Strategic Planning Coursework (Coursework Sample)

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In this article, the author puts much focus on how management processes and strategic planning can be used by municipal governments with high population of about 25, 000. According to the author, municipal governments have used strategic planning for approximately 20 years. However, there is no official report of how strategic planning is used, and the results obtained from it. The author uses this rationale to study whether the municipal administrations use other components in their strategic planning and management. In the study, the author does not show how the governments use dramatic expansion in using strategic planning. However, according to the article, there is evidence that the governments have used growing sophistication, which can be shown by use of use of links to decision-making and management activities. The article says that most managers only care about achieving their objectives, which makes them enthusiastic about using strategic planning. Currently, there is an increase in how more people are using strategic planning. However, it is good to note that comprehensive strategic management has only been used municipalities groups.
In his study about strategic planning and management, Eadie found the purpose of strategic planning as to retain a desirable balance between the organization and it’s surrounding over a long period. In this article, the author cites Bryson (1995), who describes strategic planning as a disciplined effort with an objective to produce important actions and choices. These choices and actions play a very essential role in shaping and guiding the organization. The actions and choices can also be used to guide how the organization works, and the reason for the organization to do that work. Strategic planning gives an orderly process of putting together information about large images of the organization, and using them to accomplish a long-lasting direction. Thereafter, the organization can use the developed image to transform into certain aims, ideas, and activities. It combines revolutionary thinking, analysis of objectives and evaluating objectives and priorities systematically. This helps to chart long run activities that will ensure the vitality of the organization and its effectiveness in the future. The author cites Osborne and Gaebler (1992, p.234), who claim that strategic planning at best aims at invading the principles, operations and the management of a given organization. This helps them to generate a spontaneous sense of where an organization is heading. It also helps the organization sense the most important thing about its development.
It is provided that the study of strategic planning and management was designed with no any other aim than to examine the extent to which municipal governments of United States with populations of more than 25000 citizens use it to ensure that municipal managers are fully satisfied with strategic planning and management processes. The process also aims at identifying particular elements of strategic planning and management that are related to the impacts closely perceived by the municipal governments. According to the study, the outcomes of strategic planning and management reveal that for the past five years, the total number of municipalities that have involved themselves informal, citywide strategic planning and management is more than forty percent. Due to the potential of survey noncommittal bias that is inherent in the methodology employed in the article, such estimates may be inflated to a degree. The study shows that over the past decades, the data does not show any important rise in terms of the use of strategic planning by these cities.
Nevertheless, the outcomes show that in the United States, a good number of town governments, though well under a majority, have at least used or are using strategic planning. According to the author, this has been done to institute long-lasting direction, guide in decision-making and to determine priorities. High percentage among cities that engage in strategic planning also report the use of management performance. For instance, the government cities use this particularly for budgeting and measurement practices, which are aimed at implementing strategic policies effectively.
It appears to be far less common linking performance measures to strategic plans than linking performance management systems to strategic plans. Among the cities that reported strategic planning activities, only about one in five of them claim to employ a mix of approaches that would advocate the launch of comprehensive strategic management process. Engaged cities in strategic planning municipal managers’, tend to be enthusiastic about it. Almost ninety percent of these managers affirmed the benefits generated by strategic planning overweighed the cost of undertaking these efforts, and majority of them stated they are satisfied with implementation of strategic creativities and the success of strategic aims and ideas. With very few of these municipal managers citing harmful impacts, others tend to see numerous b...