Public planning and political strategy

Planning theory and practice derived from corporate experience, management science and rational decision theory have had little influence on decision-making in the public sector. The political environment and organizational complexity of public decision making render conventional approaches to objective, rational, comprehensive planning of limited value in government agencies and in private corporations involved in public policy making. A more effective approach to strategic planning and management must be based on an understanding of the political dynamics through which policies are made. It must adopt a variety of styles directly related to major functions in the policy making process and use a variety of political intervention and influence techniques that facilitate the implementation of plans and policies.     

Making planning more effective

The authors have been carrying out a comparative study of strategic planning in a set of ten, diverse organizations from both public and private sectors. The research focused on two issues: (1) what constitutes effective planning? and (2) what is the impact of participation on that effectiveness. This paper describes those elements of the results of the research which have greatest relevance to practising planners and managers.     

Strategic planning in government-dependent businesses

As the role of government has expanded in various countries, standard distinctions between the public and private sectors have become blurred. This paper explores the special context within which strategic planning must take place in organizations with a very high dependence on government. Four types of government dependency are considered: ownership dependency (public enterprises); regulation dependency (private, regulated firms); input-dependency (e.g. non-profits dependent on state funding); and output-dependency (e.g. defence contractors who sell a considerable portion of their output to governments).Despite their seeming differences, all four types of government-dependent organizations (GDOs) experience five distinctive problems that seriously limit the relevance of traditional planning models (or what are often referred to as ‘rational, comprehensive models’). They are: fragmented strategic decision-making authority; heightened goal ambiguity; politicization of strategic decision-making; short-term orientation and internal bureaucratization.The concepts of strategy and strategic planning are as relevant to Government dependent organizations (GDOs) as they are to other kinds of firms, although the planning system has to be designed somewhat differently. Six tentative guidelines for designing the planning system in GDOs are presented in the paper: (1) plans must be ‘negotiated’ rather than ‘formulated’ in GDOs; (2) outsiders must be involved in the planning process; (3) socio-political issues must be integrated with technoeconomic tissues; (4) top management must play an active role in running the system, especially in managing interfaces with government; (5) the planning system should emphasize flexibility over discipline or rigor and (6) plans must be written up with the expectation that much of their contents could become public knowledge.The paper concludes with the view the GDOs may have a lot to learn from one another despite superficial differences in institutional status (public vs private) and nature of goals (for- profit vs not-for-profits).     

Strategic planning in Tanzania

The Tanzania Wood Industry Corporation is one of the very few parastatal organizations that have developed and introduced a strategic corporate planning process. The novelty of the idea, the many operational problems that surround the managers and the lack of adequate training are some of the problems that have retarded the development and introduction of corporate planning in Tanzania. In 1980 the new CEO of TWICO contracted a Finnish management consulting firm to audit the whole corporation and to recommend a better management practice. Systems manuals were then developed and a grassroots based strategic corporate planning process was then introduced. Now in its third year, the impact on management is very encouraging.     

Strategic Planning in the Malawi Public Sector: Potential Tool for Progress or Regression?

The process of developing strategic plans in the public sector is regarded as one indicator of positive reform in the system. The assumption is that strategic planning ensures that (just like in the private sector) public sector organizations’ operations should cost less but deliver better service. Ultimately the argument is that public sector institutional governance and responsiveness to the citizenry is not only seen but felt. However, strategic planning has to be done in an appropriate manner for it to deliver. For instance an analysis of the underlying motives, the role of leadership in the process as well as the relevance or viability of the guiding strategic planning model significantly affect the nature of expected results. In the early 2000s, the Malawi public sector embarked on a serious drive towards strategic planning process as part of its reform package. In order to ascertain it’s potential to transform the Malawi public service, this paper focuses at critically analyzing the strategic planning process in the Malawi public sector by among other things asking: who initiated and led the process? What approach determined the process? What is the possible potentiality of the adopted strategic planning approach in enhancing the reform agenda in Malawi? Based on interviews with senior officers in key Malawi public sector institutions, the paper concludes that the strategic planning process is ‘transitional and fluid’ hence lacks the clout to effectively enhance reforms in this sector. Another finding is that lack of effective leadership has largely contributed to the status quo.     

