Strategic Orientation and Organisational Culture in Polish Public Organisations: Insights from the Miles and Snow Typology

• Authors: Martyna Wronka-Pośpiech , Aldona Frączkiewicz-Wronka
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Polish public organisations are often perceived as having strong bureaucratic orientation, avoiding both change and risk. However, in the last decade a distinct change in the management model of public organisations can be noticed. Public sector becomes an open ground for mergers and partnerships, entrepreneurial leadership, diversified services and commercialization (Golensky and DeRuiter 1999; Zimmerman and Dart, 1998; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004; Walker, 2013]. Public organisations embrace these strategies from the for-profit sector in order to manage change and to be effective. Most importantly, public organisations are adopting these frameworks in order to survive the changing operating environment, including changes in the level of government funding. Our paper draws on the Miles and Snow (1978) typology of generic strategies - prospectors, defenders, analysers, and reactors - to identify different organisational strategies within public organisations providing social services in Poland. In order to assess organisational culture we used the most widespread and used in many empirical studies Cameron and Quinn’s model (2003), the Competing Values Framework (CVF), from which four cultures - adhocracy, clan, market and hierarchy - emerge. The choice of these two providers of social services was dictated by our conviction, that these organisations are critical both for the national economy and for mitigating, counteracting and preventing social exclusion.

Keywords

EN

strategy; strategic orientation; organisational culture; social services; Miles and Snow typology; public sector

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Management
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 20
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 126-141

Dates

published

2016-05-01

online

2016-06-10

Contributors

author

Martyna Wronka-Pośpiech

• Ph.D. University of Economics in Katowice, Department of Entrepreneurship and Management Innovation

author

Aldona Frączkiewicz-Wronka

• University of Economics in Katowice, Department of Public Management and Social Science

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/manment-2015-0029