Implementation of strategic management thought in local governments and reflections on strategic plans: Comparison of Van Metropolitan Municipality and Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality

Today's modern organizations are faced with constant change and transformation forced by technical, social, political and economic factors in the external environment. In the face of these rapidly changing and more ambiguous forces, institutions need to develop a road map that requires more skills in order to predict their future clearly and in future matters. These capabilities are the core of strategic management. Strategic management is a administrative philosophy that focuses on deciding what an organization is, how it will be in the future and how to achieve its future goals with whom and with what resources. Strategic management is a administrative understanding that allows organizations to analyze their current situation and environmental conditions and turn threats into opportunities by foreseeing the future. It is only possible for organizations to overcome all of these complex conditions with strategic management tought and strategic planning. Strategic planning is based on a pre-analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of organizations and the opportunities and threats around them and It is based on the realization of all the targets that may occur in the long term, and the realization of its targets effectively. As in the developed world states, within the framework of the strategic management approach in our country, it was made compulsory to prepare a strategic plan for public institutions and organizations with the Public Financial Management and Control Law (Kamu Mali Yönetimi ve Kontrol Kanunu) No. 5018, which was enacted in 2003. The strategic plan implementation, which became mandatory with the KMYKK numbered 5018, has been implemented in almost all public institutions and organizations since 2006. In this context, special provincial administrations, municipalities and metropolitan municipalities, such as other public institutions and organizations on the issue of preparing a strategic plan is stated as a necessity in the their related laws as well as the KMYKK numbered 5018. With strategic planning process, the extent to which success has been achieved in issues such as direction and effect of change in management understanding and philosophies of public institutions, the ownership of this process, especially by managers, the realization of budget facilities while preparing a strategic plan has become an important research topic. This study aims to examine the strategic management thought and strategic planning issues in the context of local governments and to measure the perceptions of managers working in local administrations and to find out the reflection of this perceptions on the strategic plans. For this purpose, the theoretical framework of the thesis has been formed by making a wide literature review, a survey was conducted to measure the strategic management perceptions of the managers working in the metropolitan municipalities of Van and Gaziantep. In addition, the recent strategic plans prepared by the Van and Gaziantep metropolitan municipalities (2015-2019 period) were examined and compared. In this way, the extent to which the strategic management approach is reflected in the strategic plans has been tried to be analyzed. According to the results of the survey, strategic management perception and consciousness level of managers working in Gaziantep metropolitan municipality were higher than managers working in Van metropolitan municipality. However, it has been observed that the strategic plan of Van metropolitan municipality is better prepared than the strategic plan of Gaziantep metropolitan municipality in terms of the preparation of the strategic plan in accordance with the strategic management approach and the content of the strategic plans.