Abstract
Is it ironic that after twenty-five years of democracy in South Africa, municipalities are still plagued by serious service delivery problems? The protests in the country are violent and seem to be too much for municipalities to handle. The reason among others is that many municipalities design strategies that are not implemented and communicated to staff. This then results in poor service delivery leading to also the protests. Strategy is the game plan of managers to deal with all manners of situations facing organisations to ensure achievement of pre-determined results. It is an expectation of stakeholders that managers should be able to solve organisational problems or at least be able to tell what it will take to resolve them. The purpose of this study is the investigation of strategic management process in local government using Ekurhuleni municipality as a case study. The qualitative method was used where purposive sampling method was applied. The content and thematic analysis was used to analyse data. The study found that the city does not communicate strategy with employees and the formulation of strategy is not inclusive of all stakeholders. The study conclude that the city needs to align corporate strategy with IDP and recommend focused communication and further studies on the topic using mixed method and larger sample.
M.Com. (Business Management)