Strategic Management and Leadership of Education: Central and Local Perspectives in Turkey

Abstract

This study seeks to assess how Turkey’s Ministry of National Education has implemented strategic management and planning by examining the views of upper-level administrators employed in Ministry’s central and provincial administrative bodies concerning the strategic management which is a legal obligation for all educational institutions across the country. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 upper- and middle-level administrators. The findings on participants’ responses to the research questions were subject to descriptive analyses. The findings of the study are interesting as reveal that the top down reforms and legal obligations do not guarantee adequate and effective implementation in practice. Upper- and middle-level administrators emphasize that a strategic management and planning culture has not been established in Ministry of National Education and the strategic management and planning process has become a weak formality, which increases the workload rather than being an effective management tool. The study revealed that instead of strategic management and planning being to a technical process, measures need to be taken to facilitate its transformation into a cultural process. Strategic management and planning needs to consider together as a whole every stage of each process. The centralist approach should be abandoned and local mechanisms’ areas of influence need to be increased. It is an important research area that more comprehensive evaluation of the centralist strategic management approach based on strategy transfer from the center to the local level.