Strategic Management in Public Services Organisations: Concepts, Schools, and Contemporary Issues

Strategic Management and Public Service Organizations sets out to connect two traditionally disparate academic literatures: those on strategic management and on public management reforming. This is an important gap which is filled by this strongly research-connected text. The authors argue that the strategic management field is of increasing importance to public managers internationally, given continuing and important reforms in the public sector. This initial observation has important consequences for the requisite work practices, skills and knowledge bases of current public managers, as they will be increasingly asked to act as strategic as well as operational managers. The book critically discusses long run public management reform processes including the New Public Management reform wave but also further and relevant non- or post-NPM reform processes and how they increase the ‘strategic space’ in which decentralised public sector organisations that influence policy or deliver key services now operate.