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Citation for final published version:
Elbanna, Said, Andrews, Rhys William and Pollanen, Raili 2016. Strategic planning and
implementation success in public service organizations: evidence from Canada. Public Management
Review 18 (7) , 1017 -1042. 10.1080/14719037.2015.1051576 file
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Public Management Review
For Peer Review Only
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In this paper, we examine the role that formal strategic planning plays in determining the success
of strategy implementation in a set of more than 150 public service organizations from Canada.
We also analyze the mediating effects of managerial involvement in strategic planning and the
moderating effects of stakeholder uncertainty on the planning"implementation relationship. A
structured online questionnaire was used to collect data. Our findings suggest that formal
strategic planning has a strong positive relationship with implementation, which, though
mediated by managerial involvement, becomes even more salient in the face of stakeholder
uncertainty. Several implications of these findings are discussed.
Key words: Strategic planning; strategy implementation; implementation success; managerial
involvement; public service organizations: Canada
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Strategy implementation is “the realization of strategy and what the firm does” (Håkonsson et al.,
2012: 182). The successful implementation of strategic decisions is widely thought to be critical
to the achievement of organizational aims and objectives (Elbanna, Thanos and Colak, 2014;
Schweiger and Sandberg, 1991). This applies as much to public sector organizations as to those
in the private sector. Only when the plans of the top management team are executed properly and
in full, it is possible to attribute organizational outcomes to the decisions made by management
and to feel some confidence that public organizations are masters of their own destiny (Elbanna
and Child, 2007); at least within the limits posed by the democratically mandated “authorizing
environment” in which they operate (Moore, 1995). Nevertheless, despite widespread
recognition of the critical role that strategy implementation success plays in determining
organizational achievements amongst public management theorists (Bryson, 2010; Poister,
2010), there remain few studies that actually examine the antecedents of successful strategy
implementation in public service organizations (for reviews of the state of art see Bryson, Berry
and Yang, 2010; Poister, Pitts and Hamilton, 2010). In fact, the literature on strategy
implementation generally remains fragmented and dispersed throughout the general and
specialized management literatures, with little systematic investigation of any of the major
themes relating to implementation success (Bossidy and Charan, 2011; Elbanna, Thanos and
Colak, 2014; Noble, 1999). In this paper, we seek to cast light on a critical issue running through
scholarly debates about strategic management in the public sector and the implementation of key
decisions: the role that formal strategic planning can play in determining strategy implementation
success.
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Strategic planning is a set of concepts, procedures and tools that organizations use when
determining their overall strategic direction and the resources required to achieve strategic
objectives (Bryson, 2011). Although aspects of strategic planning are common to all types of
organizations, the application of planning processes needs to be carefully tailored to the public
sector environment when applied by public service organizations (Bryson, 2011). In particular,
public managers have to build"in the perspectives and needs of those stakeholders with whom
they must co"operate and collaborate in order to achieve organizational goals (Bryson, Crosby
and Bryson, 2009). Not only is the formal strategic planning undertaken by public service
organizations an important indicator of top management’s commitment to developing and
implementing coherent and comprehensive organizational strategies (Boyne, 2010), it is also a
key means for promoting inclusive public management in a democratic society (Bryson et al,
2009). The more time and effort that is devoted to analyzing the internal and external
environment, and developing and evaluating strategic options, the more managers may feel
confident that the outcome of that process will be a positive one (Camillus, 1975; Capon, Farley
and Hulbert, 1987). As such, the basic assumption underpinning the practice of strategic
planning is that it is rational to invest resources in formulating good plans because this will
vastly improve the prospects of implementation success (Mintzberg, 2000).
Despite the popularity of the idea that planning matters for implementation, there have
been few empirical studies of the connection between planning and implementation in public
service organizations using primary and secondary data on those organizations (Bryson, Berry
and Yang, 2010; Poister, Pitts and Hamilton, 2010). Moreover, little attention has been devoted
to the boundary conditions of the relationship between formal strategic planning and strategy
implementation success. In particular, the active participation of managers in the strategic
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