Public managers need to be able to position their organizations to achieve desired program outcomes by using fundamental strategic management techniques.

Public managers need to be able to position their organizations to achieve desired program outcomes by using fundamental strategic management techniques. Managers may be charged with diagnosing complex situations and resolving them in ways that enhance organizational performance. Throughout this course, you have learned strategic perspectives on the management and leadership of public sector organizations. Now, for your final project, you will develop a strategic management white paper that can be used to guide decision making for a public and a nonprofit sector organization. Organizations use white papers to present problems and proposed solutions persuasively. 

To create this white paper, select one public and one nonprofit organization from the List of Organizations document linked in the Reading and Resources section of Module One. Be sure that the organizations you select have enough publicly available documentation to help your research. Research their strategic management practices to make recommendations regarding effective strategies and best practices in strategic management. Complete an organization profile and an analysis of your selected organizations and use this information in your paper. Compile all elements of the paper from your milestone assignments as outlined throughout the course. 

The final project represents an authentic demonstration of competency because strategic management white papers extensively guide decision making for public and nonprofit sector organizations. The project is divided into three milestones, which will be submitted at various points throughout the course to scaffold learning and ensure quality final submissions. These milestones will be submitted in Modules Three, Five, and Seven. The final project will be submitted in Module Nine. 

In this assignment, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following course outcomes: 

• Assess alignment of public institutions’ discrete resources to their organizational visions based on elements of the strategic management process
• Determine best practices for enhancing the effectiveness of public programs based on qualitative and quantitative evaluation of program outcomes
• Recommend program reengineering best practices appropriate for program redesign in government or nonprofit organizations based on cost, benefit, and risk analysis
• Assess strategic management processes for their effectiveness in overcoming unique constraints facing government agencies
• Recommend strategies to enhance organizational performance and mitigate the impact of contemporary challenges to strategic management in the public sector

Prompt

Your strategic management white paper should discuss strategies and best practices in strategic management that can be used to guide decision making. The target audience for your white paper is the leadership and management of the public and the nonprofit sector organizations you have chosen. Write the white paper with the idea that it could be presented to key decision makers in those public or nonprofit organizations. 

Use a variety of secondary resources, such as the organizations’ websites, which will have pertinent information, including, for example, a strategic plan, a sustainability report, and other relevant sources (such as an annual report) to help complete this paper. Be sure to address any feedback you have received on your milestone (incremental) assignments. As a reminder, this is a strategic planning course, and we are looking for you to address all the components of the organizations that holistically impact strategic planning. 

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed: 

1. Introduction: Concisely describe the two organizations you will be comparing in your white paper. Make sure to include the organizational vision for each organization in your description.
2. Analysis: In this section of your white paper, you will analyze the strategic management practices of the two organizations. Specifically, you should address the following:
   1. Strategic Management: Compare the elements of strategic planning and the management process used by the two organizations. In other words, how did the organizations apply elements of the strategic management process? What worked and why?
   2. Resource Alignment: Assess the alignment of the two organizations’ discrete resources to the organizational visions.
   3. Resource Allocation Decisions: Describe how the organizations’ resource allocation decisions were altered or guided by the strategic planning and management process. In other words, how did the organizations apply elements of the strategic management process to align resources to organizational vision?
   4. Outcome Evaluation: Describe the qualitative and quantitative measures used to evaluate the program outcomes.
   5. Best Practices: Identify the best practices used by the two organizations to increase the effectiveness of program outcomes.
   6. Cost-Benefit Analysis: Create a cost-benefit analysis that identifies the costs, benefits, and risks associated with program or process redesign in the two organizations.
   7. Constraints: Describe the constraints facing the two organizations. Examples of constraints include diffused leadership, limited managerial autonomy, politically defined performance outcomes for programs, and legal requirements.
   8. Strategic Planning Techniques: Analyze the strategic planning techniques used by the two organizations to address the constraints you described. Support your response with specific examples of the organizations using strategic planning instead of public sector techniques.
3. Recommendations
   1. Program Success: Based on the measures used to evaluate the program outcomes and the best practices you identified, which best practices could decision makers implement to enhance the likelihood of program success?
   2. Participation: Recommend a participation best practice by contrasting the participation characteristics of the reengineering processes used in the two organizations.
   3. Program Reengineering: Recommend a best practice model for program reengineering based on your cost-benefit analysis for the two organizations and independent research.
   4. Overcoming Constraints: How effective were the strategic management processes used by the two organizations to overcome the constraints they faced?
   5. Organizational Success: Explain how governmental and nonprofit agencies can improve organizational success by best utilizing the principles of benchmarking, best practices, and comparative governmental performance.
   6. Customer Service: Recommend a strategy to mitigate the impact of the challenge of providing effective and efficient customer service. Justify your recommendation. Your response should be based on your analysis of the two organizations and additional research.
   7. Boundary Limitations: Recommend a strategy or tactic that governmental agencies and nonprofit organizations can implement to mitigate the impact of the challenge of territorial boundary limitations. Justify your recommendation. Your response should be based on your analysis of the two organizations and additional research.Your strategic management white paper should adhere to the following formatting requirements: 15–20 pages, double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font, and one-inch margins. You should use current APA style guidelines for your citations and reference list.