Planning & Hierarchy Sources

Planning Source - Alichia

"Planning is an integral part of everyday life in the home, in personal, occupational, and cultural affairs, in the conduct of business, military operations, and civil government." (1)

"Identification of the knowledge needed for effective planning accompanied its evolution as a successful operational activity. Until recently this consisted of knowledge borrowed from traditional academic disciplines. Planning is now emerging as a distinctive field of knowledge with its own area of intellectual considerations, methods of utilizing information, analysis, projection, reaching conclusions, presentation, and means and methods of implementation." (2)

"Related fields of knowledge such as economics, political and social science, engineering, architecture, and law - regard some aspect of planning as their special competence, and other professions consider some part of its effectuation as their operational responsibility." (3)

"Depending on many factors, planning is institutionalized in different ways in different applications, cultures, and nations." (4)

"Planning may be intuitive and automatic, or conscious and deliberate. The latter includes many types and applications of planning. Whereas the specific objectives of most planning programs are subject to differences in opinion, the process of attaining a necessary or desirable result is accepted as an essential part of human endeavor." (5)

"The objectives, methods, and potentialities of planning vary greatly among countries, cultures, political and social systems, and stages of economic development. Nonetheless, there are common characteristics of the process wherever and whenever applied. And certain considerations are commonly taken into account in successful planning." (6)

(1) Melville C. Branch, "Planning: Universal Process", Published by Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990, p.ix.
(2) Ibid., p.x-xi.
(3) Ibid., p.xi.
(4) Ibid., p.xi-xii.
(5) Ibid., p.xii.
(6) Ibid., p.xii.

Hierarchy Source - Alichia

"One important element..from this configuration of hierarchy is communication. Some theorists believe this aspect to be of such importance that they define hierarchy as "centralized communication systems." Whether hierarchy is defined as a communications system or not, the flow of information up and down the pyramidal structure forms an important aspect of power, privilege, and authority relationships. In most instances, the possession of information or knowledge constitutes power. It is the possession of information, on one hand, and the deprivation of it, on the other that keeps the systems of domination in operation."(1)

"Theorists with the most positive view of hierarchy come primarily from the rational systems perspective. As one would expect, they view hierarchy as the most efficient means of attaining organization goals. The "essential elements" of the rational perspective are goal specificity and formalization. Specification of goals allows the organization to select among desired activities and design a specific organization structure to accomplish those desired tasks."(2)

"Hierarchy's benefits include providing the necessary structure for what is perceived to be efficient management. By specifying roles and coordinating tasks within the organization, more time is spent in working towards goals than in working out power and authority relations. This part of the organization is already a 'given'."(3)

(1) Kathleen P. Iannello, "Decisions Without Hierarchy: Feminist Interventions in Organization Theory and Practice", Published by Routledge, 1992, p.16.
(2) Ibid., p.18.
(3) Ibid., p.18.

Planning Source - Cameron

Hierarchy Source - Cameron

Planning Source - Kenneth

"Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people
Strategic planning is the formal consideration of an organization's future course.
All strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions:

1. "What do we do?"
2. "For whom do we do it?"
3. "How do we excel?" [1]

"an act of formulating a program for a definite course of action; "the planning was more fun than the trip itself"
the act or process of drawing up plans or layouts for some project or enterprise
the cognitive process of thinking about what you will do in the event of something happening; "his planning for retirement was hindered by several uncertainties" [2]

"Planning in organizations and public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired goal on some scale. As such, it is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior. This thought process is essential to the creation and refinement of a plan, or integration of it with other plans, that is, it combines forecasting of developments with the preparation of scenarios of how to react to them." [3]


[1]- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_planning
[2]- wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
[3]- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning

Hierarchy Source - Kenneth

"The Hierarchy theory is a dialect of general systems theory. It has emerged as part of a movement toward a general science of complexity. Rooted in the work of economist, Herbert Simon, chemist, Ilya Prigogine, and psychologist, Jean Piaget, hierarchy theory focuses upon levels of organization and issues of scale. There is significant emphasis upon the observer in the system. "

"Hierarchical levels: levels are populated by entities whose properties characterize the level in question. A given entity may belong to any number of levels, depending on the criteria used to link levels above and below. For example, an individual human being may be a member of the level i) human, ii) primate, iii) organism or iv) host of a parasite, depending on the relationship of the level in question to those above and below."

"The ordering of levels: there are several criteria whereby other levels reside above lower levels. These criteria often run in parallel, but sometimes only one or a few of them apply. Upper levels are above lower levels by virtue of: 1) being the context of, 2) offering constraint to, 3) behaving more slowly at a lower frequency than, 4) being populated by entities with greater integrity and higher bond strength than, and 5), containing and being made of - lower levels."

"A SUMMARY OF THE PRINCIPLES OF HIERARCHY THEORY" By
Timothy F. Allen, Professor of Botany,
University of Wisconsin Madison

Planning Source - Essmael

Hierarchy Source - Essmael