Republic of Strategic Management

and Public Governance:

Indonesia Strategy Execution in the
Public Sector
Defense
Paul Joyce
University
(RIDU) 30 July 2024
 1. Vision and strategy execution in a
“strategic state”
2. Good quality public services
3. Strategic leadership challenges and
Themes of handling crises
Lecture 4. Sustainable development as a strategic
challenge
1 Vision and execution
THINK POINTS:
Paul Light (2014 8) : “Vision with execution is the clear driver of success, just
as its absence is an equation for failure.”

Paul Light (2015 2): “It is one thing to develop grand visions of a future
good; it is quite another to craft effective policies and provide the resources,
structure, leadership, and organizational cohesion necessary to honor the
promises made.”
 The modernisation of government
– towards the “strategic state”
Definition of ”strategic-state”

A strategic-state exists when central government “can [and does] set and steer a national long-term vision-based
strategy for the country, ... mobilise actors and leverage resources across governments and society to achieve
integrated, coherent policy outcomes that address ... [a country’s] challenges effectively.”

Further, the “strategic state” is a concept that stresses:

1 “the importance of effective implementation of strategy”

2 “the importance of networks and institutions both inside and outside government”, and
3 “the need to draw inspiration from sub-national initiatives and from citizens”.

Reference: OECD (2013), Poland: Implementing Strategic-State Capability, OECD Public Governance Reviews. Paris: OECD Publishing.
A rejection of rigid strategic performance planning in which the plan
dictates exactly what is to happen – rigid because no scope for
flexibility – no need for evaluation, learning, strategic agility

• Berry (1994) in a study of strategic planning in the USA, suggested

that organizational capacity to be flexible is a hallmark of strategic
management leadership.
• The OECD has publicised the concept of “strategic agility” and has
recently linked this to the ability of governments to manage change
and innovation (OECD 2020 56): “Public-sector innovation is about
introducing and implementing new ideas whose impact help promote
and improve sound public governance by reinforcing the strategic
agility and forward-looking nature of the state.”
 New words and new realities ...

“The strategic role of Centre of Government (CoG) has been

expanding over the course of the last decade due to the
increasing complexity of policy-making and the emergence of
whole-of-government strategy-setting and implementation,
strategic monitoring of government performance over the
medium term, and strategic issues management.” (OECD 2020 46)
Comment: strategic issues management as a partial answer to challenges and linked to agility.
 Routledge, 2022

The key data set used in the book is from

an extraordinarily rich survey carried out
for 2016 and published by the French
Government.

Expert judgements were made on

government, economic, and other
variables for 144 countries.

The official name of the database is the

"Institutional Profiles Database" (IPD),
which has appeared in several editions
since 2001.

Data for 63 countries were selected for

analysis in the book.
 Measuring
development
Is Indonesia approaching Two widely used
or at a threshold of national indexes - relate
development? to major policy
sectors – human
development
(health,
education,
income) and
environmental
performance.

And they strongly

correlate.

Does scatterplot
suggest presence
of a threshold?
High scores on
national
performance
correlate with
higher average
“happiness” of
citizens.
________________

National
performance
measured by
Human
Development Index
and Environmental
Performance Index.

Happiness
measured by
average subjective
well-being score
using Gallup data.
2.1 Strategic policy making
process
THINK POINTS:
The governments of Singapore and China appeared to score relatively highly on
“agility” in 2016. Could their example of agility in policy making suggest to
Indonesia’s government something worth pursuing? That is, greater “strategic
agility”? How to pursue it? Stronger habits of policy evaluation? A more
experimental approach to policy? More responsiveness to changes in policy
context?
 Notes for Figure
Data Source for government long-
term vision: World Economic
Forum Global Competitiveness
Index. Response to the survey
question "In your country, to what
extent does the government have
a long term vision in place?" [1 =
Not at all; 7 = To a great extent].
Available at:
https://govdata360.worldbank.org
/indicators/h5b74eef6?country=B
[11 April 2021].

