Determinants of Success and Failure in the Implementation of Strategic Plans in the Municipal Districts of Prague, Brno and Ostrava

This thesis examines strategic planning at the level of municipal districts and boroughs of the statutory cities of Prague, Brno and Ostrava. The main objective is to identify the factors influencing the success of the development and implementation of strategic development plans and, based on the findings, to formulate practical recommendations. The research involved an assessment of 31 valid strategic plans using an evaluation framework adapted from international studies to the Czech context, a questionnaire survey among representatives of 43 municipal districts and boroughs, and three semi-structured interviews. The analysed strategic plans demonstrate a relatively high level of quality in terms of goal formulation and data foundations, but reveal significant shortcomings in implementation, monitoring and evaluation. A statistically significant positive relationship was confirmed between document quality and municipal population size, but not between quality and the actual utilisation of the plan in practice. The success of implementation is therefore primarily determined by institutional and organisational factors, in particular the support of political and administrative leadership, organisational capacity, actor motivation, the degree of participation, and the method of plan preparation. The contribution of this thesis lies in providing a comprehensive overview of the state of strategic planning at this hitherto little-explored level of local government, in verifying the transferability of foreign evaluation methods, and in formulating concrete recommendations for stakeholders aimed at improving the effectiveness of strategic management processes, as well as enhancing transparency and credibility of local governance.