Strategy Content and Performance

Public management research has long been concerned with the service public agencies provide and the way it is provided (Rainey, 2010). However, only in more recent years has attention been turned to the strategy content of public organizations (Joyce, 1999; Moore, 1995). This may have arisen because of the ‘traditional’ view that public organizations are controlled by higher levels of political authority, giving managers limited discretion to manage, or because public agencies have multiple goals, many stakeholders and decisions are rule-bounded. As such only a limited number of authors sought to develop strategy models for public organizations. For example, Stevens and McGowan (1983) examined strategy during times of fiscal austerity in US local governments, and Wechsler and Backoff (1986) sought to derive four models of strategy in four agencies in Ohio. The focus on strategy content has, however, increased over recent years (Joldersma and Winter, 2002; Joyce, 1999; Lane and Wallis, 2009). This is in part because stakeholders (including users, regulators and often higher levels of government) have become interested in and have greater expectations about the performance of public agencies.