Beyond Implementation: An Analysis Of The Resistance To Policy Analysis^†

Abstract

The resistance to the use of analysis has traditionally been explained in terms of “implementation”: managers do not understand analysis or are not sold on it; analysis lacks the support or participation of top management; analytic solutions are blocked by managerial attitudes, organizational climates, politics. This paper finds these explanations superficial, arguing that we must look beyond implementation - to formulation — for the reasons why analysis, especially policy analysis, is resisted. Analysis denies the importance of dynamic factors characteristic of policy making; it fails to handle the critical soft data; despite claims of objectivity, it drives the organization towards a narrow economic morality which sometimes amounts to a social immorality; it tends to encourage bureaucratization and centralization; and it disregards another, fundamentally different mode of thinking — generally called intuition — which better suits many of the needs of policy making. There is, however, a role to be played by “soft analysis,” carried out in interdisciplinary teams, as in the earliest days of operations research.