Application of Strategic Management to Tax Reform

Abstract

This study examines how strategic management mediates digital transformation arising from tax reforms in selected Caribbean tax administrations. Focusing on Grenada, Jamaica, and St Kitts & Nevis, it addresses a gap in the literature by analysing the managerial and institutional conditions under which reform driven digitalisation translates into sustainable administrative effectiveness rather than fragmented or symbolic change. Adopting an interpretive qualitative research design, the study draws on thirty semi-structured interviews with tax administration officers across the three jurisdictions. Data were analysed using comparative, theory informed thematic analysis to examine how participants perceived and enacted strategic management practices within resource constrained and highly institutionalised public sector environments. Although tax reforms provide the authorising mandate for digitalisation, the findings indicate that strategic management determines whether digital transformation becomes coherent, embedded, and sustainable. Four interdependent dimensions, strategic leadership, proactive strategic management, strategic direction, and operational efficiency, emerged as central mediating capacities. Jamaica exhibited stronger governance alignment and institutional coherence, enabling more sustained digital progress, while Grenada and St Kitts & Nevis experienced uneven outcomes shaped by capacity constraints, coordination challenges, and fragile strategic alignment. The study is based on participants’ perceptions within three small state jurisdictions, limiting statistical generalisability. However, the findings underscore that digital transformation in tax administration is best understood as a governance centred and socio technical process, in which leadership, strategic coherence, and institutional capacity condition the realisation of reform outcomes over time. The study contributes to strategic management and public sector digital transformation scholarship by conceptualising strategic management as a mediating institutional capacity linking reform intent to sustainable performance outcomes. By situating digital tax reform within a sustainability oriented governance framework, particularly in relation to effective institutions (SDG 16) and sustainable innovation (SDG 9), it offers empirically grounded insights relevant to policymakers, tax administrators, and development partners operating in Small Island Developing States.