Abstract
By analyzing organizational process of social planning, we can study the mechanism of its success and failure. Controls over a society work simultaneously on three levels : social system, basic institution and individual project. We can find three types of social control system corresponding to these three levels. The control system on the level of social system constitutes the meta-control system for a control system on basic institution level. And the latter sets up the meta-control system for a control system on individual project level. Each control system on a lower level operates in the frame which is defined by a meta-control system on a higher level. In order to analyze the interrelation between multiple control efforts of different levels, “the strategic analyse” proposed by M. CROZIER and E. FRIEDBERG is very useful, because this approach presents a fundamental consideration about the actor-system relation.
All reflections of this article are based on two postulates : (A) a meta-control system on a higher level conditions the possibility of success and failure in a control system on a lower level, (B) a control effort which operates in a meta-control system on a higher level does not determine completely control efforts which work in a control system on a lower level. We verify and develop these postulates through case studies concerning the construction process of bullet express train in Japan and in France. Through these studies, we find that the “paradox of rationality” prevents seriously the success of social planning and that the “value-rationality” is a source of autonomous decision on a lower level control system.
