Hoshin Kanri and Portfolio Kanban Management: A Conceptual Framework for Strategic Management in the Public Sector

There is an increasing focus on strategic management and an expectation of continuous improvement (CI) through the implementation of management systems, such as Lean thinking, in public organizations. The gap between strategy formulation and execution is argued as a major reason for the failure of strategies and their improvement initiatives. The Hoshin Kanri (HK) approach and Portfolio Kanban Management can be a powerful basis for the effective deployment and execution of strategic CI initiatives as they contribute to bridge this gap and eliminate the waste that comes from poor communication and direction. The necessity to develop related and underpinning managerial processes is found present in the Norwegian public sector. Based on the HK approach and Kanban principles, this paper present a conceptual framework that can support strategists in public organizations and their adaptation and implementation of Lean thinking as a means to pursue CI on a system level. Further research is needed to test and pilot the presented framework to develop, validate and generalize its overall functionality in practice.