This article focuses on the use of strategic planning and management processes in municipal governments with populations over 25,000. Strategic planning has been used in municipalities for 20 years now, but little is known about how it is used and the results obtained. In particular, we explore whether municipal governments tie other components of the overall strategic management process to their strategic plans. Findings do not show a dramatic expansion in the use of strategic planning, but there is some evidence of growing sophistication, as demonstrated by links to other management and decision-making activities. Managers were enthusiastic about their experiences with strategic planning and largely satisfied with their achievement of goals and objectives. Overall, we find a raising of the bar as far as strategic planning is concerned, but the use of comprehensive strategic management is only beginning to develop in a small number of leading-edge municipalities.Strategic planning was introduced into the public sector 20 years ago, with much of the early literature focusing on local government applications (Dodge and Eadie 1982;Eadie 1983;Sorkin, Ferris, and Hudak 1984;Denhardt 1985). Over the past two decades, academics and practicing professionals have shown a sustained interest in strategic planning, and it has become a centerpiece of orthodox public management. Indeed, a recent study of the public management literature from a practitioner's perspective found strategic planning to be the most frequently discussed topic in at least one major public administration journal (Streib, Slotkin, and Rivera 2001). Beyond strategic planning itself, over the past several years interest has also focused on the broader process of strategic management in the public sector (Vinzant and Vinzant 1996a;Poister and Streib 1999;Zanetti and Cunningham 2000).The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 requires federal agencies to develop strategic plans and tie them to budgets and performance measures, and many states have imposed similar results-oriented requirements through legislation or executive mandates (Broom 1995;Melkers and Willoughby 1998;Aristigueta 1999). Thus, 60 percent of a sample of state agencies responding to a 1995 survey reported using some form of strategic planning (Berry and Wechsler 1995). In contrast, there is no blanket requirement for local government jurisdictions to use particular approaches to planning and management. However, a decade ago, another study found that nearly 40 percent of municipal jurisdictions with populations over 25,000 had engaged in strategic planning on a citywide basis (Poister and Streib 1994). On the other hand, a number of authors have detailed the difficulty of using strategic planning effectively in local government settings

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While it has become ubiquitous in the public sector over the past 25 years, strategic planning will need to play a more critical role in 2020 than it does at present if public managers are to anticipate and manage change adroitly and eff ectively address new issues that are likely to emerge with increasing rapidity. Th is article argues that making strategy more meaningful in the future will require transitioning from strategic planning to the broader process of strategic management, which involves managing an agency's overall strategic agenda on an ongoing rather than an episodic basis, as well as ensuring that strategies are implemented eff ectively. Complementing this move to more holistic strategic management, we need to shift the emphasis of the performance movement from a principal concern with measurement to the more encompassing process of performance management over the coming decade in order to focus more proactively on achieving strategic goals and objectives. Finally, agencies will need to link their strategic management and ongoing performance management processes more closely in a reciprocating relationship in which strategizing is aimed largely at defi ning and strengthening overall performance while performance monitoring helps to inform strategy along the way. I n 1942, John A. Vieg wrote that after a century and a half of a deliberate lack of public planning in this country, the kind of planning that had arisen out of the New Deal's approach to the Great Depression with vigorous government action was "here to stay" because it was desperately needed, and because the consequences of not planning would be too costly. Since then, planning has evolved over the second half of the twentieth century, with city planning, metropolitan planning, regional planning, advocacy planning, policy planning, program planning, and-transitioning into the twenty-fi rst centurystrategic planning all gaining prominence. Th us, planning has become fi rmly established in the American governmental system, just as Vieg predicted.In compelling fashion, many of Vieg's observations regarding the nascent fi eld of planning more than 60 years ago still ring true today. For example, the purpose of planning is to "protect and promote the public interest," and planners will endeavor to "weigh all the relevant facts" but will also "use their disciplined imagination" (Vieg 1942, 65). In addition, Vieg asserted that planning should be a continuing process, that planning is synthesis more than analysis, and, above all, that "planning should be pointed toward action" (67-68). Th ese characterizations are particularly relevant to strategic planning, as is Vieg's emphasis on the importance, and the diffi culty, of developing consensus around the values on which planning is predicated.Th is article looks at the midterm future of strategic planning in the public sector from a managerial perspective over the next decade to the year 2020. After briefl y reviewing the current status of strategic planning in public agencies, it focuses on three...

Although there is considerable literature on strategic planning and management in the public sector, there has been little effort to synthesize what has been learned concerning the extent to which these tools are used in government, how they are implemented, and the results they generate. In this article, the authors review the research on strategic planning and management in the public sector to understand what has been learned to date and what gaps in knowledge remain. In examining the 34 research articles in this area published in the major public administration journals over the past 20 years, the authors find substantial empirical testing of the impacts of environmental and institutional/organizational determinants on strategic management, but efforts to assess linkages between strategic planning processes and organizational outcomes or performance improvements are sparse. Large- N quantitative analyses and comparative case studies could improve the knowledge base in this critical area.

Although performance management processes are widely assumed to be beneficial in improving organizational performance in the public sector, there is insufficient empirical evidence to back this claim. In this article, the authors examine the impact of performance management practices on organizational effectiveness in a particular segment of the public transit industry in the United States. The analysis utilizes original survey data on performance management practices comprising both strategy formulation and performance measurement in 88 small and medium‐sized local transit agencies in conjunction with comparative outcome data drawn from the National Transit Database maintained by the Federal Transit Administration. The results provide evidence that more extensive use of performance management practices does in fact contribute to increased effectiveness in this segment of the transit industry.