bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Business and society in transformation
Authors: Harman Willis W.
Published: February 2008

Although most of us have to be concerned primarily with the welfare of our own organizations, we recognize that these organizations prosper only as the society as a whole prospers. Society presently faces a set of complex problems, and neither the bureaucratic process of executive decision‐making nor the adversary process of political decision‐making seems well adapted to their resolution. What appears to be required is a process for developing new perceptions of the situation, the facts, and the action possibilities.
Books
Authors: Leontiades Milton
Published: February 2008

This suspenseful message of Edward R. Bagley's Beyond the Conglomerates is misleading. What is heralded as a view of the corporate future is primarily an extension of the present.
Financial plans that are tempered to bend
Authors: Singhvi Surendra S.
Published: February 2008

This article discusses some concepts related to planning for financial flexibility used at Armco. The planning process and concepts are equally applicable in other industrial firms.
The thinking man's inventory of natural resources
Authors: Collier James R.
Published: February 2008

To the world at large, the problems of energy supply and demand have tended to obscure the need to focus attention on what is happening in the nonfuel minerals area. But to those of us in the business, the problems are no less compelling and largely similar. Nonfuel minerals demand for the year 2000 is estimated to constitute approximately two‐thirds of total minerals demand in the United States. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that by the year 2000 U.S. dependence on imports will be complete for 12 commodities and over 75 percent for 19 others.
Report card for planners
Authors: Henry Harold W.
Published: February 2008

Corporations are continually under pressure to improve performance. Many different indexes are used to evaluate performance by various groups with legitimate concerns; these include stockholders, customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and governmental units. Return on investment is a basic index, but the quality of products or services provided and contributions to the welfare of society in general are also evaluated. Thus corporations must periodically measure their performance on various indexes and compare the results to accepted standards.
The Cornucopia myth and other Canadian problems
Authors: Shepherd John J.
Published: February 2008

Although profound differences of opinion occur in our society, one of the things that all Canadians do enjoy is the adherence to a popular mythology which embraces the following cardinal points:
How to tap Big Brother for information
Authors: Lesko Matthew J.
Published: February 2008

Many planners, although aware of the importance of external information, continue to make decisions without using this resource. Such situations exist because planners have been conditioned to believe that the information they really need for precise decision‐making is either unavailable or too costly. These misconceptions are contrary to evidence showing that the United States has been experiencing an “information explosion” during the last twenty years and that most contributors to this explosion are public organizations and special interest groups who make information available at low cost. Ignorance of sources of external information, rather than its cost or availability, is the core of the planners' dilemma. This seeming incongruity exists because a majority of organizations generating information spend most of their resources collecting data and preparing reports, reserving little or no funds for advertising the availability of their information.
Interviewing Professor Mintzberg's “Right Brain”
Authors: Allio Robert J.
Published: February 2008

Probably every planner, while reading an article about managing, has felt a twinge of discomfort or gnaw of disbelief over the discrepancy between management as it is written about and management as it is practiced. According to the canons of business literary tradition, management's style and thought processes are presumed to be logical and orderly. Any MBA soon learns that top management does not behave as if it has read the right textbooks. Usually this discrepancy between real operation and literary tradition is dismissed with the Platonic argument that the real is always flawed when compared to the ideal. But last year, Professor Henry Mintzberg of McGill caused a stir in the business community by observing that the textbook version of how managers operate is a fantasy. Managers may pay lip service to planning and tables of organization, pointed out Mintzberg, but they actually function quite well in near chaos. In a subsequent article, he identified managers as holistic, intuitive thinkers “who revel in ambiguity; in complex, mysterious systems with relatively little order.” A record number of readers responded, most of them applauding Mintzberg's revelation. Professor Mintzberg has synthesized data from some evocative physiological brain experiments with his perceptions of management thought processes. Physiologists now believe that each hemisphere of the brain has special abilities. In most people (right‐handed ones) the right hemisphere controls conceptualization, intuition, synthesis, judgment. The left hemisphere employs logic, linear thinking, organizational abilities. According to Mintzberg, much of a manager's work involves such processes as following hunches in the midst of a chaotic problem‐solving process, and this indicates that managers have exceptionally well‐developed right brains. It is this “right‐brainedness” that makes great corporate strategists capable of epoch‐making leaps of conclusion. Planners and other staff aides, who Mintzberg says are left‐brained, are best suited to taking their direction from these masters of strategy and tidying up the logic in the aftermath of the conclusion. It's a rather startling concept of the planner's role, so Planning Review asked Professor Mintzberg to discuss his theories and define his sense of the true function of the planner in more detail.
Steering spaceship earth: Report on the Fifth International Planning Conference
Authors: Donaldson Robert H.
Published: February 2008

