This study examines how organizational leaders deployed strategic planning over time to support organizational transformation and dramatic performance improvements in a mission-driven organizational context. Drawing on a longitudinal case study of a nonprofit from 2014 through 2023, we explore how successive top leaders navigated and reshaped structural aspects of the organization to advance strategic goals. During this period, the organization undertook two strategic planning and implementation cycles, doubled its client base, and increased its assets sevenfold. Using Crosby and Bryson's operationalization of structuration theory, we analyze how leaders' actions and the structural context influenced each other to shape evolving mission, vision, internal alignment, external engagement, and organizational effectiveness. Our findings emphasize the recursive, non-linear nature of strategic planning and implementation and the importance of building strategizing infrastructure that can persist through top executives' transitions and external shocks. This study contributes to theory and practice by reframing strategic planning and implementation as a structurational process, extending strategic leadership research in public and nonprofit contexts, and offering guidance for sustaining strategic momentum for mission-driven nonprofit organizations in complex and shifting environments.
Seo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.