Strategic planning in turbulent times: Still useful?

Abstract

A common criticism of strategic planning is that it is of little use when the environment is turbulent and the future is unpredictable. The last decade has witnessed great environmental turbulence and uncertainty in many conditions that are important for public policy and administration. This study analyses survey data from 144 public sector organisations in Norway in 2020 on how strategic planning has been designed and used over the past four years and how managers perceived the usefulness of the strategic planning. Most of the central as well as local government organizations prepared strategic plans in addition to mandatory plans and the managers perceived the net benefit of the strategic planning as positive, even under the turbulent environments of the recent years. A multivariate regression analysis showed that a prospector adaptation, stakeholder participation, use of management tools, and ease of use of the strategic planning process had the greatest positive correlation with the perceived usefulness of strategic planning.