Elements of Strategic Planning and Management in Municipal Government: Status after Two Decades

This article focuses on the use of strategic planning and management processes in municipal governments with populations over 25,000. Strategic planning has been used in municipalities for 20 years now, but little is known about how it is used and the results obtained. In particular, we explore whether municipal governments tie other components of the overall strategic management process to their strategic plans. Findings do not show a dramatic expansion in the use of strategic planning, but there is some evidence of growing sophistication, as demonstrated by links to other management and decision-making activities. Managers were enthusiastic about their experiences with strategic planning and largely satisfied with their achievement of goals and objectives. Overall, we find a raising of the bar as far as strategic planning is concerned, but the use of comprehensive strategic management is only beginning to develop in a small number of leading-edge municipalities.     

Construction Procurement and State Government Strategy: Aligned or Disconnected?

Australian state governments are engaging in strategic planning processes and publishing departmental and/or overall state strategic plans. One means of achieving the goals outlined in these strategic plans is via public procurement processes. Investments in construction projects by governments are strategic in nature and made to create infrastructure, which enables the provision of public services. This article investigates the contribution that construction procurement across the five Australian state governments who expend the most money on infrastructure makes towards the achievement of government strategy. The research draws on interviews with experienced project managers to assess whether public sector construction procurement is aligned or disconnected with publically stated government strategies.     

Managing for Results in State Government: Evaluating a Decade of Reform

State governments in the United States have enthusiastically embraced the idea of managing for results. This appears to represent a victory for New Public Management policy ideas transferred from New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The managing for results doctrine that emerged from these countries called for an increased focus on results but also increased managerial authority to achieve results. In return, it was claimed, governments would enjoy dramatic performance improvement and results-based accountability. This article assesses the implementation of public management reform in the United States and argues that the managing for results doctrine has been only partially adopted. State governments selected some of the New Public Management ideas but largely ignored others. In short, state governments emphasized strategic planning and performance measurement but were less successful in implementing reforms that would enhance managerial authority, undermining the logic that promised high performance improvements.     

Organizational Strategy and the Outcomes of Fiscal Retrenchment in Major Cities in the United States

This study examines if organizational strategy—specifically strategy formulation and strategic stance—influences the outcomes of fiscal retrenchment in city governments. Fiscal retrenchment is defined here as the process of responding to a budget crisis. Analysis of data from a 2015 national survey of municipalities in the United States with a population of 50,000 or more indicates that a rational planning process is associated with fiscal recovery, whereas a defender strategy stance, which emphasizes organizational stability and efficiency, correlates with continuing fiscal difficulties. Examining the complex interactions between strategy formulation, strategic stance, and environmental turbulence, the empirical analysis indicates that a rational planning process that results in a defending stance is associated with slower fiscal recovery, but there is limited evidence that the relationship between strategy and fiscal recovery is dependent on external economic conditions.     

Public Service Professionalism for Performance Measurement and Evaluation

For over fifty years, efforts have been made to measure the results of government activities. Most recently, performance measurement and evaluation have been key components of government reforms in many countries in reaction to loss of confidence in governments and budget stringency. Emphasis is on measuring outcomes or results within a general framework of strategic planning and objective setting, and in a context of devolution, managerial decentralization, and privatization. While it seems reasonable that governments should justify their use of public funds by demonstrating the effectiveness of their programs and activities, performance measurement in practice is by no means straightforward and demands considerable thought in its design and implementation.     

The Effects of Strategic and Economic Interdependence on International Conflict Across Levels of Analysis

This study develops a Social Network Analytic approach to conceptualize and measure interdependence across levels of analysis. This framework contains several innovations. First, it integrates "sensitivity interdependence"—the effects of changes in one state on other states—with "vulnerability interdependence"—the opportunity costs of breaking a relationship. Second, it measures interdependence at different levels of analysis and across multiple relationships. Third, it integrates multiple dimensions of interdependence into a single measure. I derive hypotheses from the realist and liberal paradigms regarding the effects of strategic and economic interdependence on monadic, dyadic, and systemic conflict. These hypotheses are tested via data on alliances, military capability, and trade. The findings provide robust support to the expectations of the liberal paradigm regarding the effects of strategic and economic interdependence on conflict. On the other hand, the expectations of the realist paradigm are not supported. I discuss the theoretical and empirical implications of this approach.     

A Successful Transition? ACT Public Finances Under Self-government

Generous Commonwealth funding before self-government in 1989 meant that the ACT enjoyed high government expenditures and low taxation compared with the states. Self-government meant a transition to normal state funding, ultimately involving substantial reductions in Commonwealth grants. Successive governments aligned taxes with other jurisdictions, but failed to reduce expenditures, which remained well above Commonwealth Grants Commission (CGC) assessments of levels necessary to provide a standard level of services. The fiscal position — however measured — has worsened. The transition to normal funding has been unsuccessful and, without the necessary adjustments, a heavy burden will be placed on future Canberrans.     

Overspending in Public Organizations: Does Strategic Management Matter?

