izational Their typology， applied recently to public organizations in the United Kingdom， divides strategic actors into four general types: prospectors， defenders， analyzers， and This article begins by integrating work on strategy content or strategic management into the O'Toole-Meier formal theory of public This study shows that strategy content is a subset of generally accepted management functions in public The article then proceeds to test the strategic management concepts in a large， multiyear sample of public The results show that strategy can be separated out from other elements of management for a distinguishable assessment of its impact on organizational Unlike the predictions of Miles and Snow and the empirical findings of Boyne and Walker， however， we find that the defender strategy is the most effective for the primary mission of the organization and that the prospector and reactor strategies work best in regard to the goals of the more politically powerful elements of the organization's
