Analyzing Strategic Management in Australia's Public Sector Firms

This essay analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of strategic management in the public sector, with a specific focus on its application in Australia. It defines strategic management as continuous planning, analysis, and monitoring to meet organizational goals, drawing parallels with military strategy. The advantages include identifying strategic directions, defining realistic goals aligned with the company's vision, and benchmarking against private-sector competitors. It also highlights the use of strategic management for business longevity, increased market share, profitability, and problem prevention. Examples like the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Bank of Western Australia Limited illustrate these points. However, the essay also addresses criticisms, such as oversimplification in strategic planning (e.g., SWOT analysis inadequacies), rigidity in rapidly changing environments, accountability issues, and difficulties in setting objectives due to scarce resources and conflicting stakeholder interests. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia's failed implementation is cited as an example. The essay concludes that the disadvantages of strategic management in the public sector may outweigh the advantages, emphasizing the need for careful consideration of internal and external factors and financial resources. Desklib provides access to similar assignments and study resources for students.

Running head: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Strategic Management
Name of the Student
Name if the University
Author note

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The essayhelps in analyzing the different kinds of advantages and disadvantages of
strategic management in the public sector. Proper illustrations are required to be provided in
order to understand the different applications of the strategic management on the public sector of
Australia. Strategic Management is the continuous planning, analysis along with monitoring the
different kinds of necessities in the organization which will be helpful in meeting the different
goals and objectives.
Strategy is being defined from the military which refers to the objective of winning the
war and applying different tactics which helps in managing the opponents in the war. There are
various kinds of strategies which are being used in various fields in an effective manner such as
strategy management is different in private sector and public sector as well. It has been seen that
the strategic management concept is very much popular in the private sector wherein the main
purpose is to analyze the different kinds of strategies which will be helpful for the future
implementation (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). Moreover, this has been noticed that there are
different kinds of advantages and disadvantages of the strategic management in the entire public
sector which is inclusive of the following:
Advantages
To begin with, firstly, strategic management helps in identification of the different kinds
of strategic directions which helps the public sector organizations in defining the goals and
mission of the organization. The major purpose of the strategic management is to define the
realistic kind of goals which will be in line to vision of the company effectively.
For instance- With the implementation of strategic management, the company tried to
benchmark themselves with the other competitors in the market especially the private sector
companies as this kind of metrics help in targeting the top competitor in the industry and gain
more knowledge on their approaches to succeed. Commonwealth Bank of Australia tried to
incorporate the strategic management practices in the different activities which are being
performed by them. Furthermore, this helped them in gaining knowledge on goals and mission of
the company which is required to be changed for the betterment of the organization (Armstrong
&Taylor, 2014).
Secondly, this has been seen that strategy has become used in an increasingly in the entire
public sector. With the implementation of the Bryson Model of Strategic Planning in public
sector, this has been noticed that this model helps in initiating and agreeing on the strategic
planning process and identifying the mandates of the organizational goals.
With the implementation of strategic management, this helps in longevity of the business
as without the business longevity, this will affect the entire growth of the business in an
ineffective manner (Höglund et al., 2018).
For instance-Bank of Western Australia Limited is one of the major public sector banks
which is situated in Australia has done proper planning with implementation of different
strategies in order to become more popular in the different kinds of approaches. Furthermore, the
bank tried to implement different kinds of strategies wherein the organizational goals were
achieved by the company in an effective manner.
With the implementation of the strategic management in public sector, this has increased
the share in the market along with the profitability in an efficient manner. With the

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implementation of the strategic management, this will help in increasing the market share and
this helps the companies in the public sector to target different customers which will help in
better sales and marketing approaches (Sabri, Danapalasingam &Rahmat, 2016).
Lastly, the implementation of the strategic management, this helps in gaining both
financial and non-financial benefits of the company. With the implementation of the same, this
helps in prevention of the problem along with different skills relating to problem solving
(Poister, Pitts & Hamilton Edwards, 2010).
Disadvantages
On the other hand, there are different kinds of criticisms which are being faced by the
public sector in analyzing and implementing the strategic management tools. Firstly, the main
issue is the focus as this is one of the major problems in the public sector (Hill, Jones&Schilling,
2014).
Furthermore, the strategic planning becomes over simplistic as the process of SWOT is
problematic in various kinds of situations in the organizations. Moreover, in the public sector,
the different kinds of inadequacies as found in the SWOT analysis could be major issue upon the
different politicians who are opposing in nature (Lasserre, 2017).
The formal strategic planning process is too rigid and slow moving in nature in the
rapidly changing environment and this is affecting the overall productivity of the environment as
well. There are few cases wherein this has been noticed that the entire cycle is not effective and
this affects the overall effectiveness of the public sector as well.
Furthermore, the other disadvantage which is being faced by the public sector due to the
implementation of the strategic management is that the issue of accountability. The perennial
issue of accountability may conflict with the strategic management (Morden, 2016).
For instance- Commonwealth Bank of Australia failed in implementation of strategic
management in their company wherein this was seen and analyzed that the entire process was
time consuming and this affected the overall effectiveness of the firm. The public sector
company faced with different kinds of difficulties as the change in mission along with different
practices of the company which is made of rulemaking bodies which affects the flexibility of the
organization and the political interference in the public sector organizations is more in
comparison to the private sector banks.
Furthermore, with implementation of strategic management, this would be difficult for
the public sector companies in setting the different kinds of objectives. According to
Rothaermel (2015), this has been seen that there are various kinds of issues which are being
faced by the public sector company’s strategy in which the main issue is related to the scarce
resources along with interest of the client and constituent are different from one another as well.
To conclude with, this has been seen that the disadvantages are more in comparison to the
advantages of strategic management in the public sector organizations. Moreover, a proper check
is required to be provided on internal and external factors which affect the industry. The
checking of the different financial resources is required in order to analyze the different kinds of
aspects which will make implementation easy and quick.

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References
Armstrong, M. &Taylor, S., (2014). Armstrong's handbook of human resource management
practice. Kogan Page Publishers.
Hill, C.W., Jones, G.R.& Schilling, M.A., (2014). Strategic management: theory: an integrated
approach. Cengage Learning.
Höglund, L., Holmgren Caicedo, M., Mårtensson, M. & Svärdsten, F., (2018). Strategic
Management in the Public Sector: How Tools Enable and Constrain Strategy
Making. International Public Management Journal, pp.1-28.
Poister, T.H., Pitts, D.W. & Hamilton Edwards, L., (2010). Strategic management
research in the public sector: A review, synthesis, and future directions. The American
Review of Public Administration, 40(5), pp.522-545.
Lasserre, P., (2017). Global strategic management. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Morden, T., (2016). Principles of strategic management. Routledge.
Rothaermel, F.T., (2015). Strategic management. McGraw-Hill Education.
Sabri, M.F.M., Danapalasingam, K.A. & Rahmat, M.F., (2016). A review on hybrid electric
vehicles architecture and energy management strategies. Renewable and Sustainable
Energy Reviews, 53, pp.1433-1442.