http://mos.sciedupress.com Management and Organizational Studies Vol. 2, No. 3; 2015 Published by Sciedu Press 40 ISSN 2330-5495 E-ISSN 2330-5509 Organizational Development within the Government Sector: An Innovative Strategic Framework Ali M. Al-Khouri 1,* 1 British Institute of Technology and E-commerce, London, UK *Correspondence: British Institute of Technology and E-commerce, London, UK. E-mail: alkhouriali@gmail.com Received: November 14, 2014 Accepted: April 20, 2015 Online Published: July 7, 2015 doi:10.5430/mos.v2n3p40 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/mos.v2n3p40 Abstract Today’s business world is more complex and fragmented with new underlying terms and concepts. As such, organizations are forced to understand the dynamics shaping today’s fuzzy world. Government organizations amid all this have been facing turbulent times to fulfill their objectives. Existing research that provides qualitative cases from governments’ fields of practice is limited and narrowed in scope that is either of academic or commercial orientation. This article explores and presents a case study of an innovative strategic organizational development framework implemented at one of the most successful organizations in the Middle East, which is also internationally renowned for best practices in management and technology implementations. The framework demonstrates the overall organizational factors that have been considered as key drivers for organizational performance and excellence. Its primary contribution is to highlight the benefits of having the organization’s strategy as the major driver for the selection and implementation of different management tools and processes to improve organizational performance and excellence. The framework represents a structured approach for the development of key management systems to accelerate the execution of a long-term strategic plan and the attainment of its expected outcomes, highlighting essential focus areas required to maximize organizational effectiveness and maturity. It also serves as a guide for organizations in developing and/or enhancing existing organizational management practices. Keywords: Organizational development, Strategic planning, Strategic framework, Organizational excellence, Public sector strategies 1. Introduction Organizations today face an ever-changing landscape of macroeconomic realities (Accenture, 2013). Industry trends and internal challenges are forcing organizations to radically rethink their business and operating models to be better aligned with the changing world and capitalize on value-generation opportunities (ibid). Among the many approaches to address such challenges is the application of strategic planning and development. From a macro perspective, the formal appearance of strategies in businesses was in the early ‘60s. The strategies focused on needs related to survival in the face of tough competition and were driven by profit needs amid rising operational costs. Strategy in governments is a recent phenomenon though and has become an important fundament to address the changing dynamics of governance in the government business. However, research studies of the past 30 years revealed that more than two-thirds of strategies fail (Branston et al., 2009; Chapman, 2002; Devarajan and Kanbur, 2012; Heeks, 2003; Winston, 2006). In fact, others who have investigated strategy implementations found this to be more alarming, with an 80-90% failure rate. Another study found that from 2000 to 2010, less than half of U.S. start-ups lasted more than 3 years (Cespedes et al., 2013). Fewer than 6% of surveyed organizations reached more than $10 million in revenue by 2010 (ibid.). Overall, the literature showed that corporate history is fraught with stories of failure. While reasons abound, failures are a fact, faced both in the corporate and the government sectors. There are many reasons behind such failure stories. Figure 1 depicts survey results of a study carried out in Europe that is very relevant to both the public- and private-sector organizations even today. Decades of research reports that most organizations fail at strategy implementation (Mass, 2014).