Strategic planning in local governments: An analysis on Malatya Metropolitan Municipality

Today, developments in the fields of science and technology parallel to globalization cause an accelerated change in the field of public administration as well as in many other fields. In this direction, the understanding of management has changed, and the need to act strategically has become a fundamental dynamic in a wide range of administrative and social aspects. As time goes by, technology has been abandoned from globalization and traditional management approaches and the use of strategic management techniques has been put into use. In order to ensure that resources are used effectively in organizations, the public and private sector have given increasing importance to planning. The efforts made by local governments to overcome the difficulties and difficulties they faced in the process of obtaining their present needs have evolved over time, leading to the emergence of strategic managerial processes in significant dimensions. These managerial processes brought strategic action and pre-thought processes in this direction. Local governments have begun to carry out strategic planning efforts to overcome the difficulties they encounter in the process of fulfilling their existing duties and responsibilities and to act more institutionally and more effectively. These preliminary intellectual processes that were carried out before the action became the basic dynamics of the institutions in time. In the study, the concept of strategic planning emerged in parallel with the structural change of local governments and the emergence, development, application and importance of this concept in Turkish local governments were analyzed. The concept of strategic planning of Malatya Metropolitan Municipality was examined by examining the quantities and qualities of the components included in the strategic plan under two separate periods of five years. In this context, situation analyzes, mission statements, vision statements, values and principles, strategic objectives, strategic objectives and preparation and implementation processes of the 2010-2014 Strategic Plan and 2015-2019 Strategic Plan of Malatya Metropolitan Municipality were examined comparatively.