Abstract:
For over two decades now the market-based, managerialist paradigm of public sector
governance has emphasised the importance of adopting rational and prescriptive
managerial techniques of private sector origin. Greater efficiency, especially, has
become a driving organisational objective of public sector performance. To sustain
such organisational achievement, supposedly, requires commitment from staff at all
levels of the organisation. Thus, managerial techniques, which support organisational
pluralism and facilitate full participation, and, in the process. the strengthening of
human resource (HR) strategies and employment relations (ER), have been supported
by governments through policy and legislative requirements.
The introduction of formal management and leadership systems, such as senior
executive services, have teinlotced this approach. Instrumental to the whole process of
change has been a reinstatement of the older managerialist technique of stretegic
plsnning (SP) as a pivotal organisational activity directed towards enhanced public
sector performance. While such planning may be motivated by direct strategic
management (SM) practice, wider influences, particularly those that come from the
quality management and service, learning organisations and transformational
leadership literatures, have been promoted in this regard, especially in individual
performance management systems.
This article examines the value ofSM practice, especially SP, in the public sector as a
rational and instrumental approach towards greater organisational efficiency and
enhanced ER. First, it considers some of the literature that proposes how SM action
through employee participation may contribute to organisational performance.
Second, it uses empirical investigation conducted in the public sectors of Ontario.
Canada and New South Wales Australia during the 1990s to consider these issues.
Finally, it speculates about the practical value of SM practice as a tool, which,
purportedly. facilitates improved ER.
