Process is more important than product; Or throw out the plan and keep the planner

Abstract

The Myth of Rationality. To prepare a technology assessment is to engage in a struggle between openness and closedness. This is the inherent struggle of planning and forecasting, since one's objective is to include the significant and exclude the complicating. In technology assessment, this struggle is particularly awkward, since in principle the assessment should be open to the consideration of side‐effects and ricochet effects and to alternative future environments; yet in practice there are limitations on time, personnel and funding, and limitations on the willingness of decision‐makers to assimilate a complicated, differentiated, equivocating analysis. So closedness is imposed where there might be openness.

Citation

Mendell, J.S. and Lynn Tanner, W. (1975), "Process is more important than product; Or throw out the plan and keep the planner", Planning Review, Vol. 3 No. 4, pp. 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb053721