PL155 FUNDAMENTALS

OF PLANNING

DIMENSIONS OF PLANNING FOR

DEVELOPMENT

© 2007 Pearson Education

 Outline
 Dimensions of project planning
 Social aspects of project planning
 Economic and financial dimensions of project
planning
 Cost recovery policy
 The role of institutions in planning
 Structure of institutions
 Organisational procedures

© 2007 Pearson Education

 Introduction
 Understanding planning for development requires
that planning activities are classified according to
the goal they intend to achieve

 Several of such examples include: emergency

planning, town and country planning/ human
settlement planning, development planning,
strategic planning

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 Dimensions of Project Planning

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 Social aspects of project planning
 This type of planning is done with the society or the
population in mind

 This is very essential dimension of planning. Why?

 Project affect people as beneficiaries (intended

consumers); producers; victims (unintended losers)

 It also takes into consideration the strategies

necessary to win and retain the support of intended
beneficiaries to design, implement, monitor and
evaluate project goals and objectives
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 Issues for consideration

 Socio-cultural issues (taboos, customs, festivals and

practices etc.)
 Demographic issues (size of population, age-sex
structure, birth rate, death rate etc.)
 Social organizations (groups and associations, local
unions, clubs etc.)
 Institutional issues (laws, power and systems)
 Active participation by the beneficiaries
 Gender sensitivity (role of and interest of women)

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 Economic and financial
dimensions of project planning

 Refers to the availability of adequate financial

resources to begin and complete the project
 Important because projects which failed to capture the
adequacy of funds have implementation challenges
 Projects get either abandoned or suspended.
 This dimension of planning also deals with recovering
project cost especially from the beneficiaries. This
ensures that funds are available to provide new
projects.
 Generally, all projects must be financially viable.

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 How?
 Necessary to prepare financial plans

 What it entails:

– mobilization and utilization of funds

– recurrent costs

– the financial situation of the beneficiaries (especially social

goods)

– the effects on district budgets

– Cost recovery policy 3-8

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 Cost recovery policy
Consider the following:
– economic efficiency (pricing policy)
i.e. an economic state in which all resources are allocated to serve
each person in the best way possible, minimising waste and
inefficiency such that any changes made to help one person would
harm another

– income distribution in society (equity)

– revenue generation (project’s ability to generate

income)

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 THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS
IN DEVELOPMENT PLANNING

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 Institutions and Organisations
 Douglas North (2009) defines Institutions as:

 “the humanly devised constraints that structure

political, economic and social interaction”

 The “rules” of the game, and Organisations are the

“players”

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 Two aspects of organizations which are
interrelated for effective plan
implementation are organizational
structures and organization procedures.

Organisational structures are the focus of

organization theory and design

Organizational procedures are the focus

of management science
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 The Structure of organization
According to Mintzberg (1979), what
organizations/institutions stand for can be described as
follows:

“Every organized human activity…gives rise to two

fundamental and opposing requirements: the division of
labour into various tasks to be performed and coordination
of these tasks to accomplish the activity
“The structure of an organization can be defined simply as the
sum total of the ways in which it divides its labour into
distinct tasks and then achieves coordination among them”

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 Organogram or Organizational
Chart
 It is the easiest way to present an
organization/institution
Such a diagram shows the various
individuals in the group, their positions in
terms of power, command and authority
as well as responsibility.
A very important aspect of an organizational
chart are the lines of communication among
all the positions.

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 Communication and relationships are important
because of the following:

 they reveal the hierarchical structure (centralized

type/system characterized by bureaucracy or
decentralized)

 they indicate the difference between co-ordination

through (direct) control or supervision and that
which has to be obtained by consultation and or
negotiation

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  Co-ordination may be vertical or
horizontal.

Vertical co-ordination is when an institution

(a higher one) controls another (a lower one)

Horizontal co-ordination: when two

institutions (of equal plane or authority)
deal directly with each other

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 E.g.
An example of vertical co-ordination is the relationship
between the Ministry of Local Government and the
District Assemblies.

Horizontal co-ordination is the relationship between

Ministry of Local Government and the Ministry of
Finance.

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 Organisational procedures
These are the ways of operations of the organization.
These are mostly in-built within the organizational
structures.
They include codes of behaviour, norms and practices,
processes of promotions and sanctions etc.

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