CORPORATE STRATEGIC PLANNING

The Strategic Planning Concept and Process

Strategic planning is defined as the process of determining the mission, major objectives, strategies, and policies that govern the acquisition and allocation of resources to achieve organizational aims. Strategic planning is a process which generates specific actions which are required to carry out a particular strategy (Thompson & Strickland, 1996).

By definition, thus, the strategic planning process begins subsequent to the adoption of a strategy. The entire strategic process within an organization, however, is a set of highly interrelated components, which function within a dynamic environment. Thus, in the so-called real world, strategic planning will often precede strategy development, because of the cyclical character of the strategic process (Hax & Majluf, 1996).

There are five generally recognized elements of the strategic cycle. These elements are as follows: (1) organizational considerations, which are concerned primarily with the organizational structure; (2) resource requirements, (3) strategic control, which is concerned primarily with the organization's internal environment; (4) strategic planning, which is concerned primarily with the external environment of the or

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ively and negatively. Formal planned patterns of growth, as an example, have been positively related to organizational performance. Conversely, a failure to effectively employ strategic planning and to effectively link strategic planning to organizational performance goals has been found to lead to organizational decline (Leidtka & Rosenblum, 1996). There are specific characteristics of a strategic planning process that caused it to be effective in leading to the attainment of organizational performance objectives. These characteristics are that the process should be goal-oriented, provide for management-strategy compatibility, provide for effective incorporation of a firm's human resources in the overall strategy, incorporate the organizational budgeting function into the strategic planning process, and incorporate information management into the strategy planning process (Hamel, 1996). Goal-Oriented Strategic Planning and Performance Basing the strategy of an organization on specific goals developed in the strategic planning process has been positively correlated with the attainment of organizational performance objectives. The basing of strategy on specific goals creates a common focus throughout an organization. The cl
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Approximate Word count = 3832
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)

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