How Far Can the Public Organizations Be Strategically Managed? Strategy as a Term, Strategic Planning/Management and its Compatibility-Conflict in the Public Sector

Strategic management as a private sector model displays certain incompati-bilities with the structural and procedural characteristics of the public sector as well as with the political context. strategic management relies heavily on efficiency, effective-ness and flexibility to achieve competitive advantage and this notion portrays con-flicts/disparities with the characteristics of public sector/policy. in this respect, there exists a need for an approach that is unique/specific to public organizations through the analyses of various concepts and models of strategy based on its formulation (deliber-ate vs. emergent) and different themes (plan, pattern, position, perspective, ploy). such an approach should accommodate both emergent and deliberate formulation (the bal- ance between stability-change), should also reflect patterns and a shared perspective which all are to be public good-oriented. in fact, however, such an approach would not go beyond a strategic planning effort that consists of abstract strategic goals and mostly lacks gap analysis, interim objectives, and quantifiable measures (excluding budgeting) due to the nature of public services.