Effects of strategic management practices on intra-organizational power relations: The case of public institutions

The purpose of this thesis was to find out how and under which conditions strategic management practices change the intra-organizational power pattern in public institutions. The thesis consists of three parts within the scope of this purpose mentioned. In the first part of the thesis, firstly, power school which lays significant emphasis on the basis of strategic management-and-power themes was evaluated. Then, the literature on "intra-organizational power and strategic management" was also reviewed within the scope of the purpose of the study mentioned. The review, which was conducted within the scope of both power school and strategic management and intra-organizational power relations, contributed to the identification of a number of highlights that would allow the determination of operational criteria (theme/indicator) required to discuss the strategy-power pattern interaction as empirical. In the second part of the thesis, the literature review on organizational power was conducted based on organizational power sources and power relations. With this literature review, the concept of "power" in the strategy-power relations in the first part of the thesis was explained in more detail and the indicators in the empirical part of the study were clarified. Furthermore, this review contributed to the shaping of a road map to guide the collection and analysis of data required for the purpose of the study and interpretation of findings. The third part is the empirical part of the thesis. The study was designed as multiple case study, which is one of qualitative designs. The sample of the study is composed of public institutions that prepare their strategic plans. Most of the data were collected using the semi-structured interview technique. In addition to interviews, documents related to the purpose of the study were also examined. Moreover, important events that were carried out during case studies and constituted the data for the purpose of the study were also observed, and the data obtained as a result of these observations were evaluated as data supporting the result of the interviews. The findings obtained from the analysis of the data indicate that strategic management practices are used as a tool to change the intra-organizational power pattern and can affect the intra-organizational power pattern in certain ways due to these characteristics. However, it was observed that the organizational context-specific factors were effective in the degree of this impact. Keywords: Strategic Management, Organizational Power, Intra-organizational Power, Power School, Public Institutions