STRATEGIC PLANNING AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM: THE CASE OF ROMANIA

• Published in: Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences Vol. 11; no. SI; pp. 30 - 44
• Main Authors: Hinjea, Calin Emilian, Profiroiu, Constantin Marius, Jiclau, Tudor Cristian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universitatea Babes-Bolyai 01.12.2015; Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
• Subjects: Analysis; Local government; Political aspects; Public sector; Strategic planning (Business); strategic planning, new public management, neo-weberian state, new public governance, public management reform; Surveys
• ISSN: 1842-2845

Strategic planning is an excellent tool that local governments can (and should) use in order to deal efficiently with change, which means that planning is an important aspect of public sector reform, arguably one of the defining elements of the public policy landscape for the past three decades (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). Our main objective with this research is twofold: to analyze why and how local public administration uses strategic planning as a managerial tool for managing change (reform), and to identify whether the planning efforts display a specific reform pattern. We employed a quantitative methodology --online survey--to collect data on the strategic planning process at the local level in Romania, with a specific framework for the strategic profile (Hinjea, 2015) and another three dimension model--NPM, NWS, NPG (1)--for the reform component (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). Our analysis indicates that over 70% of strategic planning efforts are done because it is a mandatory condition for accessing EU funds. Major issues concern implementation, monitoring and evaluation with only around a third of organizations having a formal body responsible for this. Although the process has mixed characteristics, NWS type elements are more common/preferred, while NPM seem least common/preferred by local authorities. Keywords: strategic planning, New Public Management, Neo-Weberian State, New Public Governance, public management reform.