Reporting a Success Story in the Context of Public Sector: Factors That Matters

Abstract

Given the unclear nature of defining any business success stories in the literature, the present article examines the use of factor analytic techniques on the evaluations of 32 success stories presented by different organisations in the 1st National Forum for success stories in Bahrain held in October, 2011. Standard evaluation forms were designed by an independent expert’s panel incorporating 15 items. Each success story was evaluated by 6-8 public administration consultants. Data were subjected to EFA techniques using Maximum Likelihood Extraction with Promax Rotation, 239 evaluation forms were examined. Three factors were retained by the analysis (a) clarity, (b) competitiveness and (c) sustainability. Recommendations are proffered for future practice as regards of analytic and evaluative decisions of success stories and reporting it in an empirical language. Numerous lectures, guidelines and descriptions exist to aid writing a success story; nonetheless, these remain to be an ‘opinion’ or a ‘reflection’ of their writer. The findings of the analysis in this research reveal that three factors are considered essential for an effectively reported success story: (a) clarity, (b) competitiveness and (c) sustainability.