1 The scatter pattern – a

geographical clustering of
countries? Not entirely,
but to some extent.
2 Within a cluster, it
seems that long-term
vision is associated with
national development.
 Operationalizing “strategic policy process”
Strategy and coordination variables Policy variables

1. Are the actions of the public 1. Is public policy experimentation prior

authorities in line with a long-term to its general implementation a
strategic vision? [alignment] common practice?
2. Degree of coordination/ collaboration 2. Is the evaluation of public policies a
between ministries common practice?
3. Degree of coordination/ collaboration 3. [Public] Authorities’ capacity to adapt
within administrations policies to changes in the economic
and social contexts

Paul Joyce (2022) Strategic Management and Governance: Strategy Execution Around the World.
(Routledge Critical Studies in Public Management.) New York: Routledge.
Strategy and coordination variables versus Policy variables (2016)
Evaluation at
the heart of a
strong strategic
policy process
 2.2 A Whole-of-Society approach
THINK POINTS:

Dr Michael Ryan of World Health Organization, speaking on 5 March 2020, in the early months of the COVID-19
pandemic, said:

“And I was so encouraged to get a call from President Sebastián Piñera of Chile. ... Another excellent discussion on
the global situation, on the importance of whole government approach.[...] These are the approaches we’re
saying are the right ones, and these are the approaches we’re saying are going to mobilise the whole government.
But not only the whole government, but that whole government should mobilise the whole society.” Source:
https://www.who.int/ [7 April 2020]

How would you rate the Government of Indonesia in terms of its ability to use a whole-of-society approach in a
pandemic or to use it to take up a challenge such as the climate crisis? Does it have enough ways and means to
encourage private businesses to work towards long-term strategic visions for Indonesia and in support of desired
national outcomes?
Operationalizing a whole-of-society
approach
Using IPD 2016 Data
3 A Strategic State
THINK POINTS
Does Indonesia’s Government need to make greater use of strategic management as a tool
of public governance?

Could the government be more successful and deliver more desired national outcomes if it
strengthened strategic state capabilities?
The Three
Factors of a
Strategic State
Credibility check: Does strategic state development correlate with
estimates of government effectiveness (published by World Bank)?
 Strong scores on
the strategic state
index correlates
with good
performance as
measured by high
scores on the
Human
Development
Index and the
Environmental
Performance
Comparing Indonesia with, say, Italy, Saudi Arabia, etc Index.
suggests existence of other factors causing
national development – it is not just strategic state capabilities.
A strategic state
as a part of a
public
governance
system
 Public
governance
system and
national
development
 An exploratory probe:
conjunction of extent of
leadership approval and strategic
state index

Performance measured by HDI

and EPI

Leadership approval and strategic

state index correlate? (Yes,
correlation was slight at r = 0.44)

Did Indonesia have a high score

on leadership approval in 2014?
4 The quality of public services
THINK POINTS:
Should Indonesia place more emphasis on aligning public services (health,
education, transport, etc.) with desired national outcomes and national
development?
Can strategic policy-making and engaging with business, NGOs, communities,
citizens etc be used to increase the quality and alignment of public services?
A correlational analysis of IPD (2016) and
other data was consistent with this model:

Strategic policy
National
process, strategic Quality of public
development (HDI
state, and public services (IPD 2016)
and EPI)
governance
There is a clear
correlation
between strategic
state capabilities
and the quality of
public services
 Quality of public
services correlated
with the
development of the
public governance
system

Other factors?
5 Strategic leadership challenges
and Crisis Handling
THINK POINTS
Logically we might expect that government strategic leaders have strategic intentions and
visions they want to realise and therefore want a civil service that is highly capable to
maximise the chances of the intentions and visions becoming a reality.
Logically it must surely be easier for civil servants to succeed in their tasks if the
government strategic leaders are intelligent, competent and have clear priorities?
Therefore, can we assume that government strategic leaders and the civil service have a
relationship of interdependence?
Towards an understanding of how public leaders mobilize
society to take up big challenges that face us today - such as
sustainability (the 2030 Agenda), climate crisis, pandemics ....

1. STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP: leaders who enjoy the approval of the public

2. STRATEGIC STATE CAPABILITIES: The government/civil service having the
required capabilities – including the capabilities needed for focused and
organised government action and the capabilities needed for
government agility
3. HONEST PUBLIC SECTOR: a public sector relatively free of the taint of
corruption

These three factors may seem plausible but are they really of importance?
Indonesia - an extraordinary level
of public confidence in government in 2018

Indonesia’s extraordinary
level of public confidence
in government in 2018 –

but also note the general

point:

The public of a country

tended to have a higher
confidence in Government
(%) if the Government has
a high score on the
strategic state index.
In the case of
Indonesia, the
public’s approval of
leaders is associated
with high public
confidence in
government

Source of data:
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/
gallup/507950/confidence-
governments-lowest.aspx
[11 July 2023]
LEADERSHIP and
societal
mobilization to take
up internal and
external challenges
IPD 2016
Does the elite have a
capacity to mobilize
society to take up
challenges?

