MPA/MSPC 3740--Strategic Management of Public & Nonprofit Organizations

Strategic Management may be defined as an externally oriented philosophy of managing an organization that links strategic thinking and analysis to organizational action. This course examines the critical aspects of strategy and organizational planning and considers the key elements of strategic management – Environmental Analysis, Strategy Formulation, Strategy Implementation, and Strategy Evaluation & Control. The principles of strategic management are applied in a semester long examination of a social service, healthcare, arts and culture, government or other public or nonprofit setting. Strategic Management attempts to orchestrate a fit between an organization’s external environment (political, technological, regulatory, social, etc.) and its internal situation (values, culture, finances, marketing, human resources, IT, organizational structure, and so on) and therefore offers the student a broad understanding of how the varied components of organizations work together to inform strategic direction and planning. Mary Louise Hatten (1984) asserted that “Not-for-profit management has often been treated as the poor stepchild in management thinking [and] can indeed benefit from the application of strategic management concepts originally developed for profit making corporations.” This course explores the methodology of strategic management and strategy creation for non-profit and governmental organizations