CHAPTER 8 - Strategic Forum

Abstract

This chapter presents a systematic account of the dialectics at the core of the strategic forum. The strategic forum defines the scope of participation in decision making, which can be restricted to key decision makers in a dominant coalition of an organization, or it can be broadened to include elements of environment-like markets, employees, or suppliers. The strategic forum is also predicated on the developing computer technology for facilitating group decision making. The intent of the strategic forum is not only to surface assumptions around strategic planning proposals but also, with its significantly enhanced logical framework, broadening the understanding of a proposal to address some challenge, alerting people to the deeper significance of some problem, harnessing the creativity of a broad base of individuals, preparing people for change, identifying positions and the people who take them, pointing to useful and relevant information, and creating a basis for moving beyond the plan and counter plan to a possible synthesis based on a deeper insight into the information created by the strategic debate.