Office of Strategy Management in the Public Sector

Abstract

Office of Strategy Management (OSM) is an important agency that is expected to coordinate strategy implementation process between the corporate and departmental level (Kaplan and Norton, 2005). Over the years, there have been increasing studies reported in the literature on the development and implementation aspect of the strategies embarked in the public sector domain. However, to date little has been reported in the literature on how the OSM is holding on in the strategy implementation phase in the public sector setting, thus, this study intends to understand the perceived roles undertaken by OSM and the meanings of its existence in strategy implementation process in the public sector environment. Hence, it is hopeful that, this research could shed light on the roles performed by the OSM and find ways of strengthening the Office further in the public sector. A qualitative case study approach on the OSM of a government ministry in Brunei is selected for this research project. The studied ministry is purposely chosen because it is one of the earliest adopters of Performance Management System via Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach. The primary instrument used in this research is face-to-face interviews. The interviewees comprise of departmental officers across the ministry including officers from the OSM. Documentation analysis was also deployed that complement main research instrument deployed. The main findings captured are cross-validated among interviewees and research instruments so as to verify their exact meanings. Finally, the emerging theoretical development is further clarified and confirmed by telling the storyline to the later interviewees. Keywords: Office of Strategy Management; Strategy Management; Performance Management; Public sector; South East Asia.