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The Influence of Technology on the Strategic Planning Process

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DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-3473-1.ch057

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798 Section 5: Business Policy, Ethics, and Law

The Influence of Technology on

the Strategic Planning Process

Martin K. Mayer
The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, USA

Michael L. Martin
Town of Cary (NC) Fire Department, USA

INTRODUCTION

The concept of strategic planning came to prominence in the 1980s under the banner of New Public
Management; since, several of the private sector components of strategic planning have been applied
and interpreted within the public sector. While many of the concepts were not new, the application to the
public sector was. The rise and general acceptance of public sector strategic planning also coincided with
the digital revolution beginning in the late 1980s, offering enormous promise, but also an equal number
of potential pitfalls. As the digital era became increasingly sophisticated, new possibilities emerged for
governance and strategic planning.
The rise of the internet in the mid-1990s changed public sector planning from an almost exclusively
hierarchical entity, into a series of interconnected networks. Hierarchical authority was still prevalent,
but gradually the lines of authority, and in turn accountability, had been increasingly blurred amongst a
growing number of actors. The further technological innovations have had major implications on govern-
ment and governance structures, and the strategic planning process is critical in promoting innovation,
growth, and effectiveness (Arend, Zhao, Song, & Im, 2017).
This entry explores the development of public-sector strategic planning, specifically the impact of
technology and how strategic planning has grown throughout the digital era; along with potential oppor-
tunities and challenges moving forward as technology and organizational dynamics continue to evolve.

BACKGROUND

What is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is more than just another concept taken from the private sector to increase public
sector efficiency (Hendrick, 2003). Strategic planning is a “deliberative approach and set of concepts,
procedures, and tools that can help leaders to enhance the achievements of their organization” (Bryson,
2011, p. xiv). Strategic planning has become widespread throughout all levels of government in the
United States over the last 25 years, and the growth of technology has only helped to stimulate it even
further (Berry & Wechsler, 1995; Bryson, 2010; Bryson, Berry, & Yang, 2010; Bryson, Crosby, &
Bryson, 2009; Hendrick, 2003; Poister, 2010; Poister, Pitts, & Edwards, 2010; Poister & Streib, 2005).
The importance of technology to organizations to inform both research and practice has long been
realized; however, there has been little widespread agreement over how to best utilize and measure the

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-3473-1.ch057

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 Section 5: Business Policy, Ethics, and Law

impacts of technology on organizations (Orlikowski, 1992). Orlikowski and Barley (2001) suggest that
to understand the ongoing innovations taking place in government it is imperative to understand both 5
the technological advances and the institutional structures.
How to understand and best leverage the changing nature of technology is a question that will come
up repeatedly throughout this review. In addition to the role of and questions over technology, debate
exists over what makes up strategic planning and ultimately how encompassing it should be. Bryson
(2011) explains it as the overarching, umbrella concept under which strategic thinking, acting, learning,
and deliberation fall. These activities make up the most important components of strategic planning
(Bryson, 2011) and collectively these activities provide an organized process for gathering information on
a large scale and using it to determine a long-term direction (Poister & Streib, 2005). Strategic planning
is a short-term planning strategy necessary to help ensure long-term success (Poister & Streib, 2005).
It is a management tool that takes inventory of organizations’ strengths and weaknesses, as well as op-
portunities and threats and how best to take advantage of the positives while mitigating the negatives
(Denhardt, 1985; Kissler, Fore, Jacobson, Kittredge, & Stewart, 1998). Strategic planning is ultimately
a way to meet the needs of the citizenry through improved performance and better service (Boyne &
Walker, 2010). As government at all levels has moved away from traditional hierarchical structures
toward more responsive networked agencies, strategic planning has become an increasingly used tool
for governance (Berry, 1994) in an effort to enhance digital connectivity and socio-economic progress
(Alam, Erdiaw-Kwasie, Shahiduzzaman, & Ryan, 2018).
Contrary to the widespread public sector support, there have been numerous criticisms attached to
strategic planning. For one, strategic planning is not a panacea; strategic planning is not guaranteed to
improve performance, and the point is not to create rigid channels and structures that trigger specific
repeatable responses (Bryson, 2011). The inherent flexibility that characterizes strategic planning, and
the efforts of strategic planning to produce real change often turns into one of critics most frequent
complaints; strategic planning is hard to define, even harder to measure, and perhaps most difficult to
determine who it is responsive to (Bryson, Crosby, & Bryson, 2009; Bryson & Roering, 1989; Kissler,
Fore, Jacobson, Kittredge, & Stewart, 1998; Mansor & Tayib, 2012). The lack of a clear definition can
be attributed to the changing nature of policy and the needs of the community; new issues emerge, out-
comes are difficult to discern, significance is unclear, and goals fluctuate. Nonetheless, strategic planning
is a tool that provides a certain level of assurance and preparedness to public sector officials (Kissler,
Fore, Jacobson, Kittredge, & Stewart, 1998). Many critics highlight these concerns and continue to treat
strategic planning as a fixed object instead of a system comprised of many interacting and changeable
parts (Bryson, Crosby, & Bryson, 2009).
In taking this approach it is easy to overlook the progress and evolution of the strategic planning
process. Strategic planning is generally accepted to include, “clarifying mission and values, develop-
ing a vision of the future, analyzing external challenges and opportunities, assessing internal strengths
and weaknesses, developing strategic goals and objectives, identifying strategic issues, developing and
evaluating alternative strategies, and developing action plans” (Poister & Streib, 2005, p. 46). What ends
up mattering the most “is the degree to which it (strategic planning) focuses the organization on what is
important, orients the organization to identification of strategic issues, and develops the internal process
where strategies and priorities are established” (Abels, 1989, p. 294).

