Managing the impacts of large public programs

This paper is the result of a research project which investigated the impact of the U.S. space program on the American economy. Based on their field studies of past space program impacts, the authors develop several conclusions regarding the overall management and strategic planning of large public programs. In this article, the author outlines a structured approach to strategic planning and evaluation which will aid public program managers to respond to the challenge of impact management.     

Long range planning in large United States banks

This study indicated that there is considerable interest in formal strategic long range corporate planning among large U.S. banks. Officers in a total of 97 large U.S. banks provided information on their bank's efforts in the area of long range planning for this study. The data indicated that the percentage of large U.S. banks with fully developed and operational long range planning systems is rapidly increasing. Information on the organization for long range bank planning and the administrative procedures being utilized are presented and discussed. In addition, information on problems that the bankers are experiencing in implementing and operating their long range planning systems are presented.     

Long range planning in large United States Corporations—A survey

This paper presents the results of a survey of the application of strategic and corporate planning in 500 large U.S. Corporations. The authors sought to update and provide new understanding on a number of important issues including; the extent of long range planning in these firms, the organizational structure of their planning function, the prevailing attitude towards long range planning in the firm, the planning process in terms of content and revision frequency, and the perceived benefits and problems associated with long range planning. In concentrating upon these issues the authors provide an interesting and important insight into the current application of strategic and corporate planning processes as well as giving a number of indications as to where the theory lags behind the practice.     

Long range planning— Japan-USA— A comparative study

This article reports on a comparative study carried out in the U.S.A. and Japan. He concludes that in the U.S.A. long range planning is used to integrate the strategies of divisions and to control the divisions. The planning process is usually bottom-up rather than top-down.In Japan, long range planning is used for improving strategic decisions of top management, so the planning process is a centralized interactive process.Project emphasis rather than quantitative planning is a common characteristic in both the U.S.A. and Japan. However American corporations are more advanced in this respect. Many Japanese corporations suggest that project emphasis is the key success factor for planning.To cope with uncertainty, American corporations tend to update their plans every year or even at shorter intervals, while adopting contingency plans.To the same end, Japanese corporations are using two time horizon plans which are composed of a long range strategy and a medium range plan.With respect to follow-up and implementation, American corporations follow-up more closely and long range planning is used for the evaluation of managers of divisions. The quality of plan and accomplishment are reflected to the economic rewards.Japanese corporations are less inclined to follow up the long range plan itself, but it is considered as important to implement it through the budget and also through the project plan. Project teams are quite frequently used.     

Long range planning of U.K. and Japanese corporations—A comparative study

The author conducted mail surveys on long-range planning systems in Japanese and British corporations. He also made a number of visits to corporations in both countries to analyse the similarities and differences in the planning systems.In the U.K., the clarification of goals and the resource allocation are emphasized but in Japan clarification of goals and basic problem finding are stressed.The strategic projects are not necessarily formulated in the long-range planning process. The relationship between the project and the long-range planning was analysed and in both countries, the trend of long-range planning is towards more strategy orientation than quantitative computation.The planning process in Japan is more centralized. The management committee plays an important role in reviewing and making the final decision. In the U.K., the plan initiation is more decentralized, and in the final decision the board of directors plays a more important role. The trends are, however, from bottom up approach to top down approach.Goals expressed in the long-range plan of the U.K. corporations put more emphasis on financial goals, but that of the Japanese corporations emphasizes growth and employee welfare.Regarding the style of strategic decision-making the subjective responses show that it is partly analytical and partly intuitive. There are some differences between two countries, but this problem needs to be analysed further.To cope with uncertainty, multiple scenarios and contingency plans are more frequently used in the U.K., whereas in Japan the sequential decision is more commonly used. British corporations are better prepared for uncertainty than Japanese corporations.The key success factors of long-range planning are similar in both countries. The involvement of top management and cooperation of line management are two important items. Differences are that in the U.K. the planning system is emphasized in addition to the other factors, but in Japan clear goals are more emphasized.     