The conference report, by Bob Donaldson of the host Cleveland chapter, notes that the delegates came from 19 different countries, with less than half from the United States. A delegate could have heard as many as 22 individual speakers in regular sessions, along with many exposures to other delegates in informal sessions. With this diversity it is difficult to find consensus, but three issues of increasing concern to planners came up during many of the sessions:
Computing who deserves the cold stars
Authors: Christopher William F.
Published: February 2008

Budgetary control systems measure organization performance in financial terms, by accounting standards. The assumptions on which such budget structures and reporting systems have been built have gone unquestioned, and perhaps even unrecognized, for too long. And as the years have passed, these assumptions, unexamined, have become less and less valid, while at the same time the budgetary control systems based on them have become more and more complex. In many businesses today, precisely interrelated financial models are constructed, reporting procedures developed, and budget variances analyzed in many dimensions, and in great detail. While this effort provides many hours of work for accountants, computer specialists, and managers, its contribution to business operations is often minimal.
The hatching of public opinion
Authors: Molitor Graham T.T.
Published: February 2008

The Need for Anticipating Public Policy Change. In today's fast‐paced world merely muddling through—benevolent neglect, as some have described it—is too erratic, too costly, and too dangerous a course for arriving at sound public policy decisions. Reliance on little‐understood forces—the “silent hand”—posited on innumerable unstructured events which somehow tote up to effective action, is increasingly outmoded. The management of massive, modern, complex, and qualitative technologies requires much more time and attention. Careful anticipation and explication of our problems is needed, more than ever before.
Pitting science against famine
Authors: Calvert Geoffrey N.
Published: February 2008

In this issue Mr. Calvert continues his discussion on how a worldwide epidemic of hunger can possibly be averted.
There's no room for guesswork at IBM
Authors: Katz Abraham
Published: February 2008

A planning and control system pervades the entire organizational structure at IBM. It serves as a primary communication link between corporate and operating unit management for establishing unit objectives and strategic direction, negotiating plan commitments, and measuring performance against plan. The bulk of the planning done within IBM is not only decentralized into the several operating units, but within any given unit, planning is further decentralized to the plant and laboratory levels. To place planning in perspective, it is necessary to examine the nature of the IBM's business, it's organizational philosphy and structure.
Are you running a company or a cloister? (Twenty ways to get in touch with the world)
Authors: Mendell Jay S.
Published: February 2008

Decide if you are running a company or a cloister. The American Management Associations estimated that 70% of a company's destiny is controlled by external affairs and 30% by internal efforts. Do these numbers strike you as plausible? If you choose to deceive yourself, you can avoid thinking about threats and opportunities. But is this wise?
A Conserver Society: Some implications for the packaging industry
Authors: Graham Smith J.
Published: February 2008

A recent article described some of the work undertaken by GAMMA for the Federal Government of Canada concerning the prospects of adopting a ‘Conserver Society’ as a future policy goal. It stressed the present need for waste minimization in the public and private sectors and, concomitantly, the greater need for future consideration by private and public planners of the ecological and social costs of both production and consumption.
Canada needs national goals
Authors: Barnhill J.A.
Published: February 2008

From an administrative perspective, Canada as a nation has been generally in a “state of drift.” With the exception of the anti‐inflation program, efforts made by the government during recent years have provided little in the way of specific direction. For example, The Way Ahead, a discussion paper on the future of Canada, fails to outline clearly “the economic and social directions the government intends to take after controls end” or to provide definitive “principles and strategies.” Passing references are made to national unity, balanced growth without inflation, individual freedom and opportunity, and the government's commitment to its fundamental social goals. Implicitly, these “goals” are for “a society in which all Canadians can develop their potential to the fullest degree possible, a society in which justice, compassion, tolerance and understanding lead to a strong and united Canada, a society based upon individual initiative and marked by personal freedom.”
Long‐range planning is not for everyone
Authors: Jack Shapiro H. , Kallman Ernest A.
Published: February 2008

Since the turn of the century management researchers, among others, have exhorted business firms to plan for their future. To us it seems obvious that the greater a firm's commitment to long‐range planning, the greater are its chances for survival and success. Most managers and executives “know” that this is so — they do not have to perform lengthy and costly research on planning to support so obvious a truism. Nonetheless, we did a research study of long‐range planning in the motor freight industry to find out whether long‐range planning is a necessity for every company in the industry. It also asks if there is a boundary condition that differentiates between those companies that must plan continually, plan occasionally, or not engage in long‐range planning at all. If there is such a boundary, what variables go into making it up? Are the variables controllable or uncontrollable? Can a model be devised that incorporates these variables? The answers to these questions can point the industry toward more efficient and effective use of its scarce resources.
Welcome to the information revolution
Authors: Garvin Andrew P.
Published: February 2008

