Implementation and Delivery

Muddling though - summary

Decisions as muddling
 Policy formulated by trial and error
 This ‘muddling’ is therefore incremental
 Favours modest aims rather than ‘grand’ plans
 Big decisions already ‘taken’ and embedded?

◦ For Lindblom business has too much of this agenda setting power
So how are decisions made?
 Macro and meso constraints
 But decisions made by individuals (and elites)
 PM to Staff Nurse
 Back-to-the-wall: Personality matters
 What ‘kind’ of person leads and makes decision?

◦ Necessary to move into the realms of psychoanalysis?

Conclusions
 Implementation takes place in multi-organisational settings
◦ complexity issues
 Policy is often not clear and/or precisely expressed
 Sometimes non-implementation might be better
 Implementation frameworks need to be flexible to cope with unintended
consequences
 Implementation gap caused by slippage between policy and delivery (bureaucrats)
 Different types of project need different approaches

 Implementation requires negotiation and maybe is best thought of as a

continuous process rather than a fixed end product
 Policy is made and re-made during delivery