Private and Public Sector Models for Strategies in Universities*

Increasing formalization of disciplined management of UK universities over the last 30 years has been accompanied by moves to articulate universities' strategies, by attempts to connect organizations' plans and management of activity to those strategies and by a desire to measure how well outcomes are fitted to universities' goals. In this complex change in the orientation of universities' management, lessons have been drawn from the contemporary development of the analysis of strategy and strategic process in commercial and, latterly, in public sector settings. It is argued that there have been very significant errors and weaknesses in the importation of such models of strategy, especially in the stress on strategic planning rather than strategic process and in the insensitivity of universities' planning to the underlying strategy process of the typical university. Most universities, it is argued, mistake planning – and even budgeting – for strategy itself, having failed to make proper sense of their own organizations' processes of generating strategies and putting them into practice. They have typically missed the crucial context of strategy and change. It is argued that there are crucial lessons to be learned from recent advances in theorizing about strategy in the private or commercial sector, particularly in relation to the development of modelling complex and path‐dependent systems; and it is argued strongly that universities' strategic process can fruitfully be analysed through the perspectives of real options analysis. This can also accommodate the richness of universities' traditions of strategy formation and implementation within ‘loose‐coupled’ organizations.     

Adding life cycles to learning curves

The price-oriented experience curve has been extensively utilized as a model in corporate planning. However, managers exercise a greater degree of control over cost than they do over price. The use of the cost-oriented learning curve together with the product life cycle model in strategic planning is explored in this paper. The Ford Motor Company's experience with the Model-T, which was the first mass-produced automobile in the U.S., is used to reinforce the fact that the simultaneous use of the product life cycle and the learning curve would have provided Ford management with better planning information. With this information, Ford could have avoided the subsequent disastrous results which it experienced.     

The importance of practical export skills: some evidence from Canadian agribusiness

This paper compares the practical export skills needed by Canadian Agribusiness for sales to the U.S. with those for Overseas markets. Seventy skills in global entrepreneurship, international marketing, international finance, and international trade logistics were ranked and used to gauge the influence of export market on practical international trade skills. The findings show that practical export skill requirements vary substantially by firm and export market. Generally, basic management, marketing, finance, and shipping skills are most important to successful agri-product exporting. Advanced skills in strategic management, export marketing, and export finance are not important to most exporters. Instead, most Canadian agribusiness exporters consider the ability to use international trade specialists to be a key export skill.     

Developing strategic thinking

This paper looks at the problem of getting managers to contribute effectively to strategic planning, and focuses on the role of management development approaches in ensuring that this happens. A number of formal, and less formal, management development techniques are discussed in the light of their relevance for developing strategic awareness. The importance of providing exposure to strategic issues at an early stage in managers' careers is stressed, and also the need to encourage managers to take initiatives in obtaining their own development. Some of the most fruitful techniques involve taking full advantage of the ‘natural learning’ that takes place on the job, and those which provide a close integration between management development and the planning process—such as projects and ‘task forces’. Finally the role of senior managers in helping to create and maintain a climate in which strategic abilities can develop is discussed.     

Formal strategy in public hospitals

This paper suggests that the difficulties associated with the application of formal strategic planning in public professional service organizations may have been underestimated in much of the literature. A survey of written strategic plans produced by Canadian hospitals showed that these plans were often heavily oriented towards expansion, ambiguous and rather loosely integrated, leading to questions concerning their realism and utility as a basis for strategic decisions. This phenomenon seems symptomatic of the complex (and often highly political) decision making environment faced by hospital administrators (and by managers of other professional service organizations such as universities and social service agencies). It is concluded that the benefits of formal planning may be different and less tangible for these organizations than for private business.     

Understanding managers' preferences for internal markets versus business planning: A comparative study of German and U.S. managers

Internal markets and centralized business planning are alternative organizational designs for coordinating the economic activities within a firm. While some preliminary theory about when to use each exists in the literature, little is known about how managers understand and decide when to use one or the other. The study develops and tests in samples of German and U.S. managers a preliminary theory about factors that influence the preferences of managers for internal markets or planning as alternative modes of coordination. Managers' preferences are influenced by key constructs of internal markets and planning theory (the perceived limits of planning, speed and efficiency of markets, motivation potential of markets), but also by differences in their institutional contexts (national government and business context, company culture, and recent company experience with planning and internal markets). The study is the first to explore the substitutability of internal markets and planning within the strategic decision process of managers, closer to where it becomes reality.     

Rational and non-rational planning

People's views on planning differ widely, as this article demonstrates. Within the broad field of planning, strategic policy-making is becoming ever more important. The authors aim to discuss a number of well known concepts, methods and theoretical approaches as they appear in the business and management literature of planning. In Part 1 they indicate the variety of planning attitudes and discuss why planning is necessary and what it entails. In Part 2, with the aid of conceptual frameworks, they discuss various planning approaches and new developments and end with an examination of rational planning and strategic policy making.     

