight approaches to strategic planning. More comprehensive process approaches include those influenced by the Harvard Policy Model, logical incrementalism, and stakeholder management. More partial process approaches include strategic negotiations, strategic issues management, and strategic planning as a framework for innovation. Finally, two content approaches also exist, namely, portfolio and competitive forces analyses. Seven approaches to strategic management systems can be discerned. These include: the integrated units of management approach (or layered or stacked units of management), strategic issues management approach, contract approach, collaboration approach (including the lead organization, shared governance, and network administrative organization approaches), portfolio management approach, goal or benchmark approach, and hybrid approaches. Strategic planning and management are approaches to identifying and addressing challenges. Neither is a single invariant thing but is instead a set of concepts, processes, procedures, tools, techniques, and practices (and structures in the case of strategic management systems) that must be drawn on selectively and adapted thoughtfully and strategically to specific contexts if they are to help produce desirable results. While there are a variety of generic approaches to both, the boundaries among them are not necessarily clear, and strategic planning and management in practice are typically hybridic. Research is accumulating about which approaches to strategic planning and management work under which circumstances, how, and why, but much work remains to be done.

Editorial

“…In this PMM theme editorial, we define strategic planning as an approach to deliberate strategy formulation in public sector organizations that has the aim of achieving important goals and creating public value (Bryson & George, 2020). In other words, practitioners are 'doing' some form of strategic planning whenever they are deliberately formulating strategies aimed at goal achievement and public value creation-and how they do it is what truly matters.…”

A Guide to Benchmarking COVID‐19 Performance Data

“…The third step was to analyze each selected measurement and identify its strengths and weaknesses for policy makers, experts, and public managers who might use these tools in the near future or already are using them. Finally, based on an overarching analysis of all the identified strengths and weaknesses, the entire process of identifying indicators and measurements, and a recent elaboration of what constitutes strategic thinking in public administration (Bryson and George 2020), key recommendations for future benchmarking initiatives were distilled. Figure 1 offers a visual representation of the developed guide.…”

“…This article aims to offer some guidance to policy makers, experts, and public managers at all levels of government navigating the data jungle that emerged with the COVID‐19 crisis and hopes to stimulate strategic thinking among these actors when benchmarking their own government's performance based on COVID‐19 performance data (Bryson and George 2020).…”

Behavioral public strategy

“…Strategic decisions in public organizations and networks are decisions linked to strategy formulation, strategy implementation or continuous strategic learning (Bryson & George, 2020). These decisions are thus focused on the long-term goals and public value that a public organization or network wants to achieve and how it does so.…”

“…'Strategy' is defined by Bryson and George (2020, p. 3) as "a concrete approach to aligning the aspirations and the capabilities of public organizations or other entities in order to achieve goals and create public value." While strategy has long served public purposeespecially in a military and governance context (Freedman, 2013;Gaddis, 2018), public strategy has only recently become a focal point of much public policy and administration research (Ferlie & Ongaro, 2015;Bryson & George, 2020). Literature reviews suggest that much of this research has centered on linking specific strategy processes or content directly to public service performance (Walker, 2013;George et al, 2020).…”