IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jadmsc/v7y2017i2p16-d99552.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Government Programme as a Strategy—The Finnish Experience

Author

Listed:
  • Jan-Erik Johanson

    (School of Management, University of Tampere, 33100 Tampere, Finland
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Elias Pekkola

    (School of Management, University of Tampere, 33100 Tampere, Finland
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Päivi Husman

    (Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, PB 40, 00251 Helsinki, Finland
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

Abstract

This article uses strategy metaphors consisting of a plan, a home and a game to study government programme formation in Finland. The strategy approach both contradicts and complements the traditional political science approach to government formation. The government programme has been strategic in the sense of separating the formulation and implementation parts of the strategy. The most important function of the metaphor of plan is to hold coalition parties together. The adopted austerity policy provides a meagre contribution to the expansion of services and the increase in government spending. Consequently, the home metaphor in the government programme appears in the distant future and in combating external threats. The game metaphor is apparent in the goal of making contracts with social partners. The vocabulary change from politics to strategy alters the government programme’s position in terms of catering to the needs of civil servants, citizens and stakeholders. The strategy perspective might be instrumental in shifting open democratic debates to closed and secretive policy formations.

Suggested Citation

  • Jan-Erik Johanson & Elias Pekkola & Päivi Husman, 2017. "Government Programme as a Strategy—The Finnish Experience," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-15, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:7:y:2017:i:2:p:16-:d:99552
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/7/2/16/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/7/2/16/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Henry Mintzberg & James A. Waters, 1985. "Of strategies, deliberate and emergent," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(3), pages 257-272, July.
    2. Quinn, James Brian, 1982. "Managing strategies incrementally," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 10(6), pages 613-627.
    3. Sanchez, Ron & Heene, Aimé, 1997. "Reinventing strategic management: New theory and practice for competence-based competition," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 303-317, June.
    4. George A. Boyne, 2002. "Public and Private Management: What’s the Difference?," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 97-122, January.
    5. Pollitt, Christopher & Bouckaert, Geert, 2004. "Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780199268498.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Steensen, Elmer Fly, 2014. "Five types of organizational strategy," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 266-281.
    2. van der Voet, Joris, 2014. "The effectiveness and specificity of change management in a public organization: Transformational leadership and a bureaucratic organizational structure," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 373-382.
    3. Dan Lovallo & Olivier Sibony, 2018. "Broadening the Frame: How Behavioral Strategy Redefines Strategic Decisions," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(4), pages 658-667, December.
    4. Dilek Zamantılı Nayır & Michael T. Rehg & Yurdanur Asa, 2018. "Influence of Ethical Position on Whistleblowing Behaviour: Do Preferred Channels in Private and Public Sectors Differ?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 149(1), pages 147-167, April.
    5. Carole RENTSCH & Matthias FINGER, 2014. "Yes, no, maybe: the ambiguous relationships between State-owned enterprises and States," Departmental Working Papers 2014-05, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    6. Robert P. Garrett Jr. & Jeffrey G. Covin, 2015. "Internal Corporate Venture Operations Independence and Performance: A Knowledge–Based Perspective," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 39(4), pages 763-790, July.
    7. Sanchez, Ron, 2004. "Understanding competence-based management: Identifying and managing five modes of competence," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 57(5), pages 518-532, May.
    8. Gebauer, Heiko & Worch, Hagen & Truffer, Bernhard, 2012. "Absorptive capacity, learning processes and combinative capabilities as determinants of strategic innovation," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 57-73.
    9. Tóth, Balázs, 2021. "Milyen kapcsolatban állnak a közszféra reformjai a gazdaságpolitikai paradigmákkal? [How reforms of the public sector relate to the paradigms of economic policy]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(2), pages 205-222.
    10. Young-Choon Kim & Taekjin Shin & Sangchan Park, 2021. "Enhancing firm performance through intra-group managerial experience: Evidence from group-affiliated firms in Korea," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 435-465, June.
    11. Arundel, Anthony & Casali, Luca & Hollanders, Hugo, 2015. "How European public sector agencies innovate: The use of bottom-up, policy-dependent and knowledge-scanning innovation methods," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(7), pages 1271-1282.
    12. Iman Seoudi & Matthias Huehn & Bo Carlsson, 2008. "Penrose Revisited: A Re-Appraisal of the Resource Perspective," Working Papers 14, The German University in Cairo, Faculty of Management Technology.
    13. Yannick LUNG & Bernard JULLIEN & Christophe MIDLER, 2016. "From the Logan to the Kwid. \r\nAmbidexterity, reverse and fractal innovation, design-to-cost: recipes from Renault\'s Entry strategy," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2016-19, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    14. Nurmi, Raimo, 1998. "Knowledge-intensive firms," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 26-32.
    15. Innan Sasaki & Niina Nummela & Davide Ravasi, 2021. "Managing cultural specificity and cultural embeddedness when internationalizing: Cultural strategies of Japanese craft firms," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 52(2), pages 245-281, March.
    16. Theodosiou, Marios & Leonidou, Leonidas C., 2003. "Standardization versus adaptation of international marketing strategy: an integrative assessment of the empirical research," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 141-171, April.
    17. Independent Evaluation Group, 2008. "Public Sector Reform: What Works and Why? An IEG evaluation of World Bank Support," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6484.
    18. Leask, Anna, 2010. "Progress in visitor attraction research: Towards more effective management," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 155-166.
    19. Alessio Conti & Giovanni Vetritto, 2019. "ICT from Below: ELISA Program and the Innovation of Local Government in Italy," International Journal of Social Science Studies, Redfame publishing, vol. 7(3), pages 70-92, May.
    20. Alexis Laszczuk & Lionel Garreau & Bernard de Montmorillon, 2017. "Understanding emergence in business model development: how companies interact with stakeholders to deal with environmental ambiguity," Post-Print hal-01787276, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:7:y:2017:i:2:p:16-:d:99552. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.