TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OF PLANNING: TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS (Hansen Ozbekhan)

Presented by J. B. Nangpuhan II (MPA Student) to Dr. C. G. Song, Professor of Public Administration at Chonnam National University, South Korea under 'Introduction to Public Administration'. Date presented: 15Dec2010. 

 

SUMMARY

 

I: The real intention of the author is to develop approaches leading to a general theory. This allows him to organize the descriptive conclusions about planning, environment, purpose, and plan.

 

1.       Planning

It can be defined in its greatest generality as a future-directed decision process. The fundamental characteristic of this process is that it is conscious and rational. It represents acting on some object, defined as environment. Such action is undertaken for the purpose of effecting changes in the environment. Planning, therefore, can be said to include the following: (1) perception of the environment; (2) definition of the purpose of the changes one wishes to effect in the environment; (3) design of the acts whereby the environment will be altered.


2.       Environment

Environment is a dynamic and complex ecosystem whose spatial and temporal characteristics are important for planning. Any given moment in this ecosystem represents a situation, namely, a particular conjuncture of events having a specific configuration as well as a particular dynamic. It is by affecting such situations that people change their environment.

3.       Purpose

Purpose is defined as the intent that is intrinsic to planning action and gives it direction. In planning, the main purpose of action is to create controlled change in the environment. The reason for wanting change in the environment is that complex dynamic situations tend toward increasing degrees of de-organization (ecological imbalance) unless higher order organizing activities are introduced. Therefore, the purpose of effecting that situation through planning is either to solve the problems that affect the situation, or to improve the situation, or to establish a general control and dynamic over the environment so as to obtain organized progress within it.

4.       Plan

Plan refers to an integrative hierarchically organized action construct in which various kinds of decisions are functionally ordered. There are three levels of functional relations between a plan and the environment:

(a)    Policy making functions which result in normative planning and are directed toward the search and establishment of new norms that will help define those values which will be more consonant with the problematic environment. In other words, normative planning occurs when the purpose of planning action is to change the value system in order to achieve the required consonance with the environment. The statements of normative planning are derived from values and defined in terms of “oughts.”

(b)   Goal-setting functions which result in strategic plans wherein various alternative ways of attaining the objectives of the normative plan are reduced to those goals which can be achieved given the range of feasibilities involved and the optimum allocation of available resources.

(c)    Administrative functions which lead to operational planning wherein the strategies that will be implemented are ordered in terms of the priorities, schedules, etc., that the situation dictates. Operational planning is that part of the planning structure in terms of which changes in the environment are effected that are purely of a problem-solving nature. In other words, operational planning need not involve a consideration of value premises.

 

II: The author consciously avoided some points in order not to lose the main purpose of the discussion. He avoided to mention the issue of power, the question of who will plan, implement plans, apply plans, although it is one of the central problems that confronts us. According to the author, power is personal, social, institutional, situational – it is ecological. Power is at the heart of every argument with which planning is concerned. It represents control over one’s life and control over one’s environment. Another issue that was avoided to be mentioned by the author is the issue of new values. New relevancies call for new values – not values to be predicted, but values to be created now. These values must be made operational within new institutions. Values have to evolve through change. Such evolution requires that we design some responsiveness into our institutions.

 

CONCLUSION

This “post-industrial age” that we are at right now is getting bigger and bigger. It is so strange, so alien and disquieting. Planning (according to the author) should become the core and method of social science. The method of value analysis and formation, of policy generation, alternatives construction, choice, decision making, and implementation should be effected by the government.

 

Reference: Korean Association for Public Administration (1980). Selected Readings in Public Administration. South Korea: Da San Publishing Company. 470-47