STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS: STUDIES OF PUBLIC POLICY MAKING AND ADMINISTRATION IN OHIO

Since Wilson, a recurrent problem for students of Public Administration has concerned the proper relationship between politics and administration. One of the earliest views of this relationship is expressed in the politics-administration dichotomy, which separates policy formation from policy implementation. Although present day Public Administration is said to have largely abandoned the politics-administration dichotomy, this conceptualization has continued to define the terms of dialogue about public organizations and has left an orthodox culture of Public Administration that frames our concept of appropriate and effective public management. This dissertation took as its point of departure an interest in describing the relationship between policy making and administration found in empirical investigations of public organizations and in developing a strategic management approach to specifying this relationship.;These field studies suggest that public organizations are suitable focal units for the study of policy development and administration, and that the strategic management approach provides a useful framework for describing and explaining purposeful choice and action taking in public organizations. Additionally, this research has identified the significant internal (organizational) and external (political, economic, and legal) factors which seem to produce specific patterns of strategy. Identification of these contingencies are important for the elaboration of public organization theory and for the improvement of public management practice.;The research reported in the dissertation is based on studies of the strategic choice and action taking in public organizations. As noted above, it took as its principal objective the development of a framework for characterizing and explaining the strategic behavior of public organizations. This exercise in classification and theory construction was based on intensive field studies of four state government agencies in Ohio.