Barriers for the Strategic Planning Process in Public Universities in Sri Lanka: A Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

The organizations have to compete with many other organizations in the same industry. Therefore, they should identify the requirement of the internal and external environment and their requirement to come up with the most suitable outcomes. Strategic planning is an essential process for all the organizations. As we all know, what most of thr people in Sri Lanka believe is Sri Lankan public uiversities are failed to achive their targets well. The stategic planning aspect of Sri Lankan public universities is poor and they have failed to achive the strategic objectives well. This is highlighted as an important requirement of the strategic plan for public sector universities that can make radical changes. But most of the public universities failed to come up with a most suitable strategic plan for them which was investigated in this study. The researcher collected the information from Multi sources in-depth desk research and in-depth interview research to identify the barriers in strategic planning in public sector universities. This research adopted a purposive sampling method to collect data and conducted seven key in-depth interviews with strategic directors and registrars of the university system. The researcher identified six new themes as barriers in the Strategic Planning process. Key themes are Lack of Awareness in the strategic planning process, Digital Adoption, Solidarity, Transformation in management skills, Impact of the external environment, and Public Sphere and perception via social media and Media.