The government’s need to integrate all government efforts and resources towards the efficient and effective strategic achievement of focusing results has led to the adoption of strategic management in public sector organizations. For the successful implementation of strategic management in public organizations, fundamental organizational culture changes are required. Failure to change the organizational culture may lead to resistance. It is a challenge to the successful implementation of strategic management in public organizations. However, it is also important to note that achieving strategic objectives is a continuous process and calls for enough time since it cannot be implemented overnight. It is necessary to develop a support mechanism so that strategic management in public organizations can be successfully implemented.
At the beginning of the strategic management procedure, it is essential to review their performance expectations with employees. These include the behaviors of the employees expected to exhibit and the strategic objectives expected to achieve during the upcoming rating cycle. Behavioral expectations should be tied to the organization’s strategic objectives. Strategic management systems drive employees to engage in behaviors and achieve results that facilitate meeting organizational objectives. If effective teaming with strategic partners has a key organizational value, the strategic management system should hold employees accountable for effective collaboration. During the strategic planning process, public managers should review and discuss these strategic objectives with employees.
During the strategic planning process, behavioral expectations should have been set. In addition to providing regular feedback, periodic feedback about day-to-day accomplishments and contributions is also quite valuable. Unfortunately, this does not happen to the extent in most public organizations that it should be in such organizations. Most employees have to be skilled enough in providing effective feedback. In fact, they have to provide feedback frequently because they can identify how to deliver it productively in ways that will be strategically appropriate. For the feedback process to work well, experienced practitioners realized that it must be a two-way communication process. It is also a joint responsibility of public managers and employees, not just the managers. This requires training both public managers and employees about their roles and responsibilities in the feedback process.
Strategic input takes the form of asking employees and stakeholders to provide self-ratings on strategies, which are then compared with the manager’s ratings. An alternative way of collecting strategic input is to ask employees and stakeholders to prepare statements of their key results or most meritorious accomplishments at the end of the rating period. Emphasis on strategic input has a number of positive results. First, it involves employees and stakeholders in the process, enhancing ownership and acceptance. Second, it reminds public managers about the strategic direction they have delivered and how strategic objectives were achieved. Third, employee-generated strategic targets can be included in the formal process with decreasing managers’ writing requirements. Fourth, strategic input increases communication and understanding at all levels. Finally, employee participations can be retained and used as input for taking strategic decisions.
Assuming that strategic feedback has been provided on an ongoing basis, the formal review session should simply be a recap of what has occurred throughout the rating period. The review session is also a good time to plan developmental activities. Practitioners have found that competency models and performance standards help managers and employees identify and address development needs. Suppose all current strategic standards are being met. In that case, employees and managers can look to the next level of performance standards to identify requirements and developmental areas to pursue in preparation for advancement. In some organizations, strategic decisions and other administrative actions are also discussed during the review session. In other organizations, separate meetings are held to discuss administrative actions.
Starting at the top and getting the commitment of upper management is a prerequisite for successful strategy implementation. Some public organizations already have a strong participatory culture. In others, it may be necessary to educate the executive team about the critical role that strategic management in public organizations can play a vital role in ensuring an organization’s optimum effectiveness and convince them about the seriousness of their role in leading the effort. The implementation of strategic management principles in public sector organizations is correlated to New Public Management (NPM). Using the principles, it offers better public service delivery and improvement of governmental performance level. It puts emphasis on performance management and human resource management. Managerial skill, competence and leadership skill etc. are the main focus.
However, there are some considerable factors to apply in public sector. Personnel and performance management style, strategic goals and objectives, organizational policies, productivity, efficiency and effectiveness of employees, organizational structure, hierarchy, span of control, etc. are considered as visible factors. On the other hand, organizational culture, norms and ethics, employees’ perception, flexibility, level of trust, democracy and unity, risk taking behavior, superior and subordinate relationship, informal and group relationship, etc., are considered as invisible factors.
Evaluation is a process by which an organization monitors and reviews its progress with key stakeholders’ involvement. It may result in against goals and objectives; feeds learning from this back into the organization on an ongoing basis; and reports on the process results. If the strategic management system in public organizations links evaluation, the system should monitor the evaluations’ internal consistency. Agencies who received good evaluations should be receiving higher levels of compensation, more frequent promotions and other desirable outcomes more readily than those who perform less effectively.
In fact, evaluations of digitalized strategic management systems show that they are viewed positively by managers and employees, decrease workload, ensure widespread access to performance management tools and provide a standardized, structured approach to collecting and storing performance data. Digitalization can capture strategic input and documentation of accomplishments online. It can facilitate managing workflow to include public managers and employees’ actions about critical events, routing documents between managers and employees, and providing access to forms and documents. As a result, the efficiency of public organizations is enhanced through the digital process.
(Mr. Nour is Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration,Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP). Email: [email protected], [email protected])
