New Directions in Planning and Policy Research: the contribution of IOR

Abstract

This document, prefaced by a brief note explaining its background, reproduces the content of a promotional brochure produced in 1976 by John Friend in his role as chairman of IOR’s then internal management group, to affirm continuity of development at a time when John Stringer had just resigned as Director to take up a new professorship at an Australian university. At that time, an internal merger of IOR with a group of senior staff from the Tavistock Institute’s Human Resources Centre had been in effect for three years, expanding the unit’s skill base but without as yet cementing any change in the external identity of IOR. Such a change was to follow in 1979 with the adoption of a new external identity as Centre for Organisational and Operational Research (COOR), as explained in IOR1979ORSevent.doc The brochure highlighted in particular the innovations in thinking about public planning processes and the dynamics of policy change which had been emerging from IOR’s project work for government departments and research councils in the early 1970’s. The time chart included in the brochure gave an impressionistic picture of the way in which IOR’s main programmes of work in health and social services, in local government, in central government and in industry had evolved since the launch of the unit in 1963. It was however recognized that the effect of the economic climate on research funding were now making it increasingly hard to sustain this momentum in future.