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The Early History of Strategic Planning

Strategic planning as a management tool is a relatively recent phenomenon, proliferating in the private
sector during the early part of the twentieth century and not appearing with regularity in the public sector
until Luther Gulick contributed POSDCORB to the Brownlow Commission in the late 1930s. It was not
until the late 1950s and early 1960s that strategic planning truly began to gain traction (Bryson, 2010).
Many attribute the growth to the programs instituted during the Kennedy administration by Defense
Secretary Robert McNamara (Young, 2003). The goal was to increase department efficiency through
planning, while still addressing long-term agency needs (Young, 2003). Vietnam notwithstanding,
McNamara’s effort to implement strategic planning was generally successful and did not go unnoticed.
Multiple states and municipalities began to pick up on and utilize the planning and efficiency principles
adopted by McNamara in the Department of Defense (Borins, 2010; Young, 2003). These efforts have
led some to refer to Defense Secretary McNamara as the “godfather” of public sector strategic planning
(Borins, 2010).

Strategic Planning in the Public Sector

While strategic planning began to come to prominence in the 1960s within the federal government,
its prevalence across the country was still quite small. It was not until the early 1980s through a series
of economic, political, and societal events leading to significant governmental reform, that strategic
planning began to be utilized frequently throughout multiple levels of government (Berry & Wechsler,
1995; Bryson & Roering, 1988; Denhardt, 1985; Hendrick, 2003). The Reagan-era market reforms that
ushered in what came to be known as New Public Management turned out to be a major catalyst for the
rise in public sector strategic planning due to their emphasis on greater efficiency through market-like
reforms. Prior to this point, much of the planning taking place was done through capital budgeting and
comprehensive city planning, which as Bryson (2010) points out was far from comprehensive. The
Reagan-era reforms coupled with increasing attention brought by multiple authors in the early 1980s
about how private sector planning could be applied within the public sector helped to spur a new era of
truly comprehensive municipal government planning (Bryson, 2010). Strategic planning became “the”
new innovative strategy in public management, “promising public agencies the benefits of a rational
and highly structured, future-oriented management technique borrowed from the best run private sector
companies” (Berry & Wechsler, 1995, p. 159). All the while this systematic, self-analyzing strategy was
revolutionizing public sector planning, technology lagged behind. By the early to mid-1980s computers
were available but hardly at the same price point or level of functionality that we enjoy today. For the
most part the technology remained quite like that utilized by Defense Secretary McNamara nearly two
decades prior. While greeted enthusiastically by the public sector, individuals were still voicing numer-
ous complaints about time, measurement, accountability, and actual use and value of strategic plans
(Berry & Wechsler, 1995).

