An operational planning is a subset of strategic work plan.

It describes short-term ways

of achieving milestones and explains how, or what portion of, a strategic plan will be put
into operation during a given operational period, in the case of commercial application, a
fiscal year or another given budgetary term. An operational plan is the basis for, and
justification of an annual operating budget request. Therefore, a five-year strategic plan
would need five operational plans funded by five operating budgets.

Operational plans should establish the activities and budgets for each part of the
organisation for the next 1 – 3 years. They link the strategic plan with the activities the
organization will deliver and the resources required to deliver them.

An operational plan draws directly from agency and program strategic plans to describe
agency and program missions and goals, program objectives, and program activities. Like
a strategic plan, an operational plan addresses four questions:

• Where are we now?

• Where do we want to be?
• How do we get there?
• How do we measure our progress?

The OP is both the first and the last step in preparing an operating budget request. As the
first step, the OP provides a plan for resource allocation; as the last step, the OP may be
modified to reflect policy decisions or financial changes made during the budget
development process.

Operational plans should be prepared by the people who will be involved in

implementation. There is often a need for significant cross-departmental dialogue as
plans created by one part of the organisation inevitably have implications for other parts.

Operational plans should contain:

• clear objectives
• activities to be delivered
• quality standards
• desired outcomes
• staffing and resource requirements
• implementation timetables
• a process for monitoring progress.

Social movement theory

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Social movement theory is an interdisciplinary study within the social sciences that
generally seeks to explain why social mobilization occurs, the forms under which it
manifests, as well as potential social, cultural, and political consequences. More recently,
the study of social movements has been subsumed under the study of contentious politics.
Contents
[hide]

• 1 Collective behavior
• 2 Relative deprivation
• 3 Rational choice
• 4 Resource mobilization
• 5 Political opportunity/Political process
• 6 Framing
• 7 New Social Movements
• 8 Emerging Cultural Perspective

• 9 References

[edit] Collective behavior

Sociologists during the early and middle-1900s thought that movements were random
occurrences of individuals who were trying to emotionally react to situations outside their
control. Or, as the "mass society" hypothesis suggested, movement participants were
those who were not fully integrated into society. These psychologically-based theories
have largely been rejected by present-day sociologists and political scientists, although
many still make a case for the importance (although not centrality) of emotions. See the
work of Gustav LeBon, Herbert Blumer, William Kornhauser[1], and Neil Smelser[2].

[edit] Relative deprivation

People are driven into movements out of a sense of deprivation or inequality, particularly
(1) in relation to others or (2) in relation to their expectations. In the first view,
participants see others who have more power, economic resources, or status, and thus try
to acquire these same things for themselves. In the second view, people are most likely to
rebel when a consistently improving situation (especially an improving economy) stops
and makes a turn for the worse. At this point, people will join movements because their
expectations will have outgrown their actual material situation (also called the "J-Curve
theory"). See the work of James Davies, Ted Gurr[3], and Denton Morrison.

[edit] Rational choice

Individuals are rational actors who strategically weigh the costs and benefits of
alternative courses of action and choose that course of action which is most likely to
maximize their utility. The primary research problem from this perspective is the
collective action dilemma, or why rational individuals would choose to join in collective
action if they benefit from its acquisition even if they do not participate. See the work of
Mancur Olson,[4] Mark Lichbach,[5], and Dennis Chong.[6]
[edit] Resource mobilization
Social movements need organizations first and foremost. Organizations can acquire and
then deploy resources to achieve their well-defined goals. Some versions of this theory
see movements operate similar to a capitalist enterprises that make efficient use of
available resources.[7] Scholars have suggested a typology of five types of resources:

1. Material (money and physical capital);

2. Moral (solidarity, support for the movement's goals);
3. Social-Organizational (organizational strategies, social networks, bloc
recruitment);
4. Human (volunteers, staff, leaders);
5. Cultural (prior activist experience, understanding of the issues, collective action
know-how)[8]

[edit] Political opportunity/Political process

Certain political contexts should be conducive (or representative) for potential social
movement activity. These climates may [dis]favor specific social movements or general
social movement activity; the climate may be signaled to potential activists and/or
structurally allowing for the possibility of social movement activity (matters of legality);
and the political opportunities may be realized through political concessions, social
movement participation, or social movement organizational founding. Opportunities may
include:

1. increased access to political decision making power

2. instability in the alignment of ruling elites (or conflict between elites)
3. access to elite allies (who can then help a movement in its struggle)
4. declining capacity and propensity of the state to repress dissent[9][10][11][12]

[edit] Framing
Certain claims activists make on behalf of their social movement "resonate" with
audiences including media, elites, sympathetic allies, and potential recruits. Successful
frames draw upon shared cultural understandings (e.g. rights, morality). This perspective
is firmly rooted in a social constructivist ontology. See the work of Robert Benford and
David Snow.[13] Over the last decade, political opportunity theorists have partially
appropriated the framing perspective.It is called poltitcal theory of a social movement

[edit] New Social Movements

This European-influenced group of theories argue that movements today are categorically
different than in the past. Instead of labor movements engaged in class conflict, present-
day movements (such as anti-war, environmental, civil rights, feminist, etc.) are engaged
in social and political conflict (see Alain Touraine). The motivations for movement
participants is a form of post-material politics and newly-created identities, particularly
those from the "new middle class". Also, see the work of Ronald Inglehart, Jürgen
Habermas, Alberto Melucci,[14] and Steve Buechler. This line of research has stimulated
an enduring emphasis on identity even among prominent American scholars like Charles
Tilly.

