Strategic Planning Environment, Process, and Performance in Public Agencies: A Comparative Study of Departments in Milwaukee

This research presents a theoretical framework for studying strategic planning in the public sector that merges research on planning in the private sector and research on the differences between public and private organizations. The study identifies a set of variables relevant to this framework and measures these variables for fourteen departments within the City of Milwaukee using a wide range of survey questions that were tested and implemented in extensive interviews. Correlations for these variables display consistent patterns that lend evidence to key debates and direct future research in the field.