ABSTRACT

In the wake of the financial crash, many governments across the globe are seeking to curb expenditure in public sector organizations. To assess the extent to which public organizations can make strategic choices that might result in lower expenditure, we explore the relationship between strategic management and overspending in English local governments. The effects of strategic stances and actions on overspending are tested using multivariate statistical techniques. The empirical results show that an innovative strategic stance results in overspending as does a commitment to the development of new services, while a reactive strategic stance and decentralized decision making are associated with lower levels of overspending. Our analysis provides support for arguments that public organizations can make strategic choices that result in tighter control of their budgets.     

破解“城管困境”的战略性人力资源管理视角——基于对北京城市管理综合执法队伍的调查研究

近些年围绕城管执法队伍产生了很多争论,一方面,地方政府对这支队伍有很强的依赖,另一方面,这支队伍受到了很多批评甚至攻击。本文在对北京市城管执法队伍进行深入调查的基础上发现,问题的根源在于国家对这支队伍缺乏明确的战略定位,这导致赋予他们的职责与这支队伍的数量和质量之间出现较为严重的不匹配,再加上没有及时采取措施对这支队伍的结构和管理机制进行优化,结果使城管执法工作的职责不断扩大,与这支队伍的人力资源状况之间的矛盾日益尖锐。相应地,必须从战略和人力资源管理两个层面来寻找解决问题的方案,即借助战略性人力资源管理思想来化解城管困境。     

Does Strategic Planning Improve Organizational Performance? A Meta‐Analysis

Strategic planning is a widely adopted management approach in contemporary organizations. Underlying its popularity is the assumption that it is a successful practice in public and private organizations that has positive consequences for organizational performance. Nonetheless, strategic planning has been criticized for being overly rational and for inhibiting strategic thinking. This article undertakes a meta‐analysis of 87 correlations from 31 empirical studies and asks, Does strategic planning improve organizational performance? A random‐effects meta‐analysis reveals that strategic planning has a positive, moderate, and significant impact on organizational performance. Meta‐regression analysis suggests that the positive impact of strategic planning on organizational performance is strongest when performance is measured as effectiveness and when strategic planning is measured as formal strategic planning. This impact holds across sectors (private and public) and countries (U.S. and non‐U.S. contexts). Implications for public administration theory, research, and practice are discussed in the conclusion.     

Consultation and Contest: The Danger of Mixing Modes

This paper argues that public consultative procedures undertaken by governments or their public services sometimes go awry because of certain confusions as to the nature and purposes of consultation. One of the most important of these is a tendency to view consultation as an exercise in policy determination by the public rather than as public input into the representative democratic process whose ultimate use is to be defined by the elected decision-makers. The result of this confusion is a tendency to misunderstand or overestimate what public consultations can achieve, and a failure to make a distinction between occasions when such consultations are useful and occasions when they must give way to explicit political contest. Three levels of activity — the technical, the transactional and the political — are analytically distinguished along with the modes of action-response appropriate to each — in order to explain and clarify the nature of good consultative practice.     

CUTBACK MANAGEMENT IN CANADA*

Abstract: Although since 1975 the Government of Canada has been successful in containing its expenditure growth — partly as a result of the demands for value for money in government and the political implications of the large deficit — the drive for efficiency and economy has a long history. The Budget reforms of the 1970s (such as MBO, PPB and OPMS) have been joined at the Federal level by a new Policy and Expenditure Management System based on resource "envelopes". This involves the preparation of a five-year fiscal plan setting out projected revenue and total expenditure with a division of expenditure into ten "envelopes" for ten policy sectors. Expenditure priorities are determined by the Priorities and Planning Committee chaired by the Prime Minister, and five Cabinet Committees are responsible for managing the various policy sectors within the funds available. The intention is that "X-budgets", or across-the-board percentage cuts which were the earlier means of cutting back, will be replaced by the more sophisticated "envelope" system. In various ways all Provincial governments — even resource-rich Alberta — have also cutback their expenditures. Ontario has used two blunt instruments in its cutbacks; an arbitrary growth target below the level of inflation and the limitation of public service manpower through the device of "person-years". The lesson from Ontario's experience is the importance of political will in cutback management.     

Wakeup Call: Strategic Management,Network Alarms,and Performance

New empirical evidence suggests that service performance is shaped by the strategies adopted by public organizations and the networking behavior of public managers. Strategy captures two central behavioral aspects of public organizations: the way in which objectives and actions are selected (processes), and an organization’s approach to service delivery (content). Networking is similarly concerned with the behavior of public managers as they interact with others. These twin themes are linked in an integrated study that explores the relationship between strategy, networking, and service performance within a sample of English local governments. The results show that strategy processes based on rational planning offer long‐run positive effects on public services, as does a strategic proactive stance.     

Profligacy Or Prudence? Changes in Employment and Compensation of State and Local Government Workers

As the 1990s began, state and local governments across the country found themselves in a situation of fiscal stress. That stress has been attributed to several sources. Recently, it has been suggested that governments themselves brought on the fiscal squeeze by their own profligacy —a profligacy rooted in excessive increases in employment and compensation of government workers during the 1980s. After summarizing some arguments presented for and against describing state and local practices of the 1980s as profligate, this article compares its evidence on the growth of employment and compensation and notes some different interpretations. The article concludes that a strong statement of the profligacy position has not been proved.     

