market (Woodlief, 1990).
3. The third objective is to gain by 1992, a viable market share in the international long distance market on calls placed from the United States (Woodlief, 1990).
To answer the question, "how are we going to get there?," requires the development of a strategic plan. Strategic man agement involves (a) the identification of those issues which are critical to the success of the firm, attainment of a speci fic objective of the firm, or solution of a specific problem confronting the firm, and (b) the development of effective strategies with which to confront the critical issues. The strategic management process requires that analysis proceed through specific stages. It is through this process of formal analysis that critical environmental issues are integrated into the strategic plan.
The first stage in the strategic management process involves the identification of phenomena. What are the prob lems facing the firm? How are the problems manifested in the firm's environment? One of the biggest mistakes made by many managers is to proceed from phenomena identification to the drafting of action plans. There are several stages of strate gic analysis between phenomena identification and the drafting of action plans.
The second stage in the process is the grouping of the observed phenomena according to common factors. Through such grouping, it is often possible to identify a single issue or set of issues which underlie the phenomena group. The third stage of the process is the application of abstraction to prob lem groups. Abstraction leads to a narrowing of the issue(s) 4involved. Once the focus of the critical issues confronting the firm has been narrowed, the next stage of analysis the determination of the solution approach may proceed. This stage is followed, in succession, by (a) the provisional formu lation of hypothetical solutions, (b) the acceptance or rejec tion of the hypothetical...