Strategic Planning Within the Department of Defense: A Focus on Strategic Hierarchical Consistency.
Abstract
Mandated within the Department of Defense (DoD) by the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993, strategic planning is a systematic process organizations employ to envision the future and direct actions to desired outcomes within that future. Unfortunately, strong evidence suggests DoD and United States Air Force (USAF) planning efforts to date have met with limited success. This research explores one reason for this limited success. Towards this end, it defines a strategic hierarchical consistency construct and proposes a scale to measure one component, the alignment of mission, vision, and goal statements among a hierarchy of organizational plans. It then employs this construct and scale to investigate the alignment of missions, visions, and goals among the hierarchy of plans within a DoD/USAF chain of command. The results of an exploratory, qualitative document analysis revealed only partial alignment of these missions, visions, and goals. Consequently, this research concludes that refinements to programs, policy, and/or strategic planning methodologies that place greater emphasis on establishing and maintaining strategic hierarchical consistency may provide a means to enhance the success of DoD and USAF planning efforts.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1998
- Accession Number
- ADA354281
Entities
People
- Thomas E. Hartzell
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology