برنامه ریزی استراتژیک موثر در سیستم های حمل و نقل عمومی

This paper identifies the characteristics of strategic planning systems of transit agencies that enhance these agencies’ abilities to respond effectively to federal legislative requirements and mandates, and have positive community impacts. These characteristics are, each unit or division must develop its own action plan to be combined into a system-wide strategic plan, strategic planning should receive more than lip service from top and unit or division level managers, and it requires the involvement and commitment of top-level management. Additional characteristics are, strategic planning should be designed to have an external orientation, to focus on an organization’s responsiveness to the demands of its customers, and it should focus on identifying and exploiting areas of future growth opportunities. Furthermore, it requires involvement of employees, and it must fit the management and decision-making styles of top-level managers.

The success of strategic planning in some private sector firms as well as interests of governments looking to tie their budgets to performance measures have spurred its use in public sector organizations as a tool of strategic management. An example of this interest is the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993, which mandates strategic planning for federal agencies. However, mixed evidence about the relationship between strategic planning and organizational performance makes the debate about its effectiveness as a tool of strategic management an ongoing one. Mintzberg (1991), for example, argued that in a turbulent environment strategic planning is a constraint on the flexibility of an organization to adapt to its rapidly changing and uncertain environment. Roney, 2003 and Akhter, 2003 have argued that it is environmental uncertainty that makes strategic planning an imperative for organizations that operate in turbulent and uncertain environments. Agreeing with the latter argument, Backoff et al., 1993 and Vinzant and Vinzant, 1996a argue that local government agencies are prime candidates for strategic planning because they, too, face turbulent, ever-changing and politically charged environments, and highly publicized resource allocation problems. Additionally, as Poister and Van Slyke (2002) note, transportation departments (including transit agencies) have experiences with planning, data gathering and analysis, and “using this information to allocate resources and manage programs”, thus making them good candidates for strategic planning. These arguments notwithstanding, many researchers seem to agree that strategic planning is an effective tool of strategic management. Miller and Cardinal (1994) found positive relationships between strategic planning and organizational effectiveness and performance and argued that methodological problems could explain the inconsistencies in past research results. Husey (1974) pointed to design and process flaws as possible explanations of failure of strategic planning in many cases. He argued that, the fact that an organization practices strategic planning does not mean that it is done well. The question therefore, is what characteristics of strategic planning are related to its effectiveness. According to Ramanujam et al. (1986), these characteristics are the organizational environment in which strategic planning is applied (contextual), and how strategic planning is designed and implemented. Ugboro, 1985 and Ugboro, 1991 adds top management leadership involvement in and commitment to strategic planning, and the strategic planning process itself to the characteristics of effective strategic planning. The objective of this paper is to identify the characteristics of strategic planning systems that enhance a public transit agency’s ability to respond effectively to federal legislative requirements, and still have positive impacts on their communities. This requires determining the relationships between strategic planning characteristics and strategic planning effectiveness. To do so, this paper develops measures of internal organizational success of strategic planning, federal legislative requirements, community impacts of strategic planning, and strategic planning characteristics. These characteristics are measured by the organizational contextual, design, process, top-management leadership involvement and commitment dimensions of strategic planning systems of public transit agencies and are treated as variables. Then, using structural and measurement equations, the paper develops relationships between the measures, strategic planning characteristics, and internal organizational success of strategic planning, federal legislative requirements and community impacts. Those measures with positive coefficients are used as the characteristics of effective strategic planning. The rest of the paper is divided into six parts. Section 2 presents a survey of the relevant literature on strategic planning and strategic management particularly in the public sector. It is followed in Sections 3 and 4 by hypotheses and methodology, respectively and in Section 5 by tests of hypotheses. Sections 6 and 7, deal with the characteristics of effective strategic planning and conclusion, respectively.

The purpose of this paper is to study strategic planning in public transit agencies and identify its characteristics that make the agencies that use it effective in responding to some federal legislative requirements, and have positive community impacts. We limited the federal legislative requirements mostly to those of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962, which are for transportation planning to be continuous, comprehensive and cooperative. This is because it is an important legislation, which specifies how transportation planning is to be done. From the results, we conclude that strategic planning is an important strategic management tool that allows public transit agencies to meet customer demands primarily in terms of mobility and accessibility, and federal legislative requirements. The characteristics of effective strategic planning in public transit agencies we found are: • Unit action plans must be consolidated into a system-wide action plan. • Strategic planning must be more than a lip service. • Employees must understand established procedures for strategic planning. • Strategic planning must fit the management style of top management. • Top management must be involved and committed to strategic planning. • Strategic planning must be able to foresee future opportunities for growth. • Strategic planning must be responsive to customer demand. It must be noted that based upon the internal measures of success and meeting legislative requirements, strategic planning appears successful in the transit systems analyzed. However, this success is at the expense of possibly not having positive external community impacts in terms of mobility and accessibility. It follows that strategic planning in transit systems must begin to adequately address the impacts they could have in the communities where the transit systems are located. Limitations: These findings are limited by the federal legislative requirements considered and the data used. Additionally, the respondents are mainly those in upper-level positions who have responsibilities for strategic planning and their responses may introduce some bias into the results, especially where strategic planning is a top-down approach. Future research that uses a larger sample including non-management employees, and that considers other legislative requirements would certainly add to our results.