In the unlikely event you haven't noticed, we are in the middle of an information crisis.
Examining the future to plan more effectively
Authors: Smith Robert D. , Myers Buddy , Doutt John , Valli George
Published: February 2008

Analysis of social trends of the past several decades indicates the growth of significant social‐political issues which, if predicted in the late 1950s, might have made the position of business firms stronger in the 1970s, and far better prepared to cope with the 1980s. Examples abound. They follow a pattern of peaking and waning where peaks were preceded by measurable signals from the environment. Had these signals been recognized, they could have been adapted to strategic and tactical business plans.
Plotting the planners place
Authors: Camillus J.C.
Published: February 2008

Defining the appropriate role of the corporate planning manager can be critical to the effectiveness of planning systems. Depending on the nature of the organization and the purposes of the planning system, different roles and responsibilities can be assumed by the manager of the system.
Wanted, preferably alive: Reliable information on Mexico
Authors: West Robert W.
Published: February 2008

North American corporations and financial institutions have suddenly awakened to Mexico and are looking more carefully than ever at this rapidly growing neighbor to the South. But after the calamitous ending of the Echeverria regime (1970–1976) and the sudden and unexpected devaluation of the Mexican peso in September, 1976, why is this interest growing?
Society's ravelled sleeve: A perspective on the planners dilemma
Authors: Brown Arnold
Published: February 2008

Increasingly, planners in both public and private enterprises will have to cope with the contradictions that make managing our organizations and our society ever more difficult and confusing, a dilemma reflected in the grim mood of pessimism that pervades much of literature today—over despair at ever being able to make wise choices. Every alternative has its adherents, its incontrovertible evidences. At the same time, it can be demonstrated that each alternative leads down the path to destruction. While it may be, as some have said, that the choices are becoming clearer, it is also true that the answers are becoming less certain, which is itself a contradiction.
Values, planning and the future
Authors: Miller Lewis
Published: February 2008

While considerable care must be paid in the planning process to the collection of data and to the deductive and inductive logical activities that go on in working with this data, the process is by no means as scientific and logical as we often like to assume. Throughout the planning process there are, and have to be, many judgments that go beyond what might be termed “rational,” in the stricter, relatively value‐neutral sense of this word. More than lip‐service should be paid, then, to the maxim that planning is an art as well as a science. An acute need persists for creative imagination.
Issue management‐challenge and opportunity for planning executives
Authors: Simmons W.W.
Published: February 2008

Corporate planning has had cyclical popularity since its inception in the '50s. There was a period in the late '50s when growing interest in the subject made “planning” a buzz word, but by the early '60s, many executives had come to feel that planning was a ritual with no measurable pay‐off. This attitude caused a rebirth in more serious planning, resulting in what today is known as strategic planning. In the early '70s, planning again fell into disrepute as planners were blamed for not foreseeing many of the problems that faced business. Today, as we approach the end of the '70s, planning is again an important function for management, but the task of the planner has evolved to include the conversion of plans to meaningful action—a challenge that has resided implicitly with the planner, but has seldom been successfully realized.
Vulnerability analysis: A new way to assess future trends
Authors: Hurd Douglas A. , Riggs Monfort E.
Published: February 2008

The changes in strategic planning processes currently under study and installation by industry leaders are testimony to the dissatisfaction of corporate management with the processes used during the late '60s and early '70s. Frequently, these processes turned managers into efficient caretakers, unable to adapt to the constantly changing business environment. Part of the problem was the approaches were based on extrapolations of a business environment of relative plenty, one in which crises were operational rather than strategic. There had been little thought given to developing the means to deal with planning for shortages, for instance, or other important threats to the company's long‐term strategies.
Keeping a weather eye on the future
Authors: Edrich Harold
Published: February 2008

A major manufacturer finds that sophisticated corporate planning methods, combined with extensive use of consultants, still do not provide sufficient lead time to anticipate regulatory developments and public attitude shifts.
Profile of a corporate planner
Authors: Knisely Gary , Matlins Stuart M.
Published: February 2008

