Strategic management during cutbacks in the penitentiary sector

In this new paper in Financial Accountability and Management, Eduard Schmidt and I analyse how public managers interact with external stakeholders during cutbacks. Relying on strategic management scholarship, we develop an argument on why public managers decide for a closed or an open cutback management strategy. In the former, they try to close off the process for external stakeholders, whereas, in the latter, they actively engage with external stakeholders. A multiple qualitative case study of cutbacks in the Dutch prison sector shows that the choice to actively engage with external stakeholders depends on public managers’ position within the organisational hierarchy, their perception of the stakeholder environment and their process goals.