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Strategic management (SM) is argued to be increasingly important for shaping the performance of public organizations (Poister, 2010; Andrews et al. 2012). In relation to performance, activities of monitoring and evaluation are described as important to succeed with strategy work in public sector (Plant 2009; Poister 2010), but few studies have been done on this area (Höglund 2015; Höglund et al., 2018). This is despite the fact that an important part of SM in the public sector is reporting on performance through some form of administrated performance information (see e.g. Weiss, 2016).  

It is, nevertheless, not easy to incorporate SM into the public sector (Elbanna et al., 2016; Poister 2010; Weiss 2016), as these theories builds on private sector ideas that focus on profitability, competitive advantage, a unique market position, and growth through market-shares, performance aspects not always well-suited to the public sector (Ferlie and Ongaro 2015; Höglund  et al., 2018; Lane and Wallis 2009). One of the few that explore possible performance measurements in public sector context is Lane (2008) who suggest that public sector should focus on delivering service e.g. the quantity of service, quality of service, service satisfaction and distribution of service. That this kind of performance measurements are important to understand in order to get an idea of what kind of value a public organization is contributing to the society and its citizens. Drawing upon the aspects of performance and public value we introduce public value management (PVM) by addressing the strategic questions of (Moore, 1995; Stoker 2006): Is it valuable for the public? Is it legitimate and politically supported? Do we have the operational capacity? In this way contributing with an analytical framework of SM in public sector that focus on performance and its relation to public value.

In short, the proposed paper can be seen as an attempt to meet up with the call to enhance our understanding of SM and performance reporting in relation to public value. We do this by presenting a qualitative case study of how the cultural department at Region Stockholm, in Sweden, has been affected by the organizations work to achieve a congruent SM that will give them an overall direction with common work practices. In this way Region Stockholm takes on an approach to SM that will give the organization a holistic view of all their departments by mixing long-term thinking, goal analysis, and evaluation of values, goals, and priorities (cf. Mintzberg et al., 1987).

Our results indicate that the work with SM at Region Stockholm gives the culture department and opportunity to become more visible in the organization by getting their own goal in the strategic plan and are included in other departments goals. However, the goals and the performance measurements do position culture as a mean, rather than a goal. In this way culture becomes nothing more than an instrument and a commodity to reach better performance for Region Stockholm as an organization. In this way culture tend to lose its own value, and consequently how public culture will generate value to its citizens.