Patronage Politics & Strategic Planning

Yesterday's Financial Times carried an article about plans by the University of Oxford's Said Business School to run a Masters course on strategic programme and project management. A lack of UK (and international ?) skills in these areas was cited as the main catalyst for the course. However, I would argue that these skills do already exist both here and abroad, and that the main constraint upon them is the increasing dominance of so-called patronage politics, or clientalism as it is sometimes called. The latter term also points to another problem. Lack of expertise, and, more importantly, experience amongst the "clients" for (and procurers of) strategic projects and programmes. Administration rather than management is the modus operandi of many of these organisations and groupings, with an over-reliance on often inappropriate and/or inadequately customised IT systems. Sound familiar ?