SWOT-analysis as a basis for regional strategies - EUROlocal

with an open-ended set of stakeholders, we seem to run into serious problems. Now
the boundary between organisation and environment becomes necessarily blurred. In
some instance a given actor may be part of the implementation organisation; in other
instances it clearly is a part of the environment. It can be particularly difficult to avoid
problems of indistinct boundaries in a situation where inter-organisational projects
criss-cross the effective boundaries of what may be in themselves well-defined
organisations.
Nowhere, it can be maintained, is this so obvious as in the field of processes related to
regional development. The reasons to this are also obvious: small budgets, shared
financial burdens among various actors (both public and private), and actors with
overlapping responsibilities and/or administrative territories. Yet, it is due to these
very factors that regional development has been made a deliberately programmed
process, utilising one of the most typical tools of strategic planning and management,
the SWOT. There is, we argue, a major contradiction here.
To elaborate the contradiction we need to return to the organisation/environment
scheme, replacing the single organisation with a network of organisations. The setting
grows much more complicated (cf. Figure 4). If we start with the information flows
from the environment through the analysis to the internal structure of the
programming organisation, we soon find that there is no single organisation that that
would be in charge of adapting its internal structure to the pressures from the
environment. In addition, there is no single organisation whose internal structural
adjustments would suffice in turning weaknesses to strengths or combatting the
looming threats by utilising the overwhelming opportunities. Instead, there is a web of
actors, each of which is supposed to do its share in the joint endeavour of developing
the region.
Figure 4. Environment-related information channelled to the web of actors
This multitude of actors has a major effect on the programming process. We may
assume that there will always be one key organisation, which will for the sake of
simplicity be called the regional development authority (RDA), putting together the
physical document, the programme. This is produced in co-operation with other
actors, both regional administrative (sector) authorities (RAA) and regional
stakeholder groups (RSG). Together these actors form a regional programming and
development partnership.
The whole programme, as well as its analytical parts, is necessarily a crude
compromise. The various members of a partnership read the developmental trends of
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