This study presents the first empirical test of the proposition that strategy content is a key determinant of organizational performance in the public sector. Strategy content comprises two dimensions: strategic stance (the extent to which an organization is a prospector, defender, or reactor) and strategic actions (the relative emphasis on changes in markets, services, revenues, external relationships, and internal characteristics). Data were drawn from a multiple‐informant survey of 119 English local authorities. Measures of strategy content are included in a multivariate model of interauthority variations in performance. The statistical results show that strategy content matters. Organizational performance is positively associated with a prospector stance and negatively with a reactor stance. Furthermore, local authorities that seek new markets for their services are more likely to perform well. These results suggest that measures of strategy content must be included in valid theoretical and empirical models of organizational performance in the public sector.

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Organization theorists suggest that the social capital within organizations is a potentially powerful resource for improving organizational performance. In addition, organizational structures may strengthen or weaken the effects of social capital, by furnishing greater or fewer opportunities for its growth. This article explores the independent and combined effects of organizational social capital and structure on the performance of over 100 organizations between 2002 and 2005, using panel data. The statistical results suggest that cognitive and relational dimensions of social capital are positively related to performance, but that the structural dimension of social capital is unrelated to service outcomes. Further analysis revealed that organizational structure has complex and contradictory effects on the impact of each dimension of social capital.

In this article, we examine the role that formal strategic planning plays in determining the success of strategy implementation in a set of more than 150 public service organizations from Canada. We also analyse the mediating effects of managerial involvement in strategic planning and the moderating effects of stakeholder uncertainty on the planning-implementation relationship. A structured online questionnaire was used to collect the data. Our findings suggest that formal strategic planning has a strong positive relationship with implementation, which, though mediated by managerial involvement, becomes even more salient in the face of stakeholder uncertainty. Several implications of these findings are discussed.

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