Community strategies: mainstreaming sustainable development and strategic planning?

Abstract

Abstract New legislation places a statutory duty on all local authorities in England and Wales to prepare ‘community strategies’ for promoting the economic, social and environmental well‐being of their areas, and contributing to the achievement of sustainable development in the U.K. This paper suggests that community strategies herald the demise of the frequently marginalized Local Agenda 21 strategies and offers the prospect of mainstreaming the principles of sustainable development into the core of local governance. However, the author argues that community strategies are unlikely to be effective if their preparation is grounded on the use of the rational or classical model of strategic management. A critical review is undertaken of this model and attention is especially drawn to a number of key inherent fallacies including spurious rationality, linear as opposed to nonlinear thinking, over‐formalization and a separation of the planning and operational elements of the process. The paper concludes with some thoughts on the potential contribution of alternative strategic management paradigms, and their implications for the preparation of community strategies. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment

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