Strategic Management in Public Services Organizations Concepts, Schools and Contemporary Issues

Strategic Management in Public Services Organizations sets out to connect the two traditionally disparate academic literatures of public management and strategic management. The authors argue that some models of strategic management are now of enhanced relevance for contemporary public services organizations, especially when considering successive New Public Management reforms. This observation has important consequences for the requisite work practices, skills and knowledge bases of current public managers, as they are increasingly being asked to act as strategic as well as operational managers.

Strategic Management in Public Services Organizations takes a strongly comparative and international perspective in addressing the fundamental issue of strategic management within diverse public administrative traditions. The impact of strategic management on the performance of public agencies is examined and it is argued that the appropriate use of strategic management models depends on the politico-administrative and cultural contexts of the public services organization in question, concluding that there is no single best way to strategically lead public organisations.

This is an advanced textbook aimed at the postgraduate level, particularly students on MPAs and MBAs with a public sector option or MScs in Public Policy and Public Management.

1.Introduction: Our Core Argument and Overview  2.Schools of Strategic Management and their Implications for Contemporary Public Services Organizations  Part I: From Structure to Culture  3.Further Proliferation of Schools of Strategic Management  Part II: The 1980s Onwards  4.Strategy as Process: A Review and Prospective Agenda  5.Strategy Making and Governance in The Third Sector  6.Framing the context: Managing strategically public services organisations in different politico-administrative ‘houses’  7.Strategy and Performance  8.Strategic management, the quest for excellence, and the ‘best practices’ research in public management  9.Conclusion: Strategic management in the public sector as both ‘science’ and ‘art and profession’

Ewan Ferlie is Professor of Public Services Management at King’s College London, UK. He is also Hon Chair of the Society of Studies for Organizing in Health Care, a Learned Society. He has published widely in the field of public management change and reorganizing

Edoardo Ongaro is Professor of International Public Services Management at Northumbria University, UK. He is President of the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA) and editor of Public Policy and Administration since January 2015. He has published extensively in the field of comparative public management.