Rational Planning and Organizational Imperatives: Prospects for Area Planning in Aging

The federal grant strategy found in the Older Americans Comprehensive Services Amendments of 1973 represents a marked departure from earlier strategies of the Older Americans Act. While the national goal of the legislation is more clearly specified and funding has sig nificantly increased, the introduction of new substate plan ning bodies—Area Agencies on Aging—is seen here as the most important change. The new national strategy is geared toward the development of these new agencies, and its success will depend very much on their discharging the functions assigned to them. This paper argues that, because the new legislative strategy is based on a rational goal model and conceptualizes the area agencies accordingly, it neglects certain requisites of organizational life. Using, instead, a social system perspective of the area agencies and their environment, the paper suggests that these agencies will, of necessity, concern themselves with matters other than those mandated in the legislation. These other con cerns will affect both the national objectives which the area agencies choose to emphasize and the intensity of their effort. Specifically, the area agencies may view the mandate to draw-in and mobilize resources at the area level as not in their organizational interests. The paper concludes that: their engaging in this role in tentative fashion will result in either incremental or goal-displaced activities; their em barking in this role wholeheartedly may prove dangerous to them organizationally and may result in substantial mod ifications in the national strategy and their role in it.