SWOT-analysis as a basis for regional strategies - EUROlocal

for repeated encounters in markets and for social processes whereby new norms and
values can be learnt, redundant institutions broken down, obsolete conceptions
eliminated and antiquated, shared beliefs abolished. Such ‘unlearning’ can be
expected to occur within the organisational learning process of regional strategic
planning.
What examples of these types of elements can then be identified in the SWOT
analysis included in our study? These are most clearly observable in two dimensions
of regional SWOT analysis:
• Organisational learning: the utilisation of experiences from previous
programming periods and other regional planning instruments as factors
contributing to and indicative of learning. This should be visible in the
formulation and re-formulation of the new regional development programme.
• Social learning: addressing the question of which actors and arenas are
involved in the learning process, dealing with issues such as institutions,
norms, social interactions and forums within which these can be developed,
maintained and re-formulated (i.e. learnt and unlearnt). In contrast to
organisational learning, which is more concerned with the learning aspects of
the process, the emphasis here is on actors.
4.1 Organisational learning: utilisation of previous experiences from strategic
planning
In the introduction to this Chapter it was assumed that the learning of a region takes
place through its organisational structure. This structure can also be called a system of
actors, which – represented by its individual members – observes the needs for
planning, designs the plans, implements them, monitors the implementation, evaluates
the output and results, and assesses the longer-term effects.
From the organisational or institutional learning perspective the above-mentioned
process in its entirety should be linked, through a feedback loop, to the re-assessment
and re-defining of a developmental situation in some later point in time, and
eventually to a re-designing of the plan. As the roles and positions of the various
stakeholder organisations may change dramatically over time, and as new actors
emerge and old ones disappear, one of the key qualities of a viable system is its
flexibility, its ability to sustain changes in its environment and adjust its own structure
accordingly.
Thus, it can well be postulated that the generic prerequisites set for evolution of cooperation,
as Robert Axelrod (1984) titled his much-acclaimed study, are the
cornerstones for systemic learning as well. An event in which two actors choose to
co-operate is typically preceded by a period during which they learned to make that
choice. This period is in turn typically marked by intense and repeated interaction
around concrete issues. The actors have thus had an opportunity to position
themselves vis-à-vis the issue, each other and the entire dynamics of the process, that
is, the history of each other’s changed relative positions at each particular point in
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