Rating of mobilization
capacity low to strong
(IPD has a scale of 0-4)

Note: I don’t have

data for Indonesia
in 2014
STRATEGIC STATE CAPABILITIES
and societal mobilization
Indonesia’s elite judged to have
strong mobilization capacity in 2016
even though strategic state
capabilities were relatively weak

IPD 2016
Does the elite have a capacity to mobilize
society to take up challenges?

Rating of mobilization capacity low to

strong (IPD has a scale of 0-4)
CORRUPTION

The perception of low levels

of corruption in the public
sector (CPI Index ) is
associated with elites having
a strong capacity for the
mobilization of society to
take up internal and external
challenges
The data on perceptions
of corruption used in this
analysis was obtained from:
https://www.transparency.org
 Strategic Leadership in a Crisis

1. In 2020 there were countries that appeared to have strategic state capabilities in
abundance but responded slowly and ineffectively when COVID-19 struck (specifically
USA, UK, Netherlands, Sweden). These four countries had leaders that initially
considered or supported the desirability of a “herd immunity” solution to the crisis
Lesson for the future? A leader’s intentions matter, including when the intentions are
wrong or mistaken.
2. The dependence of the civil service on good government leadership may be most critical
at the start of an unexpected but deadly pandemic.
3. If challenges such as the climate crisis call for a societal response, then strategic leaders
must work to bring the public and business (and others) into a cooperative and
collaborative relationship with government ministers and civil servants.
 Different responses to COVID-19
produced different trajectories of
cumulative mortality rates.

Indonesia was in a group of

countries – from various parts of the
World – which for most of the first
year (2020) had a low cumulative
mortality rate and which did not
suffer a big increase in the rate
between April and November 2020.

Joyce, P. (2021) Public Governance, Agility, and Pandemics: A Case Study of the UK Response to COVID-19.
International Review of Administrative Sciences. January 2021. DOI: 10.1177/0020852320983406
And different
trajectories of
cumulative
mortality rates
produced
different
responses by the
public
6 Sustainable development as a
strategic challenge
THINK POINTS:
Should governments in general be developing their strategic
capabilities, increasing their financial capacity, or should the
government leaders increase their commitment to delivering the 2030
Agenda? Or all of them?
Indonesia – a top
improver after 2015
as measured by
changes in the SDG
Index score
Data from Sachs, J.D.,
Lafortune, G., Fuller, G.,
Drumm, E. (2023).
Implementing the SDG
Stimulus. Sustainable
Development Report
2023. Paris: SDSN,
Dublin: Dublin University
Press, 2023.
10.25546/102924
 Indonesia and the
Sustainability Agenda
after 2015

• Considering a sample of 63
countries, Indonesia was one of the
countries that had progressed a lot in
terms of cutting poverty in its
population: along with Bangladesh,
Cambodia, India, and Pakistan.
• However, Indonesia’s carbon dioxide
emissions went up from 1.962 tons
per capita in 2015 to 2.282 tons per
capita in 2019.

