Adapting Global Administrative Reforms to Local Contexts within Developing Countries: Insights into the Blue Ocean Strategy

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231198840
• Author: Shaimaa Magued
• Date: 01 November 2023
• Subject Matter: Perspectives

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231198840

Administration & Society

2023, Vol. 55(10) 1893 –1910

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997231198840

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Perspectives

Adapting Global

Administrative

Reforms to Local

Contexts within

Developing Countries:

Insights into the Blue

Ocean Strategy

Shaimaa Magued1

Abstract

As a subfield of Public Administration that is primarily concerned with

improving performance within state institutions, administrative reform

fails to fulfill its goals in developing countries due to the ethnocentricity

of ready-made and replicable global strategies. Administrative reforms

as top-down models of development marginalize local implementers

who neither understand nor support the full adoption of the assigned

models. Drawing on the significance of an all-inclusive synergy among local

stakeholders for successful change, this study introduces the Blue Ocean

strategy as an innovative managerial approach reflecting the temporal

and spatial particularities of developing countries’ operational contexts.

This study builds a conceptual framework for reforming public and non-

profit sectors in developing countries in light of the guidelines of the Blue

Ocean strategy as the expression of local stakeholders’ goal of improving

organizational performance in compliance with existing opportunities and

challenges. In doing so, it examines how the managers and employees of

1Cairo University, Giza, Egypt

Corresponding Author:

Shaimaa Magued, Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, al-Nahda

Square, Giza, 12613, Egypt.

Email: shaimaamagued@feps.edu.eg

1198840AAS0010.1177/00953997231198840Administration & SocietyMagued

research-article2023

1894 Administration & Society 55(10)

an Egyptian non-profit organization have benefited from the Blue Ocean

strategy in improving their NGO’s performance through the adoption of

effective strategic planning that restructured human resources functions

and boosted employees’ productivity. The author conducted seven open-

ended and semi-structured expert interviews with a selection of the NGO’s

working staff and two managers in order to depict how the Blue Ocean

strategy has enabled them to formulate and implement human resources

strategic management as a customized administrative reform conforming to

contextual exigencies.

Keywords

strategic management, human resources’ strategic planning, Blue Ocean

strategy, administrative reforms, public and non-profit organizations

Introduction

Governance, efficiency, effectiveness, accountability, and citizens’ satisfac-

tion have been foci for administrative reforms, establishing standardized

benchmarks for global performance starting from the 1980s onwards. Yet,

extensive studies have underlined the failure of these standards in steering

convergence of global public sector performance around unified values and

principles because of their ethnocentric foundations, top-down imposition,

marginalization of local implementers, and maladaptation to contextual par-

ticularities (Denhardt, 2000; Denhardt et al., 2013). The extensive applica-

tion of privatization, contracting-out, decentralization, and digitalization

across developing countries yielded corruptive practices and mediocre qual-

ity of services for citizens who remained unable to hold rulers accountable. In

light of structural, normative, and practical deficiencies within processes of

administrative reforms across developing countries, this study introduces a

theoretical construct for adapting administrative reforms to local specificities

by engaging local stakeholders in the formulation and implementation of ini-

tiatives for improving performance. Drawing inspiration from management

studies, the Blue Ocean strategy highlights an approach for appropriating

administrative reform initiatives and indigenizing its normative foundations,

means of implementation, and tools of evaluation.

Building on management scholarship, the Blue Ocean strategy refers to

unconventional means for locating new domains that companies, entrepre-

neurs, and investors have left untapped and unexplored toward recreating the

market, instigating demands, and standing out of competition (Mauborgne &

Kim, 2004). In contrast to the Red Ocean strategy’s reinvention of market