Introduction
How and why focusing on plans does not work because it does not give adequate consideration to the situated action is a sociological topic that most people have been able to debate in the past; and have come up with theories and explanations. Different authors have tried to explain their views, and a careful look into what they propose leads this discussion into the conclusion that it is difficult for plans to work since they do not give adequate consideration into the situation in action.
Discussion
First Suchman identifies the relationship between the plans and the situated action; she says that plans are set of actions that are set to achieve a desired state of something that is already known in advance. However, she says that the success of planning mostly relies on the knowledge of the external conditions; if the knowledge of planning is not known then other measures have to be taken otherwise the situation cannot be solved.
Suchman also states that one of the main challenges of having a plan is to realize the plans of others by the actions that they make; she says these actions can differ depending on the circumstances in question. Suchman argues that if we come up with plans according to our observations, it does not mean that all of us recognize those plans us people have different views. This shows that if one focuses on the plan he or she has formulated it does not work since not everyone recognizes those plans. The best example would be in the marketing and communication department in an institution of higher learning. The plans for the external communications coordinator may be the same with the of the internal communications director. However, their actions would be different, and since things change very fast, some plans are bound to fail because our observation of different people’s perception to the initial plan.
Suchman takes another example of the speech act theory; here she talks of how the theory takes spoken language as a form of action. In this theory, the speakers build on a language and maintain mutual models of each other through conversation. The spoken language lacks significance of the action taken as significance of the spoken language does not rely on the action itself but also the unspoken part that it refers to, this example show that focusing on plans does give adequate consideration to the desired action. Focusing on plans too much have its problems, and that is why expert help systems may work in reasonably and well defined closed domain but mostly fail when it comes to commonsense reasoning.
Suchman also discussed on the situated action, she says that most plans are embedded in the practical and situated activity and that they are not independent and abstract to the circumstances at hand. Here, Suchman studied on how people use their circumstances to achieve actions that are well thought of and intelligent. Suchman talks about ethnos methodology that deals with how mutual intelligibility is accomplished by the most practices that we take for granted in that only when problems occur is when these practices become present, she says that this is different in comparison to normative social science where nothing is taken for granted even if the problem has not occurred, and this will help to know the situated action needed and also the plans to be considered in order to achieve this desired action.
Suchman also talks about how a speaker does not simply follow a pre-existing plan in place but also responds to the cues that the listener produces, and he or she adapts his utterance according to the this, this means that face –to-face conversation is not only comprised of the actions and reactions involved, but also it is a joint activity, hence easier to converse and come up with the situated action.
Garfunkel also shows us in his book, ‘Towards a Sociological Theory of Information,’ that focusing on plans does not give adequate consideration to the situated action, here Garfinkel poses questions such as how does a dead body become suicide? Breaking of rules becomes a crime and a product of the womb an abortion? He answers the question by saying it is through communication; all of those are achieved through talk. He says that is not only achieved by the words spoken, but also their inflection, loudness and rapidity and that is not only by what is said but also by what is not said. This is an important theory as one cannot only focus so much on the plans he wants to take but also take into consideration of other factors in order to come up with good actions to take.
Conclusion
It has been shown that when one focuses a lot on the plans it does not give adequate consideration to the situated actions as many other factors are to be considered when trying to achieve a situated action. It is important to note that circumstance may change hence the need to have flexible plans or flexible people to handle the different situations that may arise.
