Reflections on rationality in strategic choice

Abstract

In this paper the author reflects on twenty years of experience in the development of a decision-centred approach to planning—the strategic choice approach—which has found application both as an aid to the understanding of observed planning processes and as a means of helping planners tackle difficult problems in practice.The author first summarises the view of planning as continuous management of uncertainty, which characterises the strategic choice approach. He then looks critically at the question of how far and in what circumstances it is relevant to regard the experience of uncertainty as a meaningful concept at the collective as well as the personal level.This leads to some modest attempts at reformulation of established concepts, which are offered as examples of the kind of progress that can be achieved through pursuing a rationality-seeking, if not a rational, approach to the complexities of planning practice.