Ref: Joyce, Paul (2022) Strategic

Management and Governance: Strategy
Execution Around the World. (Routledge
Critical Studies in Public Management.)
New York: Routledge.
 Resilience and the SIDIK – Indonesia’s
climate vulnerability
Climate Crisis – the assessment tool
challenge of
adaptation efforts
Preparation of
Indonesia’s National
• “The world is already experiencing Adaptation Plan
changes in average temperature, shifts
in the seasons, an increasing
frequency of extreme weather events,
and slow onset events.
• The faster the climate changes and
the longer adaptation efforts are put
off, the more difficult and expensive
responding to climate change will be.”
•
(https://unfccc.int/topics/adaptation-
and-resilience/the-
bigpicture/introduction#:~:text=The%2
0National%20Adaptation%20Plan%20(
NAPs,and%20to%20facilitate%20the%
20integration [25 July 2024]
 Climate Vulnerability Assessment and
Developing a National Adaptation Plan
SIDIK A climate vulnerability assessment tool Strategy for Climate Crisis & National Adaptation Plan
“Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) recently won A whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach
a United Nations Public Service Award for its Vulnerability Index Data requires government strategy for the climate crisis to be
Information System (known as SIDIK). integrated with other government strategies, requires
coordination and collaboration across government, and
requires partnership and cooperation beyond
The project won the award in the climate action category and was one government.
of 15 initiatives recognised globally. SIDIK is expected to play an
Arguably this is implicit in the advice given by Trittipo and
important role in shaping national climate policies in Indonesia. [...] colleagues on the integration of adaptation planning into
government decision making:
The system was developed by the MoEF to assist line ministries and
“Adaptation planning intersects with many public
local governments in conducting climate change vulnerability and risk priorities such as economic development, housing, public
assessments, with units of analysis down to the village level. [...] SIDIK is health, and climate change mitigation. By using these
being developed further to use geospatial datasets and to interoperate intersections, governments, multilateral institutions, and
with systems from other ministries and agencies.”
philanthropies can magnify adaptation impact and seek
to generate positive outcomes for broader groups of
stakeholders (as well as avoid unintended
Source: Global Government Forum (2024) consequences).”
(Trittipo, A. et al 2023)
 Some themes of the Lecture
• A case has been made that the strategic state capabilities of any government matter for the delivery of
important national outcomes
• Indonesia’s ability to mobilise whole-of-society approaches to take up challenges and respond to crises
and emergencies may significantly rest on public confidence in government and approval of leaders
• Indonesia in the first phase after the global adoption of the 2030 Agenda on sustainability has been
one of the “improvers” (September 2015 to 2020)
• Indonesia’s success in reducing poverty has been impressive in this first phase of the 2030 Agenda
• The geographical clustering that was apparent when looking at the slide on strength of awareness of
long-term strategic visions and national performance against HDI and EPI suggests my need to better
understand social and economic factors that form the context in which countries use strategic
management as a tool of public governance.
• Reflection: The theory of a strategic state may be a more precise formulation of government
effectiveness, but with its emphasis on long-term strategic visions, strategic policy making variables,
and its whole-of-society element it is – arguably – also a reflection of what is happening, for example,
in countries like Saudi Arabia with its ambitious plan for societal and economic transformation. As a
theory of government effectiveness, the theory of the strategic state also has the virtue of enabling us
to consider the importance of agility when looking at experiences and successes in Singapore and
China.
 Reference List
• Berry, F.S. (1994) Innovation in Public Management: The Adoption of Strategic Planning. Public Administration Review, July/August 194, Vol. 54,
No. 4, pages 322-330.
• Global Government Forum (2024) Indonesia’s award-winning climate vulnerability assessment tool. Sustainability Monitor.
• IPD (2016) Institutional Profiles Database. Available at: http://www.cepii.fr/institutions/en/ipd.asp [28 August 2018].
• Joyce, P. (2021) Public Governance, Agility, and Pandemics: A Case Study of the UK Response to COVID-19. International Review of Administrative
Sciences. January 2021. DOI: 10.1177/0020852320983406
• Joyce, Paul (2022) Strategic Management and Governance: Strategy Execution Around the World. (Routledge Critical Studies in Public
Management.) New York: Routledge.
• Light, P. (2014) A Cascade of Failures: Why Government Fails, and How to Stop It. Center for Effective Public Management at Brookings. July 2014.
[online] [4 March 2019]. From: https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-cascade-of-failures-why-government-fails-and-how-to-stop-it/
• Light, P. (2015) Vision + Action = Faithful Execution: Why Government Daydreams and How to Stop the Cascade of Breakdowns that Now Haunts
It. The Volker Alliance Issue Paper. December 2015. New York. [online]. From: https://www.volckeralliance.org/ [1 March 2019].
• OECD (2013), Poland: Implementing Strategic-State Capability, OECD Public Governance Reviews. Paris: OECD Publishing.
• OECD (2020) Policy Framework on Sound Public Governance: Baseline Features of Governments that Work Well. Paris: OECD Publishing.
• Sachs, J.D., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G., Drumm, E. (2023). Implementing the SDG Stimulus. Sustainable Development Report 2023. Paris: SDSN,
Dublin: Dublin University Press, 2023. 10.25546/102924
• Alexis Trittipo, Hamid Samandari, Homayoun Hatami, and Mihir Mysore (2003)Paving the way to resilience: Strengthening public sector
adaptation planning and execution. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/ [25 July 2024].
• World Bank (2005) National Visions Matter: Lessons of Success. Available at:
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/CDFINTRANET/Resources/nationalvisionsmatter.pdf [14 March 2019].