Introduction

This introductory chapter argues that the field of strategic management, although originally developed mostly in relation to the private sector firms, has enhanced applicability to many contemporary public service organizations. The proliferation of recent models of strategic management beyond conventional industrial economics has aided this process. The book also adopts a view of strategic management which is both multi faceted and contextualised. The chapter then considers some key recent scholarly work on strategic management and why it has enhanced applicability to public services organisations (section 1.1). It also explores how high level narratives of public management reforms have created conditions facilitating strategic management in the public sector (section 1.2). We also consider whether strategic management in public organisations is ‘contingent’ on the specifics of contemporary public administration, or whether it is an approach universally applicable, meaningful and useful ‘anytime and anywhere’ (section 1.3). The concluding section outlines the later chapters (section 1.4). The appendix (Appendix 1) provides a bibliometric analysis of scholarly publications about strategic management in, respectively, the field of generic management (the business-orientated literature) and of public administration and management.