Organisation for regional resources management

Abstract

This paper offers a conceptual framework to discuss the organisational dimension of regional management. The regional system is defined as a ‘black box’ transforming regional resources into output products and services. The discussion is centred in the management of these transformations. It is argued that the complexity that managers have to see in the regional system is only that which is left unattended by the system's self-regulating and self-organising processes. However, the complexity that the regional system must see and respond to in its environment is defined by ‘socially implied’ criteria of performance. A mismatch between this and the actual complexity absorbed by the regional system may imply that managers are overloaded by a large unattended residual complexity. To redress the balance structural changes are likely to be necessary. This paper deals with only one aspect of structural design, namely the partitioning of the tasks implies by the missions of the regional system. The 1974 re-structuring of Local government in England and Wales is analysed from this perspective. This paper was originally presented at a IIASA workshop on Regional Resources Management (Albena, Bulgaria 1985). Hence its focus in the regional system, however, its content is general to all organisational systems.