Strategic Management and Performance Management in Government Agencies
This thesis is based on explorative empirical research on the use of strategic management and performance management in central-administrative governmental agencies in Norway. Employing document analysis, the whole population of 61 central administrative agencies in Norway (the year 2017) – including directorates, inspectorates and oversight bodies, was examined. These are organizationally independent units but are exposed to politically based ministerial governance, including performance budgeting and performance management. Strategic management and performance management are therefore not inherently integrated processes in Norwegian government agencies. Key questions were how performance management interacts with strategic management in governmental agencies, do ministries’ various use of performance management affect whether agencies develop strategies or how they design their strategy, and are (long term) strategies dormant documents or actively used as steering instruments in agencies alongside (short term) performance management? Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered from our source documents. Poister et al.’s (2010) strategic management framework was used as an integrative perspective. The relationship between agency and parent ministry was interpreted as defining important contextual determinants described by Ferlie and Ongaro (2015). Strategies were analysed with various approaches such as strategic stance (Boyne and Walker 2004) and institutional “administrative values” and vision (Bozeman 2007, Hood 1991). The quantitative data were analysed with Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) (Hair et al. 2017). Key findings: In a supposedly low-NPM affected tier of government, two-thirds of agencies had agency-wide strategies. Strategic management seems to have a stronger identity forming function, while performance management dominates aim-setting in agencies. Depending on variables like size, organisation structure, policy area and ministry-affiliation, the interaction between performance management and strategic management showed non-linear variations suggesting they function as separate, but interconnected steering-instruments in government agencies in Norway.
Publisert i 2019
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