Approaches to strategic monitoring: A case study approach

The monitoring of plans in a strategic context aims to do more than accumulate and corroborate breadth and depth of all information requirements of a complex organisation. Strategic monitoring, whilst including the quantitative role of gathering facts to improve analytical decision-making, is necessarily qualitatively involved with the fostering of relationships with various tiers of authorities and associations, and with environmental groups. The system requirements of qualitative monitoring are not always as reliant upon specialised, sophisticated computer monitoring as upon flexible organisations of internal staff who are encouraged, at the earliest phases of decision-making, to investigate the deficiencies and criticisms of county plans. Qualitative monitoring is a more sensitive instrument for determining how politics affects planning, and vice versa, and for gradually reconciling conflicts. The nature and extent of both approaches to monitoring are here examined in the cases of two U.K. county planning departments.