The Strategic Choice Approach to planning under pressure has been developed by OR scientists as a means of facilitating communication among decision‐makers with diverse perspectives, allegiances and skills. Its function is to enable them to make sustained progress together in exploring the structure of complex decision problems, and in charting progress towards timely commitments to agreed actions. It offers a balanced set of communication tools which are primarily visual in form, yet are interlinked within a philosophy of planning that recognises the challenges that decision‐makers face in responding strategically to diverse sources of uncertainty, including those that call for a political or structural rather than an analytical response. The principles and leading tools of the approach are briefly introduced, with references to the growing range of applications in fields of collaborative planning ranging from local community action to national environmental policy.

PurposeTo present a perspective on partnership grounded in empirical management research. This paper is based on a keynote presentation by the author at a conference on partnership in Durham in 2004.Design/methodology/approachIt reflects on the particular challenges of realising partnership ideals in the field of public policy with its rich textures of accountability, reflecting a career perspective of management research and the facilitation of planning workshops in inter‐organisational policy domains.FindingsThe challenge of managing decisions within an often obscure maze of inter‐agency relations is interpreted as one of developmental decision making, within which personal capacities for responsible scheming play a crucial role.Research limitations/implicationsIt is argued that this view offers more appropriate guidance to partnership practice than a more conventional system‐centred perspective; and that this has important implications for future research and education in public management.Practical implicationsTo learn from one another's experiences, it is suggested that public managers should cultivate capacities to map graphically the shifting patterns of structural relations among issues and among organisational roles. It is argued that the firmer grasp of new communication technologies exhibited by emergent generations offers new promise in this direction, bridging the traditional educational divide between the arts and the sciences.Originality/valueThe paper offers fresh perspectives on partnership that are intended to challenge the thinking of practitioners and consultants as well as researchers.

How far is it possible to capture the lessons to be drawn from successive projects that involve intervention by social scientists within or between organizations, whether acting as researchers, as consultants, as agents of change, or in some combination of these roles? This paper outlines the way in which a framework was developed, by staff and associates of The Tavistock Institute, for examining the varied and often subtle influences of successive "negotiated project engagements" on the development of wider personal, institutional, and disciplinary programs. This framework is designed to take into account the contrasting perspectives of the investigators themselves, of their organizational hosts, and of any external sponsors whose primary concern will normally be with project outcomes at a more generalized level. As an illustration, particular reference is made to the experience of a pioneering project concerned with policy-making in city government. This project was undertaken to advance the understanding and practice of public planning, while also exploring the potential for synergy between the perspectives of operational research and applied social science. The paper concludes with some speculations about the potential for further developing this kind of framework in supporting experiential learning.

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