Soft situational strategic planning (SSSP): A method and case study of its application in a Brazilian municipality

Abstract

Municipal government planning is challenging in the extreme being characterised by ill-structured and messy problems, the complexity of which is compounded by often conflicting views and priorities of multiple stakeholders. In South America, Situational Strategic Planning (SSP) is a wide spread method of such planning. The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of a proposed multi-methodological approach, Soft Situational Strategic Planning (SSSP) in a South American municipal government. SSSP is a variant of SSP enhanced with elements of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) and Strategic Choice Approach (SCA). Through an action research case study in a Brazilian municipality, we implemented SSSP through a strategic planning cycle. The findings suggest that SSSP complement the SSP process regarding the implementation and monitoring of strategy. The application also indicated that SSSP has the potential to make government planning processes more structured for policy makers.

Keywords:

• Problem structuring
• situational strategic planning
• government planning
• soft systems methodology
• strategic choice approach

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Carlos. Matus started his career as a researcher and teacher on the field of public planning and management at the UN Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) in Santiago. He was a member of Salvador Allende’s government (1970-1973) and fulfilled the functions of Minister of Economy and Head of the Central Bank. At the coup he was imprisoned with other ex-ministers at the prison of the Island of Dawson (extreme south of Chile). In 1976 he was exiled to Venezuela, where he resumed his work as a UN expert and started developing PES, through the organisation of seminars and the publication of books. In 1987 he founded ALTADIR, a specialised research and training institute on the field of public steering.