COMMUNITY AND CONSENSUS - REALITY AND FANTASY IN PLANNING

Strategic planning has been presented as a way to set organizational d irection. Differences between corporate enterprises and nonprofit comm unity organizations raise questions whether strategic planning can hel p the latter. This article presents a case study in strategic planning by a Jewish community federation. Religious differences led to confli cts over policy and procedures. However, planning participants had pol itical and psychological interests in seeing the community as unified. As a result, they followed consensus procedures that let them avoid e xamining differences, but led to decisions that the majority did not l ike. Strategic planning cannot escape addressing social, cultural, and psychological differences and conflicts about them.