Analyzing Strategic Stance in Public Services Management: An Exposition of NCaRBS in a Study of Long-Term Care Systems

Abstract

This chapter describes the utilization of an uncertain reasoning-based technique in public services strategic management analysis. Specifically, the nascent NCaRBS technique (developed from Dempster-Shafer theory) is used to categorize the strategic stance of each state’s public long-term care (LTC) system to prospector, defender or reactor. Missing values in the data set are termed ignorant evidence and withheld in the analysis rather than transformed through imputation. Optimization of the classification of states, using trigonometric differential evolution, attempts to minimize ambiguity in their prescribed stance but not the concomitant ignorance that may be inherent. The graphical results further the elucidation of the uncertain reasoning-based analysis. This method may prove a useful means of moving public management research towards a state where LTC system development can be benchmarked and the relations between strategy processes, content, and performance examined.