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The Moray Firth Working Party: ‘Performance’ Without ‘Conformance’ *
Author(s) -
JORDAN GRANT
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.1982.tb00012.x
Subject(s) - economic shortage , variety (cybernetics) , optimism , workforce , business , local government , firth , government (linguistics) , public administration , economics , political science , economic growth , computer science , psychology , social psychology , linguistics , philosophy , oceanography , artificial intelligence , geology
The case was selected as being (reportedly) one of successful implementation: the interest was in the preconditions of success. To meet a forecast shortage of housing for oil‐related construction workers, the Scottish Development Department convened a working party on which it, eight local authorities, a representative of the local industrial lobby and various other relevant central government departments were involved. A joint programme was organized so that the local authority contracts would be ‘pooled’. This was intended to attract a national‐scale builder with his own workforce into the area and relieve the skilled labour shortage by phased development. The housing problem was turned round to a housing surplus, but this resulted from the over‐optimism of the forecast need and a variety of building responses rather than the straightforward success of the joint operation. The case illustrates that implementation success depends on a range of dimensions; the implementation question dissolves into multiple aspects.