Planning or organizing: the implications of theories of activity for management of operations

In this paper we examine a dominant approach to management at the operations level which we refer to as management-as-planning. Our contention is that this approach to operations management rests on an implicit assumption of the plausibility of a particular theory of the nature of on-going, purposeful activity, the planning model of activity, which we describe in detail in order to draw out its underlying assumptions. We present three examples of the management-as-planning approach from the diverse settings of robotics, manufacturing production management and public sector policy formation and conclude that many of the assumptions of the planning model of activity cannot be satisfied in realistic environments. There is a need to found management at the operations level on a more realistic conception of the nature of purposeful activity which is currently being articulated in the fields of cognitive science and social theory. This change of view leads to a new approach to the nature operations management which we call management-as-organizing. The beginnings of this new approach at work can be discerned in three examples of counter approaches in use in the same three areas studied. Key words - operations management, planning and control, management theory, theories of activity, computer aided production management, lean production