| Abstract: | Some planning activities of organizations operate happily; others are muddled or ritualistic. A review of the activities which operate happily suggests a useful distinction between the performative sense of planning as doing something (plans as promises) and the indicative sense of planning as describing something (e.g. plans as forecasts). This distinction is important in the context of the management of public enterprises, where an inaccurate view of what'corporate planning' can achieve has distracted attention from unresolved problems of gaining commitment to agreed targets. |