This article is based on a survey of chief corporate planners conducted in early 1979. The survey was conceived and sponsored by Johnson, Smith & Knisely, Inc., executive search consultants. It was designed and conducted by Stuart Matlins Associates, Inc., management consultants, New York. Copies of the full report are available for $20.00 from Johnson, Smith & Knisely, Inc., 275 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
Planning for change in the organizational structure
Authors: Reinharth Leon , Jack Shapiro H. , Kallman Ernest A.
Published: February 2008

This article is based on a chapter from the forthcoming Van Nostrand Reinhold/NASCP book by the authors titled The Practice of Planning: Strategic, Administrative, Operational.
Advise, consult, coordinate, help
Authors: Seawright Terry
Published: February 2008

The style of the planning function at Babcock & Wilcox Canada, Ltd. is helpful rather than critical, straight‐forward rather than convoluted. The result is a clear‐cut advisory role for the company's planner — and success in the company's planning.
Brewing a business strategy model
Authors: Thiel John
Published: February 2008

Strategic decision‐making is difficult because predicting the future in any detail is simply impossible. If we could get a handle on the relationships between decisions of the past and their effects on later business performance, though, we could probably discover which decisions were most significant to performance. This, in turn, would give us clues about the relationship between strategic decisions of the future and their effects on performance.
Beginning to plan in Ontario's Ministry of Industry and Tourism
Authors: Barrows David S. , Spearin Charles
Published: February 2008

The concept of planning in a government environment shares premises with private sector planning, even though the planning process may differ due to differences in structure and purpose. The general reason for the planning function in the Ministry of Industry and Tourism of the Province of Ontario, for example, is to contribute to the development of economic policy in the government and to provide a wide variety of consultative and financial services to private sector manufacturing and tourism establishments. The purpose of the ministry, in contrast to the profit motive of private enterprise, is to direct this assistance to private business to achieve specified, province‐wide economic objectives.
Matching human resources to strategies
Authors: Meals Donald W. , Rogers John W.
Published: February 2008

A company whose business has always been the steel industry diversifies by acquiring a printing company. Should the benefits package of the parent, a member of the mature and highly‐unionized steel industry, be extended to the printing industry where benefits are not traditionally as generous? A textile firm whose traditional business has been stable for years finds that its fabric processing division is growing very rapidly and holds a strong position in an expanded market created by the use of new synthetic fibers. Are the firm's traditional criteria for selecting, promoting, and compensating executives appropriate to the management of this growing sector? The management of a company that has grown rapidly for ten years decides that the firm has attained an optimum size and that future growth should be limited and highly selective. Do the personnel policies in recruitment, training, compensation, and management succession still fit a company that will now experience slower growth?
Letter to the Editor
Authors: Mason R.O. , Mitroff I.I. , Barabba V.P.
Published: February 2008

I was most interested in reading the article on “Creating the Managers' Plan Book” by Messrs. Mason, Mitroff and Barabba, in the July 1980 issue of the Planning Review.
THE 1980s: A problem for strategic planners
Authors: McLagan Donald L. , Caton Christopher
Published: February 2008

The economy of the 1980s presents significant problems and no easy promises for business. In a slow‐growth, high‐inflation environment business will have a difficult time making profits grow faster than inflation. Developing strategies to do so, however, is the art of strategic planning.
Details of economic planning to be settled in the 1980s
Authors: Lekachman Robert
Published: February 2008

It is not astonishing that societies suffer linguistic hangups derived from their national experience. Germans, recalling the horrible inflation of the 1920s, have been sensitive to even small accelerations in their cost of living. Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government is testing the strength of British detestation of unemployment, an emotion associated with the general depression which began in the same decade and persisted until the start of World War II.
Strategic planning in an uncertain world
Authors: Sloan Michael P.
Published: February 2008

In deciding long‐term investment, Strategy for foreign countries, many companies are led to wonder what “the” future might be. In practice, projects are based on an extrapolation of existing tendencies, in which the politico‐economic future unfolds as the natural prolongation of the past. Unfortunately, the political life of nations is not constant; it includes abrupt changes, revolutions, spectacular overthrows of power. Many companies have recently learned this bitter lesson in Iran.
The corporate planner and the community
Authors: Barber John M. , Kelly Richard M.
Published: February 2008

Today's corporate planner has a unique opportunity to provide a community service. Although many non‐profit organizations have sophisticated management systems, others have not been introduced to the methodical approach to organized thinking offered by planning systems. Non‐profit organizations range from huge national organizations to local improvement groups. Many local groups are directed by their national associations; implementation of that direction varies in both complexity and success. The corporate planner, as a community service, can provide an introduction to the tools of planning organization and implementation. The results of planning, particularly the statement of mission and the responsibility assignments for action plans, provide tools that often are not available from other sources.
Why cash is king at Cooper
Authors: Cizik Robert
Published: February 2008

