CPFM Module I
Strategic Management in the Public Sector cheat sheet
Every chapter's key points, formulas and definitions on one page, for the last week before the exam. Each heading links to the chapter that explains it.
Introduction to strategic management
- Strategy is the long-term direction and scope of an organisation, aimed at achieving advantage through its configuration of resources within a changing environment, to fulfil stakeholder expectations.
- Strategic management is the ongoing process of analysis, formulation, implementation and control that keeps a strategy aligned with the organisation's environment and objectives.
- Strategy can be read through three lenses: as design (deliberate, top-down planning), as experience (built on what has worked before) and as ideas (emerging from experimentation across the organisation); a strategist gains from applying more than one.
- Private-sector strategy is driven by profit and competition and measured by revenue and market share; public-sector strategy is driven by public value and mandate and judged on service delivery, equity and legal compliance.
- Kenya's public sector runs at national and county level under the 2010 Constitution's devolution settlement, alongside state corporations, so strategy must respect the division of functions and political and public accountability.
Key terms
- Strategy
- A long-term direction and scope for an organisation, aimed at achieving advantage through its configuration of resources within a changing environment, to fulfil stakeholder expectations.
- Strategic management
- The ongoing process of analysis, formulation, implementation and control, each taken up in its own chapter below, that keeps an organisation's strategy aligned with its environment and objectives.
- Design (rational planning) approach
- Strategy as a deliberate, top-down analytical process leading to a formal plan.
- Experience-based approach
- Strategy evolving incrementally from managers' accumulated experience and judgement.
- Ideas-based (emergent) approach
- Strategy emerging from innovation and experimentation across the organisation, not only from the top.
- Private sector
- Driven primarily by profit and market competition, with relatively clear performance metrics (revenue, market share).
- Public sector
- Driven by public value and mandate, accountable to citizens and political oversight rather than shareholders, and judged against service delivery, equity and legal compliance rather than profit.
The rest of the sheet covers
- Strategic analysis
- Strategy formulation
- Strategic choice
- Strategy implementation and execution
- Strategy control
- Strategy documents
- Exam technique and revision
- Glossary