Do the characteristics of the managers affect strategic thinking level: A research on secondary education institute managers in Tokat province

The concept of strategic thinking, which forms the basis of the concept of strategic management, is a process that affects the future of a company and shapes the perceptions of managers and gives them meaning. Thanks to strategic thinking, a manager can determine how to use the limited resources in the most efficient way, facilitate the progress of the organization towards its goals, strengthen the competitive advantage and improve its strategic performance by guiding the whole organization correctly. Therefore, having strategic thinking characteristics of managers is an advantageous situation for the organization and the manager. Today, this phenomenon manifests itself not only in private enterprises where competition is fierce but also in governmental institutions and its importance is gradually increasing. The aim of this study is to investigate whether the level of strategic thinking of the managers working in educational institutions changes according to demographic and professional variables. The research method is a quantitative method. For this reason, it is aimed to reach all the administrators of the secondary schools in Tokat province and districts. In the first part of the thesis, strategy and strategic management have been explained theoretically, in the second part, strategic thinking and process have been discussed. In the third part, it has been shown whether the strategic thinking levels of secondary school administrators in Tokat province and districts differ according to various demographic and professional variables. The strategic thinking level questionnaire was applied to 168 managers working in 58 secondary schools both via the Internet and by hand and collected. The surveys collected were analyzed using the SPSS 22 program. According to the findings, the results of the study were; it has emerged that only the "gender" variable of demographic characteristics affects the strategic thinking level of managers and that male managers think more strategically in the sub-dimension of framing than female managers. From professional features, only the "management status" variable was found to affect the level of strategic thinking of corporate managers, ın the reflection sub-dimension, it was revealed that the managers thought more strategic than the deputy managers ,ın the framing and system thinking subdimensions, it was revealed that the deputy managers thought more strategically than the managers. The expectations and results of the findings were discussed in detail during the study.