At cooper industries we treat cash with great respect. In fact, the view of our entire management team is colored by the importance we place on cash. It affects the way we look at opportunities, the way we deal with problems, and the way we measure achievements. And it certainly affects the way we do our planning — strategic, long‐range, and near‐term. We have exaggerated only slightly in the phrase we coined to capsulize our viewpoint: “Cash is king.”
Vventure capitalists
Authors: Fast Norman
Published: February 2008

IN 1980, venture capitalists invested almost $1 billion in the growth businesses and emerging industries of the future. Eighty percent of this investment was made by the 100 or so leading venture capital firms. These professionally managed venture capital firms are dedicated to identifying business opportunities that can become major corporations within ten years. These venture‐capital‐financed companies will play key roles in defining the future competitive environment of present corporations, so tracking these firms is one way of keeping an eye on the future.
Driving force: Key to strategy
Authors: Markus Robert M.
Published: February 2008

The corporate planner needs a foundation from which to coordinate short and long range planning operations. This foundation is the organization's statement of strategy. Underlying the strategy, an organization must still have a unifying concept. We call this theme the driving force, and we have found that it propels every strategic program.
Going public with strategy in annual reports
Authors: Gibson Laura N. , Murdick Robert G.
Published: February 2008

Judging the increasing number of strategic statements appearing in company advertisements, stockholder meetings and annual reports, corporate executives now believe there is a clear connection between strategic management and company profitability. The extent to which corporations reported on strategic management in their 1980 annual reports, reflects the growing belief that it is to a company's advantage to formulate and publicize its corporate strategy. In addition, by examining these reports, one may draw a correlation between a company's size and rank and its reported strategy.
The rational model has led us astray
Authors: Peters Thomas J.
Published: February 2008

A recent Fortune article went for the jugular, “Management consultants and business planners share a dirty little secret. Ninety percent of all strategies fail to get implemented.” The same article told the tale of a consultant who took a $3 billion company with no strategy and developed 200 separate Strategic Business Units. The issue is obvious. Given a company that couldn't execute one strategy, how do you suddenly take on 200 different ones — each requiring a different style, staff and skill?
The internationalization of Japanese management
Authors: Mito Tadashi
Published: February 2008

As scholars and business leaders the world over have come to realize that Japanese products equal or surpass in both quality and price the best that other advanced industrial nations have to offer, they have naturally begun to pay more attention to Japanese‐style management. The developing nations have an obvious interest in emulating Japan's remarkable economic growth; and even the advanced nations of North America and Europe, which once hosted Japanese missions seeking to understand their technology and management techniques, are now sending their own missions to Japan. As Japan has emerged as world leader in industrial development, teacher and pupil have switched roles.
Incremental strategic planning: A creative adaptation
Authors: Eadie Douglas C. , Ellison Nolen M. , Brown Grace C.
Published: February 2008

Like those of other older industrial areas in the Midwest and Northeast, Cleveland's problems are many and deepseated. Overall economic stagnation and population loss have eroded the tax base, and the inner city grows older and poorer, while a superficial renaissance of skyscraper construction and theater restoration buoys spirits. Although serious efforts are underway to improve Cleveland's city government, the continued decline in the tax base, along with services, and the virtual collapse of the school system, drive more people into the suburbs and ultimately, from the region.
Profile of the corporate planner updated
Authors: Knisely Gary , Matlins Stuart M.
Published: February 2008

This article is based on a survey of chief corporate planners conducted in 1981. It updates selected data included in the authors' 1979 and 1980 surveys (see Planning Review, January 1980 and November 1980) and provides new data about additional aspects of planning. The survey was conceived and sponsored by Johnson, Smith & Knisely, Inc., executive search consultants. It was designed and conducted by Stuart Matlins Associates, Inc., management consultants. Copies of the full report are available for $50.00 from Johnson, Smith & Knisely, Inc., 275 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.
The stagnation of planning may be dangerous to your strategy
Authors: Rule Erik G.
Published: February 2008

A common problem in many public and private sector organizations is the stagnation of strategic planning after four or five planning cycles. At this stage of development strategic planning is maturing as a management discipline; however, as corporations grow accustomed to formal planning's concepts and techniques, there often evolves an attitude of complacency among top management that, if left unchecked, can undermine planning's essential value.
Financial goal setting: Implicit vs. explicit
Authors: Spraakman Gary P.
Published: February 2008

