Structured Strategic Contingency Planning

Abstract

As was suggested in the previous chapter, when an organization is resident in a context characterized by moderate state-stochasticity, it might attempt to answer for strategic readiness requirements by electing to operate under a bipartite, model-based contingency planning platform: [E] ↔ [R]. Again, both [E] and [R] can be expected to house referents that are comprensible as models … as scenarios and scripts, respectively. Given the preadaptive orientation of traditional contingency planning, the contingency event set [E] would be expected to contain the set of environmental and/or competitive state-level events to which an organization may be subject at some future period(s). The response-side set [R] will thus ideally contain a predefined and fully-invested strategic plan available for execution should any member of the contingency event set actually occur. In terms of its broad practical implications then, a contingency planning structure of this sort may be seen as a basis for bringing some degree of formal discipline to strategic analysis operations conducted over what is referred to as the SWOT quartet … the assessment of Strengths, Weaknesses, Oppportunities and Threats.