Flexibility in water management planning as an intra-organisational issue

This paper is a case study of a team of Dutch water managers who saw that to achieve flexibility in planning they needed to engage with organisational control requirements. Rather than approaching flexibility normatively, as much planning literature does, this paper presents a case of flexibility empirically – as something actors negotiate through their strategising within planning practice, within their organisational context. The analysis shows the importance of approaching flexibility in planning as an intra-organisational issue, presents insights on the strategies actors employ in negotiating flexibility and control intra-organisationally, and points to the political nature of dynamics between flexibility and control.