Process Skills on Strategic Thinking among Thai Public Executives: A Life-Long Development
Keywords:
Strategic thinking, a process model of strategic thinking, executive developmentAbstract
Senior executives in the public sector are considered a very important civil servant group for country development. Their good intention and broad work experience combined with their capacity of strategic thinking deems critical for effective state functioning. This research study was intended to assess and then compare a process model which consists of six strategic thinking skills, as proposed by Schoemaker, Krupp & Howland (2013), of participants in Thai leadership development programs. The study sample consists of a group of 547 training participants from different organizational culture whom attended the leadership training programs as follows: a number of 371 senior civil service executives, a number of 120 middle-level managers from the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA), and a number of 55 senior Thai local administration executives.
The data analyses revealed that the senior executives exhibited a considerably high level of strategic thinking across six skills: the sequential abilities used to anticipate, challenge, interpret, decide, align, and learn (mean range = 5.15 – 5.66 of 1-7 Likert rating scale). The two highest mean scores are on the Anticipation and Learning factors with the lowest on the Decision Making in all subgroups. One-way ANOVA exhibited statistically significant on the Anticipation and Alignment Factors (F = 3.598, p = .05; F = 5.290, p = 0.01). A post-hoc paired comparison analysis showed that the both superior significance was due to the higher mean scores of the civil service executive group over that of the PEA group. The t-test statistics of the total sample confirmed the traditional notion that male executives tend to significantly demonstrate higher levels of strategic thinking in three skills over those of the females. The statistically significant results are on the Challenge, Decision Making, and Alignment factors (t-tests = 3.045, p = 0.01; = 3.873, p = 0.00; = 2.215, p = 0.05, respectively).
The study provided a process model for developing executive strategic thinking via the lens of gender difference, team support, and organizational culture. Suggestions on how to design the process development on strategic thinking of the executives including the problems and future research studies are provided as well as the limitations of this study.
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