The Beginning of the Digital Revolution

Strategic planning began to gain a foothold at a time of great upheaval in the public sector. As Denhardt
(1985) notes, the social and technological changes overtaking the country and the world in the late
1970s and early 1980s led to increasing turbulence and complexity for government. The diversity of the
challenges, ranging from the oil crises of the 1970s, changing demographics and values, inflation, and

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a further outsourcing and devolution of traditional government responsibilities had a profound effect
on government service delivery and both technological and organizational form and function (Bryson 5
& Roering, 1988; Orlikowski, 2000). These changes, highlighted within the New Public Management
reforms of the 1980s, further outlined the need for effective strategic planning (Bryson & Roering, 1988).
The problem seemed to become not whether strategic planning was a good idea, but how to carry
it out effectively (Bryson, Crosby, & Bryson, 2009; Bryson & Roering, 1989; Kissler, Fore, Jacobson,
Kittredge, & Stewart, 1998; Mansor & Tayib, 2012). The beginning of the digital revolution in the mid
to late 1980s, characterized by the growth of the personal computer, began to answer this question by
further altering traditional forms of government and offering multiple tools to make strategic planning
more accesible and impactful within the public sector. This massive growth in technology revolutionized
information systems, transporting it from a task primarily centered on “efficient data processing” to one
viewed as increasingly “central and critical to an organization’s growth and survival” (Venkatraman,
1985-86, p. 66). This growth in computer and communication technology and the resulting possibilities
unlocked through information systems and data collection and analysis further cemented the need for
full-on public sector strategic planning. As Venkatraman (1985-86) states this significant investment
and the “increase in resource commitment requires systematic planning approaches for ensuring that the
resources are deployed both efficiently (in the short run) and effectively (in the long run)” (p. 67). The
vast increase in information technology transformed strategic planning. With technological advances
came a number of additional challenges, namely how to incorporate and evolve information technology
from its traditional role as an “administrative support toward a more strategic role within an organiza-
tion” (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1999, p. 472).
The rapidly changing nature of government and technology in the digital age led to many reforms
crucial to the success and popularity of strategic planning, but perhaps none more so than the Government
Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) (Poister, 2010). This act, under the Clinton Administra-
tion’s National Performance Review, required all federal agencies to engage in periodic strategic planning
practices (Poister, 2010). As Berry (1994) notes there were more than 250 state agencies in nearly every
state already engaging in strategic planning activities during the 1980s. With the passage of the GPRA
this number increased exponentially not just in the required federal agencies, but in state agencies as
well. Berry and Wechsler, (1995) in a national survey of state agencies found that nearly 60 percent of
respondents were using some form of strategic planning and of those not, nearly nine percent had plans
to do so in the future. Of those polled, 47 percent began using strategic planning from 1985-1989 and an
additional 39 percent instituted programs from 1990 to the time of the polling (Berry & Wechsler, 1995).
By 1997 as required by the GRPA, all federal agencies were conducting strategic planning; however, the
nagging question of strategic alignment remained. Specifically, individuals were still questioning how
to best incorporate and make use of information and communication technology that was critical to the
effectiveness of strategic planning (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1999). At the federal level, it was very
much an unbalanced effort, as some agencies dove in headfirst and others simply scraped by meeting the
minimum requirements for compliance. This led to further mixed efforts and something of a carrot and
stick approach in which the government attempted to update regulations to provide enough incentive to
get as many agencies as possible to engage in strategic planning in a manner that would result in more
than just compliance but effective and meaningful strategic planning.

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The Growth of the Internet and Email