[edit] Emerging Cultural Perspective

Taking up some of the achievements of new social movement theorists, a number of
scholars have developed a powerful critique of the currently dominant political
opportunity approach.[15][16] This emerging cultural perspective argues that:

• Politics and power should be defined more broadly to include "all collective
challenges to constituted authority."[17]
• Structures not only constrain actors but constitute actors (no dichotomy between
culture and structure)
• Contention is as much a contest over meaning as it is a struggle over resources
• The rational actor model is problematic, whether applied to collectives or
individuals
• Opportunities are made as often as they are recognized

Domestic Resource Mobilization and Financial

Development: Looking at the MDGs from a
Different Angle?
George Mavrotas

While recent years have witnessed new interest in the finance–growth nexus, the
relationship between domestic resource mobilization and financial development remains
relatively unexplored. However, issues related to domestic resource mobilization and
financial development are central to the overall development process. Recently they have
been raised in connection with the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs). Financial development, broadly defined to include not just financial sector
deepening but also improvements in the efficiency of the financial sector, can enhance
domestic resource mobilization – which is vital for pro-poor growth.

The policy agenda has recently moved in new interesting directions partly because of the
relevance as well as the importance of domestic resource mobilization for accelerating
progress in achieving the MDGs, and partly through the emergence of new initiatives.
These include the United Nations International Year of Microcredit (in 2005) and the
'blue book for policy-makers’, Building Inclusive Financial Sectors for Development,
published in 2006 by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and the
UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), which emphasized in
particular the issue of ‘financial access’ and the centrality of ‘inclusive financial sectors’.

It is broadly recognized that developing economies often lack an appropriate financial

sector that provides incentives for individuals to save and acts as an efficient
intermediary to convert these savings into credit for borrowers. The financial
liberalization experience of many low-income countries in recent years, although in the
right direction in certain cases, seems to suggest that transforming the financial structure
of an economy is a complex process that assumes a deep understanding of the entire set
of interactions between financial sector reforms and the economy. At the same time, the
experience of the Asian financial crisis clearly suggests that, while financial liberalization
may be desirable, the process must be regulated correctly, and this requires the building
of institutional capacity – a costly, though important, process.

It is equally fair to argue that, until very recently, orientating the domestic financial
system towards domestic resource mobilization has been neglected as a potential source
of development financing for the MDGs. However, there is substantial potential here,
which, if realized, can help to accelerate progress significantly towards the MDGs. It also
needs to be stressed that the above important route has the additional advantage of
engaging local communities directly in the overall development financing process.
Further to building the financial system as whole, it is also vital to provide microcredit
and to create insurance mechanisms for the poor.

The above discussion suggests that, while substantial progress has been made in recent
years on the research and policy front in this important area, a number of issues remain
unresolved and require further attention. In this regard, a recently published UNU-
WIDER volume entitled Domestic Resource Mobilization and Financial Sector
Development, brings together a collection of essays by leading experts in the field who
discuss various aspects of the financial development–domestic resource mobilization
nexus in an effort to delve more deeply into the above important relationship. The
volume provides also a good balance of recent theoretical developments in this area; the
application of recent innovations in econometric methodology; important case studies
that discuss country experiences with financial sectors reforms – in both Africa and Asia
(including China); and useful policy lessons. The study was prepared as part of UNU-
WIDER’s research on Globalization, Finance and Growth, linked to the project on
Financial Sector Development for Growth and Poverty Reduction.

A central message that emanates clearly from the study is that policies enhancing domestic resource mobilization – for
example, by mobilizing domestic savings, expanding the tax base in developing countries (particularly in Sub-Saharan
Africa), increasing access to financial services and deepening financial sector development) – have a prominent role to
play in the challenging effort to use all available sources, both domestic and external, so as to accelerate progress with
the MDGs. In particular:

• Deepening financial sector development is becoming a key priority in low income

countries along with the challenge to move beyond financial deepening towards
improving substantially the efficiency of the financial sector.
• Policies that attempt to build better financial institutions (thereby increasing the
confidence of savers), encourage competition and provide a broader variety of
 instruments for saving. They can further strengthen the overall saving
mobilization process in low-income countries with substantial gains in the area of
poverty–reducing growth and MDG achievement.
• Most individuals, as well as small and medium enterprises, continue to depend on
informal and non-financial assets for their savings facilities and arrangements.
Policy-makers need to encourage microfinance institutions, which, with a
relatively small cost base, are a more viable way of delivering savings facilities to
low income individuals and small enterprises, especially in rural areas.
• On the other hand, the challenge for microfinance institutions is to create
structures that facilitate the clients of successful microfinance-institutions to
access larger, more diverse and longer-term sources of finance.
• Last but certainly not least, improving access to saving institutions is of crucial
importance for domestic resource mobilization. Rural savings mobilization, in
particular, requires an institutional network providing easy access to potential
savers. The absence of saving institutions collecting deposits from the rural
sector, especially in remote areas, may simply discourage savings or encourage
consumption, and perhaps wasteful expenditure, or it may lead to saving in a non-
monetized form.

It is hoped that the volume will contribute in a fruitful and forward looking way to the
ongoing debate amongst the international development community regarding the
mobilization of domestic resources in developing countries, and the crucial role that
financial development can and should play in this regard.