Coherence and balance in strategies for the management of public services

Recent ‘models’ of public management see strategy as providing a broad direction, or framework, within which learning and responsiveness are encouraged. Strategic direction is deliberately designed and yet is expected to emerge through the ‘routine’ decision‐making activity of managers at all levels in the organization. In this article, an approach to managing strategy development, review and renewal in public service organizations is proposed, and methods for testing it are described. The work was developed and tested over three years with the Director General of the Prison Service of England and Wales and with senior managers responsible for developing strategy in other public service organizations.