The Impact of Strategic Planning on the Performance of Governmental Organizations: An Empirical Study on Oman’s Five-Year Plan (2011-2015)

Abstract

The current study concentrates on investigating the impact of strategic planning including the “existing of strategic base, strategy comprehensiveness, extent of planning, strategy effectiveness and ongoing evaluation" on the performance of governmental organizations in the Sultanate of Oman through an empirical study on the five-year plan (2011-2015) of the state. The population of the study include all managers, heads and members who work in planning departments at eight selected governmental ministries of civil service representing the government sector organizations in the sultanate of Oman. The population of the study estimated at 425 employees, using Yamane’s (1967) formula and the sample size estimated by 207 employees covering employees from all the eight selected ministries representing 56.4% of the total population. By analyzing Spearman's Correlation Coefficients between independent variables and dependent variable the results indicate that the overall strategic planning significantly correlated with the outcome variable which is the performance of government organizations. Consequently, the current study proves that the performance of government organizations positively influenced by strategic planning factors expressed by the “extent of planning, comprehensiveness of strategy, the effectiveness of the strategy, existing of strategic base and ongoing evaluation”. As well as, study findings confirm that strategic planning is essential for governmental organizations, that because it provides a sense of direction and outlines measurable objectives. Thus, strategic planning uses for guiding day-to-day decisions, evaluating the progress of the organization and changing approaches when moving forward. In the aim to make the most of strategic planning the organization must give careful thought to the strategic objectives it outlines, and then back up these objectives with realistic, thoroughly researched, quantifiable benchmarks for evaluating results. In the end, the results of the current study contribute to persuading the government of the Sultanate of Oman about the importance of applying strategic planning in all its governmental agencies.