With no conceptual basis, financial goals can only be haphazardly incorporated into the planning process. A recent survey of 60 large Canadian companies points out that there is little understanding of the “dynamics and interdependencies” for reconciling goals and for making them more congruent with the goals of most managers. Indeed, in 1977 the Journal of Finance stated that a “fully integrated theory on corporate financial decisions has not yet been developed” — a statement which has to date gone unchallenged.
Public affairs planning at J.C. Penney
Authors: Weiss Carter A.
Published: February 2008

The lesson is clear. The inability of American business to respond to its public responsibilities has spawned an underlying public distrust of the business community. Increased regulation, product lawsuits and the public's desertion of American‐made products reflect the shaky coalition between business and the public, which in turn has contributed to the general weakening of American business both at home and abroad.
Dealing with the media: Perception vs. reality
Authors: Klepper Michael M.
Published: February 2008

The private sector … is no longer private. Business, particularly big business, is scrutinized by the press as never before. How a company is perceived affects its recruiting, morale and the attitudes of investors, lenders of capital, potential joint venture partners — even the finance ministries of countries where the company wants to do business. More than ever, a company's image is reflected in its bottom line, and senior executives must manage the company's identity as much as they do any other asset or liability.
Systematic political risk analysis for planners
Authors: Coplin William D. , O'Leary Michael K.
Published: February 2008

Corporate and strategic planners for international businesses have always been aware of the importance of domestic and foreign political conditions in defining both risks and opportunities for their businesses. Unfortunately, the complexity and subjectivity of political analysis, along with the lack of valid, relevant, and up‐to‐date information makes it very difficult to integrate political analysis into the planning process. Yet in recent years, the U.S. business environment has been radically altered time and again by international events such as changes in government, outbreaks of political turmoil, increasing or decreasing restrictions on the operations of international business, changes in protectionism, or basic shifts in fiscal and monetary policy. At the very least, planners need a warning system to alert them to possible serious reversals of the business climate.
Reassessing technology management
Authors: Thackray John
Published: February 2008

The latest buzz word heard in boardrooms, business schools, seminars, executive conferences, lectures, and in management consultants' proposals is “technology management.” In this context, technology is not simply science applied, nor is it simply research and development activity. Technology has become a synthetic term for a number of techno‐socioeconomic forces at play in our material world. And in technology management we have yet a higher level of abstraction. Its seductive appeal consists of the implicit promise that technology can be managed by the corporation just like any of its other resources such as people, capital, and materials. The term suggests that companies can pick and choose between good technologies that lead to growth and profits, and bad technologies that lead to sterility and decay. It also implies that companies can defend themselves against technological surprises.
Surveying small company planning problems
Authors: Smith Maurice L.
Published: February 2008

Small companies plan less and plan differently. This is part of the findings of a survey of planning practices in companies of all sizes conducted in 1982 by the MBS Group. There are no major surprises in the results, which tend to confirm what was always suspected—planning in smaller companies (defined as those with less than $5 million annual sales) differs in many ways from that in larger companies.
Linking business and Human Resource strategy
Authors: Berger Lance A. , Glass Harold E.
Published: February 2008

The recent lessons of the recession have taught human resources planners to think about controlling people costs before their companies get pinched by a sluggish economy. To do this, business and human resource strategy must be linked in a systematic and quantifiable way.
Dimensions of strategic choice
Authors: Camillus John C. , Venkatraman Natarajan
Published: February 2008

The role of environmental scanning. The key to effective strategy lies in matching a firm's capabilities with opportunities in the external environment. This gives environmental scanning a central role in the strategy process. However, the effectiveness of the scanning activity depends on the balanced judgment of the planners—you don't want too limited an analysis, nor do you want to waste time on irrelevant factors.
Sniping at strategic planning
Authors: Randall Robert M.
Published: February 2008

At a recent New York NASCP workshop titled, “Corporate Strategists Under Fire,” Fortune writer Walter Kiechel, III delivered a free‐swinging attack on consultants, strategic theory, and planners who zealously promote unrealistic strategies at the expense of commonsense management. Mr. Kiechel has been questioning theoreticians and corporate executives on this subject for the last five years, so it seems fitting that Planning Review give him an opportunity to interview himself.
The 1984 risk index for international business
Authors: Coplin William D. , O'Leary Michael K.
Published: February 2008

Business continues to face increasing world‐wide political and economic risks, despite signs of a modest economic recovery. This survey of 80 countries shows risks increasing for exporters and financial institutions. However, companies with direct foreign investment will face little increased risk because the desire for new foreign investment will continue to constrain nationalist pressures in most countries. Political violence from terrorist groups, dissidents, and guerrilla forces is not expected to exceed last year's levels. However, the threat of violence from international hostilities is greater for many territorial and maritime disputes.
Long‐range planning of corporate research and development
Authors: Geisler Eliezer , Rubenstein Albert H.
Published: February 2008