End user computing in Asian countries: Policy lessons for development administration

End user computing requires policy initiatives very different from those needed for computerization in order to deal with the specific issues of initiation, development and institutionalization. Microcomputers provide a service and not goods or savings and require an emphasis on the dynamics of the system, where both strategic issues and operational priorities have to be set. The process is organizational, rather than a technological or a planning exercise. It requires governments to guide the change through deliberate decision making. The objective has to be to obtain the support of users at different levels. In this paper Asian experiences are compared with Western experiences to determine a framework for looking at the process. The limited set of strategies for success have also been identified.     

Disaster Resiliency of U.S. Local Governments: Insights to Strengthen Local Response and Recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic

This research presents implications of the global pandemic for local government resiliency in the United States. The authors explore insights from local government officials and managers on the front lines of response and recovery efforts to the biological natural disaster. Findings from the latest nationwide survey of U.S. local governments regarding their preparedness for weather-related natural disasters also inform responses to the current crisis. Results indicate that local governments are innovating and taking strategic actions to fight the virus, even as COVID-19 has exposed social inequities that are exacerbated as the virus spreads. Survey findings of disaster readiness of local governments to weather-related disasters shows that small, resource-poor governments will not be able to respond well and social inequities will grow. Policy strategies at all levels of government must recognize and account for these inequities as threat of this virus subsides, to support stronger, more effective readiness for the next biological catastrophe.     

Understanding Strategic Planning and the Formulation and Implementation of Strategic Plans as a Way of Knowing: The Contributions of Actor-Network Theory

ABSTRACT

This article has two purposes: first, to take seriously the notion of strategic planning as a way of knowing, and second, to argue that actor-network theory provides a particularly apposite method for understanding whether and how strategic planning works in particular circumstances. Pursuit of these purposes also helps illuminate possible contributions of strategic planning to inclusive, participative, and democratic public management. The paper is illustrated with examples from the 1995 and 2007 strategic planning and subsequent implementation efforts of MetroGIS, an organization created to foster widespread sharing of geospatial information primarily among public organizatons serving the Twin Cities metropolitan area of Minnesota, USA, and further, to enhance their individual and collective effectiveness. The Metropolitan Council, the regional government, is the primary sponsor of MetroGIS, which is comprised of over 300 organizational partners across the region. Conclusions are offered about the importance of viewing and studying strategic planning as a way of knowing and as a potential vehicle for inclusive public management in a democratic society.

[A table featuring a complete timeline of the major MetroGIS accomplishments between 1995 and 2008; the controversies, participants, processes, technologies, and artifacts involved; and the outcomes or major consequences resulting from the accomplishment is included as an online supplement on the publisher's website.]     

Strategic drift in international non‐governmental development organizations—putting strategy in the background of organizational change

Although the use of strategic planning has become widespread in INGDOs they have often been accused of strategic drift—continuous change in their strategic directions with plans only loosely coupled to their activities. However, the way that they prioritize their activities, and the reasons why strategic drift occurs has generally escaped in‐depth research. This article draws on detailed, qualitative research of strategic planning meetings at the executive levels in a major INGDO, carried out between July 2006 and December 2007 to identify the reasons why strategic drift occurs and the role of strategic planning. It was found that by deliberately crafting multiple, ambiguous, and ambitious strategies, managers were able to effect organizational change, not by literal strategy implementation, but by using these strategies as metaphors to harness consensus and legitimacy in key stakeholder groups. Senior managers utilize the symbols, language and deliberative arenas of formal strategic planning to effect organizational change; however, strategy, in rational terms, needs to be located in the background for its role to be properly understood. The research unpacks complex decision‐making processes in an INGDO and, contrary to normative literature, recommends that, in order to avoid inflationary planning, managers should not take their strategy literally. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Looking Beyond Managerialism The 1995 National Conference of the Royal Institute of Public Administration Australia, held on 29th November to 1st December 1995, Brisbane

In providing this conference summation I have chosen to highlight six themes well represented during proceedings: (1) managerialism; (2) institutional scepticism; (3) markets and networks; (4) empowering the customer; (5) national governments and globalisation; and (6) legitimacy and the new tribes. As the conference included over 55 papers and four simultaneous strands it was impossible to cover everything — so these reflections are informed by personal preferences.     

Fixed‐Term Parliaments and the Challenges for Governments and the Civil Service: A Comparative Perspective

The Fixed‐term Parliaments Act significantly reduces the powers of the Prime Minister to manage the risk of government termination and to time elections to his or her party's advantage. In this paper we ask how the Act is likely to change the way in which governments terminate, their durability and opportunities for planning in government and departments. In answering these questions we draw on quantitative comparative evidence from other European countries that operate with fixed‐term parliaments. Our analysis suggests that fixing the parliamentary term can be expected to convert some opportunistically called elections into regular elections and to stabilise governments toward the end of the parliamentary term. But the Act is also likely to have unanticipated consequences in increasing governments’ vulnerability to failure before they reach the final sessions of Parliament. We explore these unanticipated consequences and outline their implications for governing style and Civil Service planning.