Helping managers to develop strategies

Concepts within strategic management are defined and a framework for strategic analysis and planning is presented. Within the planning operation, corporate strategy and corporate integration are central to strategic management. The timetable largely prescribes the procedural steps involved in strategic analysis and planning, and the character of each of these steps is determined by the frame of reference, or the aims and purpose of strategic managers, which are established during strategic planning. As a practical management tool, the framework developed here offers the possibility to improve management performance and to increase corporate effectiveness and flexibility.     

Public Knowledge of and Involvement with Metropolitan and Local Strategic Planning in Australia

Despite academic and practitioner debate surrounding public involvement in planning, little is actually known about the extent to which the public is aware of the planning process. The focus of this paper is the examination of the underlying, latent public knowledge of the planning system in Australia. This latent knowledge (or more accurately, the absence of this knowledge) emerges as a barrier to public involvement. This paper examines public perceptions of the importance of metropolitan and local strategic plans, knowledge of these plans, the main sources of this knowledge, and the extent to which the public is likely to become involved with strategic planning process. The paper concludes that despite large segments of the population viewing strategic planning as important, only a small proportion is actually aware of the plans themselves, while an even smaller proportion is likely to become involved in the planning process.     

Cutting back bureaucracy in a public service

The British public service is respected for its efficiency and objectivity. But it has a music hall reputation for bureaucracy and lack of initiative. As with many long-acquired reputations, nothing nowadays could be further from the truth. A revolution has swept through the corridors of Whitehall and the many other places throughout the UK where the public service is alive and well. This revolution has been described in Morley,¹ and other articles² have shown how strategic planning and management have been adopted by individual parts of the public sector. Having set the scene in ‘Building a New Organization for Nature Conservation’,² the author now describes how English Nature moved on to reflect its new strategic approach in a different organization structure which broke many of the traditional mores of the public sector.     

An Examination of IT Planning in a Large,Diversified Public Organization*

The conduct of information technology (IT) planning processes has been of dominant managerial concern in public and private organizations. Yet, current IT planning research offers little guidance on the types of planning actions and behaviors that are appropriate to organizational contexts. We focus on the conduct of the IT planning process by describing an exploratory research project. The project empirically examined a number of issues associated with managing IT planning within a single large public enterprise, particularly identifying actions and behaviors related to producing quality IT plans. The results of the study yield some useful set of guidelines; most interesting is the importance of building IT infrastructure based on IT sophistication and innovativeness for large agencies to improve plan quality. Other recommendations include having a focused, balanced technology and business planning orientation that incorporates a strategic outlook, support of top management, attention to business planning, and early consensus among planning members.     

The social construction of strategic coherence: Practices of enabling leadership

The construction of “strategic coherence,” defined as the development of a system of mutually compatible meanings among organization members about desirable organizational directions, is clearly a crucial issue for organizations. Yet, how to achieve it is in part an open question. While previous studies have considered how strategic coherence may emerge across top levels of management through strategic planning activities and negotiations among senior leaders, we know much less about the contribution of other actors and processes behind the scenes (in non-strategy roles). Drawing on an ethnographic study of a public hospital's planning and project management practices, this paper therefore focuses on the bundles of practices, people and tools through which strategic coherence can emerge across different levels and sectors in mundane activities. We build on the concept of “enabling leadership”, grounded in practice theories of leadership, as our analytical lens. The study reveals how strategic coherence is socially constructed by practices of ‘fueling’, ‘shaping’ and ‘entwining’ mutually compatible meanings, in interactions among diverse people and tools. We propose a grounded model of the construction of strategic coherence as the progressive socialization of meanings about organizational direction that is not just administered from the top, nor naturally emergent from the grass-roots, but that is a collective and inherently socio-material accomplishment of enabling leadership.     

How to integrate strategic planning into your management process

The primary purpose of strategic planning is to enable management to make decisions today which will affect the firm over the long run where the long run is characterized by risk and uncertainty. If strategic planning is to be useful to management it must be an integral part of the decision making process and not merely an appendage to the management process. In this paper we shall define some of the problems involved in integrating strategic planning and strategic planning tools into the decision process. We shall also suggest some possible solutions to these problems.     

Using strategic planning to drive strategic change

This article describes a case history of strategic planning, learning and change within a major division of Dowty plc. At Dowty CASE, a telecommunications company, the management team used strategic planning as a structured learning process to generate strategic change. There are many lessons which academics and practitioners alike can learn from this case of strategic planning and change in action.     