The growth of the internet and email has had a profound effect on how government works. Much like the
Reagan-era reforms a decade prior, the information age ushered in by an increasingly connected society
posed substantial challenges to the traditional ways of governance. The economy was reshaped by the
advent of new technology, which also led to increasing global markets, and a much more interconnected
world and marketplace (Kissler, et al., 1998). This period of innovation highlighted the role that technol-
ogy can have in reshaping society and the challenges resulting from such innovation. Bryson, Berry, and
Yang (2010) attribute these challenges to the growth of the internet, stating that it is “transforming the
nature and patterns of public service; therefore, strategic management must reflect this reality” (p. 511).
As society has become increasingly globalized and networked, much of the challenge and potential
for strategic planning and organizations lies in “information and communication technology advance-
ment” (Bryson, Berry, & Yang, 2010, p. 511). Information technology strategic alignment has evolved
from a task of managing resources to one that attempts to determine how to leverage internet based
strategic technologies to “enhance efficiency, service quality, democratic participation, and seamless e-
governance” (Yang & Melitski, 2007, p. 428). By increasing participation and communication amongst
stakeholders, organizations are increasingly likely to ensure individuals are on the same page and there
is some level of goal congruence (Ketokivi & Castaner, 2004). In order to achieve goal congruence,
“organizations have to find appropriate relationships between the ‘entrepreneurial’ problem (which
strategy to adopt), the ‘engineering’ problem (which technologies to use), and the ‘administrative’
problem (which processes and structures to select)” (Boyne & Walker, 2010, p. S188). Balancing these
problems in a way that will effectively give credence to each has become increasingly difficult in an era
of constant innovation and online technology. Borins (2010) expresses concern that using technology
to make strategic planning broad based and accessible may also open it up to further manipulation and
political manipulation. Whereas Holley, Dufner, and Reed (2004) raise the concern that by balancing out
such problems raised by Boyne and Walker (2010) through technological innovation, it could potentially
lead to what they term “islands of information” (p. 106). These “islands” are basically systems character-
ized by uncoordinated information technology and communication in which information systems fail to
communicate with each other; either there are compatibility issues, or the information systems simply
exist as redundancies (Holley, Dufner, & Reed, 2004, p. 106). This “computerization” of the planning
process has been “highly controversial” and the balancing act of using information systems effectively
and integrating them properly into the planning process has raised several additional issues for planners
(Poister, 2010, p. 247).
Representational diversity is one such problem (Borins, 2010). Borins (2010) calls the representational
issues one of “the main challenges for online strategic planning” (p. 221). At issue is how those engag-
ing in the strategic planning process, ensure there is a diverse representation of the population (Borins,
2010). Maintaining diversity comes down to ensuring that equal voice is given to all involved and that
regional demographics and population differences are accounted for (Borins, 2010).
While the challenges are many, the effective use of information and communication technology in
the strategic planning process can be highly beneficial for a given organization. Information and com-
munication technology “may be used to achieve greater government efficiency, better service quality,
and more democratic participation” (Bryson, Berry, & Yang, 2010, p. 511). Environmental assessments
(Denhardt, 1985), information retention and storage, as well as faster and easier feedback mechanisms
are just some of the many benefits of utilizing information and communication technology in strategic
planning.

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Even with the vast potential of the internet for strategic planning, many organizations had yet to ef-
fectively figure out how to harness and take advantage of such technology when it was first becoming 5
available. Many strategic plans were internal, and organization centric, prioritizing concerns of internal
efficiency over transparency, engagement, and openness (Yang & Melitski, 2007). This lag between ef-
fective incorporation of technology and the planning process is one that severely hampered the potential
of the technology for strategic planning. While the rise of the internet and email has led to greater atten-
tion given to the use of technology in the strategic planning process, the complexity and prevalence of
multiple factors including politics, conflicting goals, and conflict have severely hindered the scale and
effectiveness of public sector strategic planning (Bryson, Berry, & Yang, 2010).
While public sector strategic planning has increasingly turned to information and communication
technologies, the debate early on was centered mainly on whether the internet would be a blessing or a
curse for democracy (Barber, 2001). While great progress has been achieved, especially when compared
with a decade prior, setting long-term strategic goals and effectively estimating the potential of new
technologies has proven to be a difficult balance (Vishnevskiy, Karasev, & Meissner, 2016).

