PLANNING IN NURSERIES — RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Planning problems in nurseries are usually characterized by a high degree of complexity, mainly caused by the long planning periods, that must be considered.
Based on the hypothesis that coping with problems of high complexity is a way of "handling" the problem rather than a systematical search for the best solution, an empirical study has been conducted in order to investigate the real planning concepts that can be found in nurseries in Western Germany.

The nature of the problems necessarily forces the decision-maker to reduce the degree of complexity by means of simplification.
Two main strategies of simplifacation are described.
The first one is a strategy of "muddling-through" that considers only incremental deviations from the past behavior.
The second concept separates the problem into different decision-areas (input, production, output) that are handled independently so that the simplifacation essentially is achieved by neglecting the interdependencies between these areas.
The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these concepts for the development of decision aid systems.

X International Symposium on Horticultural Economics

D. REYMANN

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1988.223.34