Corporate research and development should be an integral part of a company's strategy to innovate and to maintain technical and scientific support for its business activities. In most companies, corporate R&D is under pressure to develop longer range plans of higher quality and usefulness for their programs and projects. Although our study did not find much opposition to the concept of long‐range planning of corporate R&D, we did find subtle resistance to the concept of planning for “basic” or “exploratory” research (a small percentage of the total R&D budget).
The straw that stirs the drink: Leadership at Pepsico
Authors: Wayne Calloway D.
Published: February 2008

Strategic planning is clearly a line function at PepsiCo. In stronger terms, strategy is the essence of our business and the responsibility of each of our division presidents. This is the one responsibility we do not allow them to delegate. They can have strategic planning departments—as long as they realize that they're the strategic planners.
The Elephant King
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: February 2008

The jackals were hungry and had nothing to eat. One old jackal conceived a plan for getting food. He went to the elephant and said: “We once had a king, but he became spoiled and would order us to do impossible things. So we have decided to choose another king. Our people have sent me to ask you to be our king. You'll have a good life with us—whatever you command will be done, and we'll honor you in all things. Come to our kingdom.”
Cooperative strategies
Authors: Nielsen Richard P.
Published: February 2008

Michael Porter discusses three generic strategies for outperforming competitors in his influential book, Competitive Strategy—overall cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. While these strategies are familiar to planners, what may be less familiar but equally successful are strategies that stress cooperative mutual gain rather than strict competition. There are four types of generic cooperative mutual gain strategies:
Questioning assumptions: One company's answer to the planner's nemesis
Authors: Stroup Margaret A.
Published: February 2008

How familiar is the lament, “It wasn't our plans that went wrong, it was our underlying assumptions.” Each year, planners carefully integrate products, cost of goods sold, marketplace tactics, and earnings results into superbly constructed plans. Then the realization dawns that the whole structure was built on a base of false assumptions — or that major factors were completely missed. And suddenly the plans are worth less than the paper they're written on.
Innovative structures for managing change
Authors: Drake Rodman L.
Published: February 2008

“Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan,” said Edmund Burke, “We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.” Think of Burke's grown man as an established company, and the company's organizational structure as its cradle and you'll find the analogy is still apt. Given the rapid rate of environmental and social change, more and more companies are being stifled as they struggle to make their organization's structure fit new strategies that will allow the enterprise to reach its full potential.
Books
Authors: Pavan Robert , Leontiades Milton
Published: February 2008

Despite the title, the central focus of this book is how portfolio planning techniques assist or impede strategy in large diversified companies. The author does not test the validity of the theory or assumptions underlying the portfolio planning approach. Instead, noting that most Fortune 500 companies are diversified and that about half of a sample of Fortune 1,000 firms use portfolio planning, Hamermesh concludes that CEOs and their companies must find it useful. The major research questions are thus:
Brazil: Best bet/biggest gamble
Authors: Coplin William D. , O'Leary Michael K.
Published: February 2008

Brazil's enormous natural resources, which include new mineral discoveries and agricultural developments, are gradually being exploited to fuel the country's development. These riches make it one of the world's leading exporters of natural resources and commodities.
A comparison of long‐range planning in South Korea, Japan, and the U.S.
Authors: Ho Rho Boo
Published: February 2008

Long‐range planning is really a phenomenon of the Eighties in South Korea. Historically, the concept was introduced in the mid Sixties, influenced by the country's first five‐year economic development plan, which began in 1962. However, planning was not naturalized until the Seventies. The impetus arose when:
The New Union Carbide: Some assembly required, batteries not included
Authors: Kennedy Robert D.
Published: February 2008

Given the experiences of Union Carbide in the past few years, I'm close to becoming a planning agnostic. I've decided the future is unknown and unknowable. I'm somewhere between bemused and regretful that all of the efforts of U.S. industry expended on the pursuit and logic of planning have not been able to preclude so many individual and collective failures of management judgment. The relative soundness of numerous businesses still, as always, depends upon the whims of exogenous fortune.
Future mapping: A new approach to managing strategic uncertainty
Authors: Mason David H. , Wilson Robert G.
Published: February 2008