The Social Media Era

The social media revolution that has occurred over the last decade has seen the transition of the internet
from a static mechanism to a large, thoroughly integrated platform. Strategic planners who were hesitant
to embrace the internet and technology were left little choice after the success and restructuring of online
networks in the wake of the dot-com bubble bursting. The resulting innovation further pushed technol-
ogy forward by promoting greater involvement and connectedness through open-source collaboration
(O’Reilly, 2005).
With the growth of social media, starting predominantly with Facebook and Twitter, and moving into
several new and intriguing directions has afforded public administrators with multiple tools to utilize
in order to impact and ease the strategic planning process through greater transparency, participation,
and data storage and dissemination abilities (Bryson, 2011). While Facebook and Twitter were created
as social networking services for individuals to connect and share, it was not long before private-sector
entities began to leverage these networks for their business goals. As innovation in the public sector is
often slower and more deliberate than in the private sector, it has only been recently that many public
sector organizations have begun to follow private sector leads in utilizing social media technologies in
the strategic planning process. Bryson (2011) highlights the many potential benefits, but Magro (2012)
cautions that a careful and cautious approach is necessary in order to avoid the potential challenges
brought on by a fast-moving online environment.
Many government agencies have begun to employ social media in the strategic planning process.
The census bureau is just one example in which the agency employs and maintains several social media
platforms to receive feedback and communicate with individuals to help inform the planning process
on a continual basis (Desouza & Bhagwatwari, 2012). While there has been significant progress within
the federal government in employing social media for planning and transparency initiatives, the results
have been more uneven at the state and local levels (Magro, 2012).
Ultimately the marriage of strategic planning and social media through the evolution of technology
is one that shows great promise but will take time and training to best utilize new and evolving technolo-
gies in a strategic manner (Fleck & Bryson, 2011; Magro, 2012). While significant research is needed
to determine how to best align social media practices with effective strategic planning, if policy makers
are able to keep up, the potential is undeniable (Magro, 2012

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Crowdsourcing

Another opportunity for public sector planners is the rise of crowdsourcing. First referenced in print in
2006 by Jeff Howe in an article for Wired Magazine, crowdsourcing is a form of open-source collabo-
ration, where individuals bounded by support of an idea come together through several technological
channels in support of the idea. Crowdsourcing began to gain traction in the private sector with the
success of Kickstarter and Indiegogo right around the time of the Great Recession. As the community
has continued to grow, public sector involvement has increased. Many of the platforms, often pitched as
a faster and more efficient way for municipalities to deliver goods and services to constituents, change
the existing budget/funding/planning dynamics of government and allow consumers to support and fund
the programs they believe in.

SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Under the auspice of the public administration paradigm of New Public Management, the concept of
strategic management sought to provide a solution to the established tactical and operational mindset
firmly grounded within traditional bureaucratic organizations. Considered to be a product that assists
in collaborative forecasting and the creation of short- and long-term goals within the private sector,
strategic planning slowly assimilated into the public sector to promote both the establishment of orga-
nizational objectives and efficiency. Whereas the establishment of an agency mission and objectives
through strategic planning has dramatically improved the planning and operational capabilities within the
public sector, multiple challenges were faced throughout both the sectoral assimilation and acceptance
process. Although widely embraced through multiple sectors, strategic planning was never dynamically
conceptualized to integrate new methods of collaboration and facilitatory technology established after
cultural and societal changes. The current shifts in knowledge and information management within the
strategic planning process from a team-centric to a broader organizational perspective also challenges the
methodology of how technology was utilized to obtain information for strategic management activities.
Although strategic planning has developed into a universal instrument for charting the course for
public and private sector agencies over the past several decades, the dynamic organizational environment
of tomorrow presents a challenge to the current broad definition attributed to strategically planning for
an organization’s future. Sampler (2014) argued that the current concept of strategic planning is obsolete
due to the rapid rate of change, the complex networks and collaborations replacing traditional hierarchi-
cal organizations, and the adaptive work needs to press forward with less reliance on past practices and
performances. Bryson, Edwards, and Van Slyke (2018) justified the position of obsolescence, as the cur-
rent conceptualization of strategic planning involves a rigid framework based upon standard procedures
and an analysis of past performance measurements for current operations.
Strategic planning is often perceived as an act of setting the course utilizing current knowledge,
skills, and experiences. In an effort to align strategic planning with the complexities of the unknown
future, Bryson et al. (2018) posited that strategic planning should be viewed as a function that focuses
on a “temporal horizon” (p. 327) rather than concrete objectives that may have been developed utiliz-
ing limited and skewed foresight. The functional definition of strategic planning, when supplemented
by open input and discourse, may help to compensate for the human mind’s inability to engage in the
rational forecasting of unknowns.

