Strategic Planning and Public Safety Agencies

The research performed for the master's project was exploratory in nature. Samples of fire safety administrators, administrators of other public safety agencies, and senior public administrators at the local government-level were selected from among the populations of such persons in Colorado jurisdictions.

The variations between respondent groups and organizational types in relation to (a) the perceived importance of strategic planning for public safety agencies, (b) the level of expertise required for effective strategic planning in such agencies, and (c) the implementation of the strategic planning process in public safety agencies were not a great as had been anticipated prior to conducting the research for the master's project. Statistically significant variations were found, however, with respect to the relationship between (a) relative agency budget size (as an explanatory variable) and four of the 21 elements/activities of the strategic planning process for public safety agencies. The four elements/ activities of the strategic planning process for public safety agencies were (a) threat identification, (b) the formulation of contingency strategies, (c) the establishment of measurement and monitoring procedures, and (d) the development of evaluation procedures. In each instance, the findin

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that continual tinkering with organizational structure tends to provide scant attention to human resources. Some contend that continual tinkering will be less harmful to an organization's human resources than is the existing crisis-reaction approach. An alternative approach is the sociotechnical system concept (STS). The STS concept assumes that every organization is comprised of three sub-systems. The organization's human resources are the social sub-system, while the techniques and knowledge used by the organization are the technical sub-system, and the entities external to the organization (including customers) with which the organization interacts are the environmental sub-system. The STS concept posits that a change made in any one of the organizational sub-systems must meet the demands of each of the remaining sub-systems (Shani, Grant, Krishnan, & Thompson, 1992). STS analysis views an organization as an open, sociotechnical system, and considers all of the primary organizational sub-systems and their interactions. While the traditional focus of STS analysis is on work design, such analysis also includes the requirements of the environmental sub-system, organizational structure, and organizational strategy. STS an
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 8959
Approximate Pages = 36 (250 words per page)

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