We agree to disagree: the relation between city councilors’ demographic characteristics, political role-play and strategic consensus.

New Public Management has become a dominant paradigm within the public sector. Pivotal within this movement is the adoption of private sector practices by public organizations with the aim of improving their effectiveness (Goldfinch et al., 2010). One of those core practices is strategic planning (SP) (Ugboro et al., 2011), which Bryson (2010, S256) defines as 'a deliberative, disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it'. Despite the recognition that a systematic approach to strategy development is beneficial (Poister et al., 2013) and the fact that SP has become nearly ubiquitous among public organizations (Bovaird, 2008), the relevance of SP is still criticized (Ugboro, et al., 2011). One reason could be that previous research, largely, overlooked the fact that SP, as a process, involves complex assemblies of human actors (Bryson, et al., 2010). Consequently, research should focus more on the 'practice of strategy' (Bryson, 2010). Shifting attention towards micro-activities of SP and their relationship with planning outcomes (Wolf, et al.,2013) will shed light on the effectiveness of SP in public organizations. Because Bryson, et al. (2010) indicated that the essence of SP is the development of a shared set of fundamental decisions about the pivotal goals that guide an organization's strategies and actions, strategic consensus (SC) is viewed as an important proximate outcome, mediating the relationship between SP and performance (Walter et al., 2013). In essence, SC centers on 'the extent to which intra-organizational perceptions converge on shared understandings of strategic priorities' and is deemed a prerequisite for successful strategy implementation (Rapert et al., 2002, 301) because it minimizes the detrimental effects of the pursuit of divergent goals (Tarakci et al., 2014). The underlying proposition this is that 'a higher degree of SC is associated with improved coordination/cooperation in the implementation of strategy, and hence, with organizational performance' (Kellermans, et al., 2011, 719). Despite the theoretical importance of SC for strategy implementation effectiveness, empirical insights on the content (e.g. specific strategic priorities), the degree (i.e. level of SC), and the locus of strategic consensus within public organizations is, to a large extent, missing (Desmidt et al., 2016). Given the lack of insights on the subject, we examine the degree, content and locus of strategic consensus amongst and between groups of Flemish municipal councilors as well as the influencing group characteristics. The research setting comprises the councillors of 308 Flemish municipalities. Within-group and between-group SC is calculated using z-scores. The proposed research addresses the call for deeper knowledge on public SP's effectiveness (Bryson et al., 2010) and has two distinct contributions: (a) we, theoretically, elucidate the importance of SC within and between (groups of) decision makers, and (b) we measure the degree of SC while analyzing the group determinants defining the levels of SC in a public context.

http://ift.tt/2eLrkPM