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Bolisani and Bratinu (2017) advised that collective organizational knowledge may be used to supple-
ment the gap between the limited rationality of decision-makers and the dynamic and uncertain needs of 5
the future. Organizational collaboration through technology may facilitate the collection of knowledge
from multiple layers and employees within an organization while promoting stakeholder buy-in within
the strategic planning process (Bolisani & Bratinu, 2017). Bryson et al. (2018) advised that while current
strategic planning efforts are limited to a specific group or team, collaborative efforts to engage organi-
zational members are noted to improve the strategic planning process through the collection of varying
ideas and forecasts. In conjunction with the functional definition of strategic planning, collaborative
technology such as conferencing programs, social media, and crowdsourcing may enhance the volume
of diverse ideas to help forecast both the needs and future objectives of an organization. Although the
collaboration and communication of agency ideas may facilitate the planning process, the ideas may only
represent a specific paradigm if the collaboration efforts do not include a diverse source of information
(Pope, 2004). Collaborative technological platforms, such as social media and crowdsourcing networks,
have the potential to bring a diverse range of stakeholders to the table, facilitating a more productive
conversation, (Buehring & Liedtka, 2018), while promoting open strategic planning (OSP), grounded
in transparency, collective inclusiveness, and information technology (Amrollahi & Rowlands, 2017).

Future Research Directions

The concept of strategic planning has transitioned from a rigid, procedural act to a function of collab-
orative engagements. With this transition, collaboration has changed from face-to-face discussions to
the discourse between physically distant agents facilitated through technological advances in computers
and digital communications. As with the case of forecasting the future based upon what is both known
and unknown, modern advancements in technology present both welcomed solutions and theoretical
questions. The novel concepts of social media and crowdsourcing provide both solutions to existing
problems and a future capacity predicated only through additional research.
As the collaborative basis of strategic planning shifted from a limited team-centric involvement to
vast social and organizational networks, existing social networking technologies, such as social media,
were embraced to facilitate communication within distant and diverse populations (Hautz, 2017). The
utilization of social media as an environment for the transfer of ideas has supplemented the legacy forms
of personal communication such as telephones and text messaging (Wirtz, Daiser, & Mermann, 2018).
Social media has been widely accepted across many sectors for the purposes of strategic planning, yet
much work remains in identifying how the characteristics and efficiency of bilateral digital discourse
differ dependent upon sector, industry, and technological platform (Hautz, 2017).
In addition to social media, crowdsourcing has emerged as a positive tool to increase collaboration
amongst stakeholders working within a strategic planning function. Although research about crowdsourcing
and open strategic planning has exponentially increased over the past decade, it remains very much in its
infancy. Ghezzi, Gabelloni, Martini, and Natalicchio (2018) have begun exploring how to best leverage
the crowd and similar attributes of open strategic planning based upon the Input-Process-Output (IPO)
framework. Within this framework, Ghezzi et al. (2018) posited that future research should focus on
the structure of problems and questions presented to the potential solvers. As problems and request for
ideas may be innately complex, research is needed on how to dissect problems and requests to promote
the most efficient work of the agents of whom information is being requested (Ghezzi et al., 2018). If
the request for information or problem is not framed to reduce ambiguity, the utility of the returning
information may not be compatible with the objectives of developing the strategic plan. In conjunction

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with developing the proper framework of requests, additional research is needed on establishing the
motivational and beneficial factors of both those seeking information and those providing information
(Ghezzi et al., 2018). For crowdsourcing to yield the most productive information, it may be impera-
tive for the facilitators of the strategic planning process to understand what would motivate the greatest
number of agents to provide the maximum amount of information. Better understanding citizen engage-
ment, motivation, and encouraging organization management to embrace the diverse ideas received from
stakeholders will be critical to unlocking the wisdom of the crowd (Ghezzi et al., 2018; Jordan, Yusuf,
Mayer, & Mahar 2016). The failure to include stakeholder ideas may promulgate a lack of buy-in and a
sense of non-inclusiveness which may hamper stakeholder interest and public-sector utility.
As crowdsourcing may provide an organization with an overload of information irrelevant to the
objective of strategic planning, cost-effective and resource-sensitive measures should be developed to
adequately evaluate and sort through the information to determine the qualities of utility and validity.
Understanding how people, organizations, information, and technology interrelate is imperative to the
effective use of crowdsourcing in strategic planning (Zhao & Zhu, 2014). As the dynamics of a societal
culture may be proportional to the level of technological innovation, further research into the integration
of crowdsourcing instruments, such as wikis, social media, podcasts, and blogs, is needed to maximize
the informational return of crowdsourcing. (Zhao & Zhu, 2014).
As the definition of strategic planning is ever evolving, the collaborative efforts to retrieve informa-
tion for the planning process changes as well. Continuous research into social media and crowdsourcing
platforms is needed to keep up with societal changes as well as to adapt to the changes in technological
platforms that may be utilized to retrieve information from a vast and diverse population.

