Strategic Planning at the Local Level of Government: Evidence from Florida

This study\u27s main question is as follows: What are the effects of internal and external environmental factors on public value expressions found within Florida county and municipal governments\u27 strategic plans? This study uses Moore\u27s (1995) Public Value Theory and its main propositions, as Dong (2015) described. This study also adheres to the tradition established by DiMaggio and Powell (1983) by focusing on homogeneity, not variation, between strategic plans under study. Data for this dissertation were obtained from 77 official strategic plans of Floridian counties and municipalities. Furthermore, the dissertation proceeded in two distinctive phases. The first phase relied on content analysis to prove the presence of public value theory\u27s main components of collaboration, collectiveness, and responsiveness in 785 excerpts from almost all the 77 official strategic plans understudy. The second phase of the study was built on the findings from Phase One. The second phase quantifies the findings from the first phase to examine the within-group and between-group isomorphic tendencies among Floridian counties and municipalities\u27 strategic plans under similar internal and external environmental conditions. The dissertation calculated the differences between the average and actual percentages of public value theory components in each strategic plan understudy to calculate the within-group isomorphic tendencies. Isomorphic tendencies were found in the strategic plans of Florida\u27s counties and municipalities with extreme fiscal health, in the Southeast region, and with a population size between 200,000 and 500,000 residents. To calculate the between-group isomorphic tendencies, this dissertation relied on the Kruskal-Wallis H test. The Kruskal- Wallis H test results between groups were all insignificance, which indicated similar isomorphic tendencies between groups with similar internal and external environmental conditions. The findings of this dissertation will expand the knowledge base on its topic