Territorial Management Control as a Lever for Resilience and Agility: The Case of Moroccan Local Governments

Abstract

This paper examines the extent to which territorial management control can serve as a lever for organizational resilience and agility in Moroccan local governments facing budgetary and institutional constraints. Despite a growing body of literature on public sector performance management, organizational resilience, and organizational agility, no systematic articulation between territorial management control, resilience, and agility has been proposed for Moroccan local governments; addressing this precise gap constitutes the purpose of this study. The article is a conceptual paper based on a narrative review of Scopus-indexed literature and a documentary analysis of Moroccan institutional reforms (2011 Constitution, 2015 Organic Law on Finance Laws). A comparative public-private analytical grid is used to identify transferable management practices. The study derives theoretical propositions rather than empirical results. It suggests that territorial management control may enhance resilience and agility through strategic alignment, performance measurement systems, organizational learning mechanisms, and adaptive decision-making processes. The conceptual analysis points to a significant maturity gap between private and public sector management control systems, while indicating that the 2011 Constitution and the 2015 budget reform provide enabling conditions for more agile territorial governance. Three critical success factors are inferred from the literature: strategic alignment of management control with local development objectives, investment in human capital and digital infrastructure, and progressive, selective hybridization of private-sector tools adapted to public service values. The contribution of the paper lies in integrating three previously separate bodies of literature within a unified analytical framework applied to Moroccan local governments, with cautious transferability to comparable decentralizing contexts. The study offers local decision-makers recommendations prioritized by implementation horizon and identifies avenues for future empirical validation of the proposed model.

JEL Classification: H70, H83, L38, M48

Paper type: Theoretical Research