Relating systems concepts and public planning

✍ Scribed by Gerald Nadler

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1980
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 969 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0032-2687
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00138157

✦ Synopsis

Scientism so pervades our society that its methodological arm, the research approach, is assumedto be de rigeur for establishing policies and solving problems. Using the research approach, modern disciplinary developments created many techniques, such as operations research/management science/systems analysis (OR/MS/SA), ostensibly for finding solutions to pressing organizational and societal problems. This paper's emphasis on scientism and the research approach is deliberate -these concepts are the "Weltanschauung" of OR/M S/SA, the major "systems concepts" available. Their analysis, modeling of what exists, quantification, and reductionism are assumed to be the beauty of their logic and their only rationality. Public planning also assumes that analysis, modeling, quantification, and reduetionism are the fundamental parts of problem solving and policy setting. This paper shows how this research approach and the unstated assumption that it must be used when establishing policies or solving problems now loom as the problems, and may be the biggest stumbling blocks to finding the good solutions society needs.

Planning with the Research Approach

Public planning and policy-making occur in a wide variety of circumstances. To illustrate the depths of commitment to the unstated assumption (the use of the research approach in problem solving and policy making), project yourself into each of the following examples. Even though each is a relatively simple real policy and problem situation, state how you would approach it.