This book proposes an approach to the analysis of the adoption of models of strategic management for public services organizations which conceives of strategy as multifaceted, as a prism composed of different lenses each shedding light on one aspect of what strategy is for a public services organization. Our approach is much in line with that of Mintzberg et al. (2009), and indeed we consider our book to represent the equivalent for the public sector, and public services broadly intended, of the approach proposed by Mintzberg and colleagues for the âprivateâ sector and commercial organizations.
We also argue that the field of strategic management, although it has developed over the past decades mostly in relation to the study of private sector settings (see a new Appendix 1 which reports a bibliometric analysis of scholarly articles in strategic management respectively in the public and private sectors; also Bryson et al. 2010), has nowadays enhanced applicability to many contemporary public services organizations, specifically as certain models of strategic management underpinned by broader social sciences than industrial economics are amenable to being systematically applied to such settings.
We recognize that this is a contested view: political scientists might well stress the continuing distinctively democratic nature of public administration (De Leon 2005), still unlike that of private firmsâ approach to competitive strategy for profit maximization objectives, and where there is less concern for a public deliberative process (this view has famously been expressed in the statement that public and private management âmight be alike, but only in unimportant respects,â where market forces and legislative oversight are seen as representing two radically distinct governance structures, see Allison 1983). Public choice economists (Niskanen 1971, 1973), from another viewpoint, might argue that the main (even if implicit) goal of a public bureaucracy is to constantly grow its budget and jurisdiction, without any interest for wider strategic reflections about the overall direction or about the cost or quality of the services it provides for citizens (unlike high-quality firms which are customer-centric and who have learnt how constantly to innovate, Peters and Waterman 1982).
However, a number of public management authors (Andrews et al. 2006; Boyne 2006; Bryson 2018; Llewellyn and Tappin 2003; Lusk and Birks 2014; Moore 1995; Vining 2011) have called for the adoption of generic strategic management models in public services organizations, even if significantly adapted to the still distinctive context of the public sector and public services. Indeed, adaptation may be required not just generically when shifting from the private to the public sector as such, but more broadly to a plurality of geographical contexts, given the diversity of politico-administrative and cultural contexts in which public services organizations operate in different jurisdictions internationally (see Chapter 7). These cultural and politico-administrative contexts frame the autonomy of public organizations as well as societal expectations towards them and the ways in which they are ultimately held accountable.
With these caveats in mind, we argue that contemporary public management can learn from the broad field of strategic management as it has developed, mostly for the private/commercial sector, over the past decades. This is indee...
