The strategy development process of cultural not-for-profit organizations and the factors affecting it

Abstract

This thesis project is a qualitative study exploring the strategy development process of four cultural not-for-profit organizations. The researcher divided the process into four stages: strategy formation, decision, implementation, and evaluation. The thesis explains how the case study organizations manage their formal and informal planning processes, and how these are both critical components of strategy development. In addition, the thesis discusses the factors affecting the strategy process of the case study organizations and the mechanisms these organizations use to manage change. ☐ The results of the thesis indicate that the organizations studied have a complex and flexible strategy process. The different activities involved are interrelated and part of these organizations’ daily operations. The case studies illustrate how deliberate and emergent strategies, as defined by Mintzberg (1994), are formed and implemented. ☐ The author identified various factors affecting the strategy process of cultural not-for-profit organizations. These include leadership, organizational culture and sense of identity, organization size and maturity, and the internal and external forces that cause change within the institution. The differences exhibited by the case study organizations can be attributed to all these factors; however, organizational leadership seems to have the primary effect on each organization’s process. ☐ The behaviors exhibited by these organizations align well with recent findings in the strategy field suggesting that the different theories in strategy development should be integrated into frameworks that embrace the complexity of the process. The framework developed by this researcher provides an alternative method of analyzing the strategy development process of cultural-not-for profit organizations.