CONCLUSION

Strategic planning has grown from a military strategy to a private sector tool, and finally to a critical
public sector innovation. Much of the reason for this public sector growth has been the parallel growth of
technology and the changing nature of government over the last quarter century. At a time when public
service delivery is increasingly complex and devolved, the need for efficient and effective public sector
strategic planning is perhaps greater than it ever has been. Fortunately, the growth of strategic planning
has been met, and in many cases exceeded by the vast technological developments of recent years. These
advances provide innumerable possibilities for increasing efficiency, capacity, service quality, transpar-
ency, and participation if they are utilized correctly (Bryson, Berry, & Yang, 2010).
As Abels (1989) states, strategic planning can be invaluable to a public organization as a tool to gain
consensus and determine goals; however, in order for this to happen the organization must “be meticu-
lous in the design of the planning methodology with safeguards integrated into the process that will
ensure planning continuation during organization crises or when planning enthusiasm wanes” (p. 295).
Technology can do this. It can alter the nature of public service delivery as advances in the internet and
the use of social media have begun to show. While the literature has yet to catch up to these advances,
the potential is there for strategic planners, but in order to maximize this potential while limiting risks,
strategic planners must proceed in a deliberative and cautious manner (Magro, 2012). Technology has
and is still changing the nature of public service, and strategic planning must reflect and account for it
(Bryson, Berry, & Yang, 2010).

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ADDITIONAL READING

Abels, M. (1989). Strategic planning. Public Administration Review, 49(3), 294–295. doi:10.2307/977017
Amrollahi, A., & Rowlands, B. (2017). Collaborative open strategic planning: A method and case study.
Information Technology & People, 30(4), 832–852. doi:10.1108/ITP-12-2015-0310
Bryson, J. (2010). The future of public and nonprofit strategic planning in the United States. Public
Administration Review, 255-267.
Bryson, J., Berry, F. S., & Yang, K. (2010). The state of public strategic management research: A se-
lective literature review and set of future directions. American Review of Public Administration, 40(5),
495–521. doi:10.1177/0275074010370361
Bryson, J., Crosby, B., & Bryson, J. K. (2009). Understanding strategic planning and the formulation
and implementation of strategic plans as a way of knowing: The contributions of actor-network theory.
International Public Management Journal, 12(2), 172–207. doi:10.1080/10967490902873473
Bryson, J. M., Edwards, L. H., & Van Slyke, D. M. (2018). Getting strategic about strategic planning
research. Public Management Review, 20(3), 317–339. doi:10.1080/14719037.2017.1285111
Desouza, K., & Bhagwatwar, A. (2012). Leveraging technologies in public agencies: The case of the U.S.
Census Bureau and the 2010 census. Public Administration Review, 74(4), 605–614. doi:10.1111/j.1540-
6210.2012.02592.x
Jordan, M., Yusuf, J. E. W., Mayer, M., & Mahar, K. (2016). What citizens want to know about their
government’s finances: Closing the information gap. The Social Science Journal, 53(3), 301–308.
doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2016.04.007
Poister, T. (2010). The future of strategic planning in the public sector: Linking strategic management
and performance. Public Administration Review, 246-254.
Sampler, J. (2015). Bringing Strategy Back: How Strategic Shock Absorbers Make Planning Relevant
in a World of Constant Change. Jossey-Bass.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Collaboration: Being an active member of a group working toward a common goal.

Crowdsourcing: Using technology to engage and collect citizen input; leveraging the ‘wisdom of
the crowd’.
Networks: Increasingly digital, networks allow the sharing of resources and collaboration of stake-
holders.
New Public Management: The government paradigm that advocated running government like a
business, with emphasis on efficiency.
Social Media: Websites and applications that allow users to create and share content within a social
network.
Strategic Management: The overarching management process of determining how to achieve stra-
tegic planning goals.

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Strategic Planning: A collaborative approach to organizational planning consisting of concepts and

tools that align the present state of an organization with the future’s goals and objectives. 5

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