*6.1. Synthesis of Findings*

The study examined the results by comparing the findings, e.g., institutional pressures, strategic intent, strategic formulation and strategic change, to the principles in Bailey et al.'s (2000) management model to understand to what extent the model shared common propositions from a theoretic perspective. The findings show that institutional pressures have a significant negative influence on strategic formulation, and strategic intent positively influences strategic formulation. Strategic intent positively influences strategic change. This study also confirms that strategic formulation has a partial mediation effect on strategic intent and strategic change.

We also found that institutional pressures do not have a significant influence on strategic intent. However, they do significantly drive IGOs' strategic formulation process, and, at the same time, lead the IGO to become more rigid, in terms of barriers, beliefs, and assumptions, in its management and bureaucracy.

Although the literature on strategic management mostly emphasizes the integrated management model, the external as well as internal forces and the integrating effects with other management components, such as change management, corporate performance management and project portfolio management, should not be overlooked, especially in IGO organizations. Lastly, it was found that strategic formulation partially mediates the relationship between strategic intent and strategic change.

#### *6.2. Implications for Practitioners*

Implications for practitioners mostly involve the context of the IGOs, whereby strategic management should be a core training program for all managers. From the literature review and the models discussed, there is no doubt that pressures, drivers and assumptions behind institutional pressures and change management are numerous and varied, making

them very difficult for a practitioner to make sense and intelligibly act upon. Moreover, the reform requirements setting very high-performance expectations position managers to be reactive and distracted from systematically engaging in strategic development, implementation and change management. Our research herein provides some critical suggestions for practitioners:


Overall, our model provides all the elements for IGO practitioners to develop their own customized framework for their strategic plan and its management. They can break down their strategic framework into four components, representing the four constructs in our model, and then detail each of the components with the following information: current state, pressures, goals, schema, communication plan, stakeholder management, risks and their mitigation and key progress indicators. The survey questions in our study can then be adapted to represent the specific IGO and then used regularly (i.e., every 6 months) to measure how the strategy is being managed. The model can then be run using the structural equation modeling approach, and insights into the current state of strategic management affairs can be obtained and acted on. Other data analytics, such as cognitive mapping simulations, can be performed to help direct managers where to intervene to achieve continuous improvement to the strategic process.

#### *6.3. Limitations*

The limitations of our study represent the characteristics associated with the methodological elements of the paper, potentially influencing the interpretation of the results and findings. This includes any constraints that prevent us from generalizing the results and producing insights for practitioners and future research.

Due to the complexity of the nature of NGOs, it is difficult to infer cause–effect relationships, because influencing variables may even vary within the sub-areas or specialization of different types of NGOs. For example, some NGOs are technically oriented, while others are humanitarian and service oriented, and institutional pressures can be significantly different.

Another limitation to our study entails the data set, which may be considered small despite the strong goodness-of-fit of the final conceptual strategic model. Due to this limitation, we were not able to split the data across different types of IGO specializations and different management positions. In the same vein, generalization of the results should be handled with caution.

#### *6.4. Recommendation for Future Research*

As mentioned earlier, publications (especially empirical) in the area of strategic management in the NGO sector are relatively scarce, and many opportunities for future research exist. These opportunities lie along two axes. The first axis includes strategic management

studies of different types of organizations in the public sector, such as the UN and its agencies, municipalities, academic institutions and international NGOs, to understand commonalities and differences, while at the same time formulating factors for successful and sustainable strategic development. The second axis entails the continued empirical testing and validation of strategic management models (originally designed for the private sector) to public sector institutions. As we have seen in the methodology of this study, our approach presents opportunities to adopt and reformulate the private sector models into a usable framework for public sector institutions. Reusable and interoperable strategic management models have many advantages that merit further research.

More specifically, and in relation to our final strategic management model for NGOs, we view our results to open the door for more in-depth analysis regarding the constructs and the relationships between them. Firstly, the business of NGOs is complex, and our research indicates that institutional pressure is a subject matter of great importance, especially since practitioners always struggle with how to manage strategy within the boundaries of power dynamics. This area of research is weak, and a Google search produces 17 articles, only 3 of which are related to public institutions. The rest are within different contexts, such as smalland medium-size enterprises, social responsibility, internationalization and innovation.

Another very important research area is the extension of our study to better understand the mediating versus moderating effects of strategic intent and strategic formulation on the relationship between institutional pressures and change. Ultimately, research in this area should result in guidance for practitioners regarding the continuous improvement of IGO efficiencies and effectiveness, especially since they operate on voluntary funds from member states and donors. This can only be achieved through proper strategic change management.

Moreover, recent innovation in strategic management modeling follows primarily quantitative (i.e., game theory), system (i.e., holism and synergy) and situational approaches, and presents opportunities to explore their application within IGOs and even public institutions in general. Some of these new concepts include a systems approach to strategic management, the application of chaos theory to strategic management and the blue ocean strategy management. At the same time, future research, in light of our rationale herein and our findings, needs to incorporate dynamics into how we think of strategy in the public sector.

It is worth noting that the data in our study come from a specific sector, the IGOs area, in which institutional norms loom particularly large. Although legitimacy concerns or the value of being perceived as leaders or regulators may not be as great in less-regulated industries, other research has suggested that gains from market or customer approval may also be found in different industries. However, more research is needed to establish the industry's role in setting boundary conditions for an effective strategic management process.

Last but not least, although the results show a good fit model for the data sample, it is important to validate the results with a larger data set.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, J.W. and R.S.; methodology, J.W. and R.S.; validation, L.W., H.G. and H.L.; formal analysis, J.W. and L.W.; investigation, J.W., L.W. and R.S.; data curation, L.W. and R.S.; writing—original draft preparation, J.W. and R.S.; writing—review and editing, R.S., H.L. and H.G.; supervision, R.S.; project administration, H.L. and H.G. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent to participate and publish was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** The survey instrument and data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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