We must expect the future to surprise us. Our worst pratfalls occur when we become overly proud of our ability to manage the future. Just when we finally learn to live with inflation, we're plagued by deflation. The oil price trends of the 1970s caught everyone by surprise, but no sooner did industry invest to conserve, than the glut struck. Government budget deficits have reached staggering proportions, but even the most wide‐eyed optimists didn't forecast inflation rates of just 3–4 percent, and interest rates gradually floating downward.
Inquest for International Harvester
Authors: Gross Norman
Published: February 2008

Let me start out by describing my relationship with International Harvester—so my biases will be clear. In 1972, I directed a review of the business planning procedures at International Harvester for Hay Associates. Perhaps the most important observation I made then was that for a good many years International Harvester had been and still was in the process of “liquidation.” That is, year after year the company earned a return lower than the cost of capital.
Replacing management's crystal ball with a spreadsheet program
Authors: Janosko Ann P. , Jensen Oscar W.
Published: February 2008

As soon as the words “planning” and “control” are mentioned, the word “forecasting” is sure to follow. Next come several important questions: Should forecasting be the special domain of experts, or become a management tool? Can management obtain accurate and mathematically valid projections without investing in special hardware or software? The answer is that the basic tools required to prepare sound forecasts are readily available in most companies today.
Mission statements
Authors: Ackoff Russel L.
Published: February 2008

Most corporate mission statements are worthless. They consist largely of pious platitudes such as: “We will hold ourselves to the highest standards of professionalism and ethical behavior.” They often formulate necessities as objectives; for example, “to achieve sufficient profit.” This is like a person saying his mission is to breathe sufficiently. A mission statement should not commit a firm to what it must do in order to survive, but to what it chooses to do in order to thrive. Nor should it be filled with operationally meaningless superlatives, such as biggest, best, optimum, and maximum; for example, one company says it wants to “maximize its growth potential,” another “to provide products of the highest quality.” How in the world can a company determine whether it has attained its maximum growth potential or highest quality?
Organizational philosophy and mission statements
Authors: Byars Lloyd L. , Neil Thomas C.
Published: February 2008

Strategic planning is concerned with defining an organization's philosophy and mission, establishing long‐ and short‐range objectives to achieve that mission, and selecting the strategy to be used in achieving those objectives. As part of this process, developing an organization's philosophy and mission is crucial. Such a statement establishes the values, beliefs, and guidelines for the way the organization conducts its business and determines its relationship with its stakeholders—employees, customers, shareholders, suppliers, government, and the public at large.
Demystifying competitive analysis
Authors: Smith Daniel C. , Prescott John E.
Published: February 2008

The value of competitive intelligence is recognized by everyone from CEOs to line managers. However, very few firms actively link their planning process with their competitive analysis. Moreover, managers in those few firms that do have an active competitive intelligence program are often disappointed with the quality of information they receive.
Using on‐line information for strategic advantage
Authors: McGrane James
Published: February 2008

For about two decades, the focus of corporate planning has been more on internal information than external information. If planners used electronic data bases at all, they were housed in company mainframes that basically contained information on the company's own business units, employees, and customers. The relationship between planners and computers had a relatively narrow field of view.
Compact Discs: New tool for competitive analysis
Authors: Briggs Warren , Coleman James
Published: February 2008

An important part of any strategic competitive analysis has always been access to timely and relevant data that can be pruned into useful information. Some new and still rapidly evolving technology is lowering the cost and simplifying access to huge data banks. This technology is already having an impact on competitive analysis. What once may have been a million‐dollar research effort taking many months, can now be accomplished in a few hours using a well‐equipped desktop PC that can read the new data sources.
Cash flow planning
Authors: Haskins Mark E. , Higgs Robert D. , Ketz J. Edward
Published: February 2008

The results of recent surveys of businesses indicate that cash flow is the single most important problem they face. The business press has noted that “cash‐flow planning is one of the more difficult and vulnerable areas in business management,” and that “businessmen can't understand why…they [are] running out of cash.” In fact, it's safe to suggest for companies of any size that cash is the lifeblood of the firm, and that a company's cash‐planning practices can be a critical early warning device of impending financial trouble.
Variance analysis in a service business
Authors: Talbott John , Brack Lori , Lee John
Published: February 2008

Small businesses, especially those engaged in providing services, usually employ some type of static budget to serve as a mechanism for evaluating the results of their operations. Management is inevitably concerned with the factors causing deviations between the static budget and the actual results. A thorough understanding of these deviations is vital if the budgeting process is to provide the expected benefits in the areas of planning and control. The problem is that superficial analysis often leads to specious explanations, or worse, that management never fully comprehends what caused the gap. We propose using a variance analysis framework to explain these deviations and to improve managerial control and effective decision making.