Tioxide: Computerization—The key to the future in financial planning

As the capability of new computer systems becomes increasingly sophisticated, so does the application of computer techniques to financial and strategic planning become more relevant to management. Planning and practically all forms of decision-making are concerned with the future, which necessarily is uncertain and therefore difficult to plan for. Forecasting methods, however, can suggest trends and it is possible to reduce the number of possible futures to a manageable number, in effect, creating scenarios. But the viewing of multiple scenarios in a manual accounting system is impractical, given the sheer volume of work, and this is where the facilities offered by computerization can assist decision-making greatly. The case study illustrated here concerns a multinational company with production facilities in seven different countries, using a sophisticated financial software packege for strategic and financial planning applications. The article traces the development of Tioxide's association with a financial modelling package, Planmaster, from initial use on a time-sharing basis to the changes in hardware manufacture which made it possible to run what is essentially a mainframe program on the desk-top microcomputer of the planning department.     

A strategic perspective for make or buy decisions

Make or buy decisions have typically been relegated to purchasing departments. While this is not totally unjustified, top management must consider the strategic implications. In essence, operative decisions are made here which influence the strategic thrust of the organization. Make or buy decisions have substantial strategic implications in the entire planning process. They can affect a firm's competitive advantage, and alter the types of alternatives considered in the planning process.

It is argued that strategic considerations should outweigh technical and conventional approaches to make or buy decisions. Top management needs to put these decisions back on their strategic agenda.     

Development, application, and evaluation of an "action-reaction" planning method.

It is difficult to design and implement new public policies and programs, at least partially owing to the fact that few useful methods are available to help shape the planning, decision-making, and implementation processes required for change. Planning often tends to focus on wishful thinking rather than on a realistic assessment of the probable outcomes. In this article we describe an action-reaction approach to planning that explicitly recognizes the restrictions on program impact arising from the system in which change is being attempted. A hypothetical example shows the application of this method to the design of a health-care delivery program. The article concludes with a discussion of the long-term uses of the data base that may be compiled with this method.     

Business planning in successful small firms

Strategic planning has been widely publicized during the last decade, but what has been accomplished by this management activity in smaller, high-growth firms? Business plans have been widely recommended for start-up funding, but we have noted additional uses for business plans in pratice. This article reports methods and results of strategic planning and written business plans in high-growth ‘INC. 500’ firms. In spite of a variety of obstacles, over half of the firms conduct strategic planning on a regular basis. Results of this study show that fast-growth firms develop written business plans as a product of strategic planning, mainly by five key management personnel. Written business plans are used more for internal management purposes than for start-up funding. Finally, the completion of strategic planning is positively associated with a firm's profitability. Based on survey and interview data, this article describes a four-phase model to help ensure effective integration of strategic planning processes and the resulting written business plans.     

Developing strategic thinking

This paper looks at the problem of getting managers to contribute effectively to strategic planning, and focuses on the role of management development approaches in ensuring that this happens. A number of formal, and less formal, management development techniques are discussed in the light of their relevance for developing strategic awareness. The importance of providing exposure to strategic issues at an early stage in managers' careers is stressed, and also the need to encourage managers to take initiatives in obtaining their own development. Some of the most fruitful techniques involve taking full advantage of the ‘natural learning’ that takes place on the job, and those which provide a close integration between management development and the planning process—such as projects and ‘task forces’. Finally the role of senior managers in helping to create and maintain a climate in which strategic abilities can develop is discussed.     

Strategic planning for water—A case history

Choosing a management policy in a developing economy for public utility systems involves consideration of a host of factors and delineation of some strategic issues. In order to make the management policy operational, a formal approach to system planning is necessary. This paper develops an approach whose primary aim is to assess the current status of the system and the environment, to identify and categorize the management problems, and then to break up the problems into manageable components to find out appropriate solution strategies. It is hoped that such an approach will jointly clarify the perceptions of how management techniques can be gainfully used and practised in managing large scale public utility systems.     

Planning in a free market economy

This paper is based on a research study project on Premises and Process of Introducing Strategic Planning in a Company. It presents and discusses some major findings of the study concerning the content of strategic decisions, the elements of a planning system, the process of introducing strategic planning and the impact of environmental conditions upon the strategic planning system.     

Strategic assessment—A rational response to university cutbacks

Effective strategic assessment and planning is required if public higher education is to cope with the problems of the next two decades. This article suggests an approach that can be easily adapted to most public post-secondary institutions, based on a strategic plan devised to combat decline in enrolment and fiscal reduction in a State educational institution.