An Examination of IT Planning in a Large,Diversified Public Organization*

The conduct of information technology (IT) planning processes has been of dominant managerial concern in public and private organizations. Yet, current IT planning research offers little guidance on the types of planning actions and behaviors that are appropriate to organizational contexts. We focus on the conduct of the IT planning process by describing an exploratory research project. The project empirically examined a number of issues associated with managing IT planning within a single large public enterprise, particularly identifying actions and behaviors related to producing quality IT plans. The results of the study yield some useful set of guidelines; most interesting is the importance of building IT infrastructure based on IT sophistication and innovativeness for large agencies to improve plan quality. Other recommendations include having a focused, balanced technology and business planning orientation that incorporates a strategic outlook, support of top management, attention to business planning, and early consensus among planning members.     

High expectations mirror high stakes for physician executives

Because the stakes in health care are high, physician executives are challenged to meet high expectations set by their CEOs and boards. These may be unrealistic--for example, demanding that physician executives possess expertise in finance or strategic planning. Job stresses for physician executives are specific to the role, but are not unlike those faced by other senior executives. It's a fact that professionals leave jobs for any number of reasons; sometimes, not through their own choice or fault. Thus, every time a physician executive leaves a job, it should not be characterized as "being fired," and not every job-leaving should be taken as a failure. Accept that you may make mistakes while doing the best job you can. Rely on your own value system and integrity to see you through.     

Integrating strategic issues into strategic management

The notion of a ‘strategic issues’ is rather pervasive in the field of planning in both conceptual [5, 19] and practical contexts. For instance, sometime ago the Wall Street Journal [41] reported that at least 50 large firms have created positions of ‘issues management director’; a dramatic increase in the number of such positions. ‘True’ strategic issues have a readily apparent importance to any organization; yet the process of identifying such issues and of integrating them into strategic planning and management is not well developed. Most treatments of strategic issues deal only with specific segments of the overall process through which relevant issues may be initially identified and finally translated into appropriate strategy [e.g. 5, 17]. This paper demonstrates that it is practical to develop a comprehensive process of ‘strategic issue management’ (SIM) that will facilitate the systematic identification, assessment and analysis of such issues. Such a process can ensure that issue-related factors are fully integrated into the formulation and implementation of strategy and plans. As such, SIM is a process whereby strategic issues may become an integral element of strategic management.     

Strategic planning in an age of uncertainty

Strategic planning and decision making in the face of uncertainty have always presented a serious challenge to top management, but the present scale of uncertainty is unprecedented. Decision makers used to be able to rely on the past to predict the trends of the future. Now they are increasingly being forced to make important decisions that depend upon highly uncertain external factors for which the past offers little guidance. In all areas of business and government, there is a vital need to understand and implement procedures that enable decision makers to deal more effectively with uncertainty for planning and allocating their organizations' resources.Because of differences in their social, political and economic environments, European and Japanese managers are today affected by many acute areas of uncertainty— such as industrial democracy, floating exchange rates, changing social and political values, growing environmental awareness, government regulation, technological change, pollution control regulation, energy cost, and raw material availability—earlier than their counterparts in the U.S.A. These uncertainties affect not only private sector manufacturing industries, but also financial and service industries as well as nationalized industries and government organizations.This article shows how ineffective methods of dealing with uncertainty can lead to serious mistakes with costly consequences. The cost of overconfidence and people's natural but futile tendency to ignore or to try to eliminate uncertainty is illustrated by the crises seen recently in the world steel and shipbuilding industries. The article then demonstrates how decision analysis procedures that focus directly on the major decision points in the strategic plan enable executives not only to include uncertainty directly in their strategic planning, but also to increase their understanding of the decision process and their ability to communicate the results to others.     

Can business learn from wargames?

The value of planning, particularly strategic planning, has long been recognized by both the military and business. Recently, the military has made significant contributions in the area of strategic decision making through the use of war games. Business managers may be able to expand their strategic decision-making judgment by employing the wargaming technology developed by the military. If the wargaming concept is embraced by business, it must serve, as it does in the military, as an aid to decision-making rather than as the decision itself.     

Reconstruction and Deconstruction of the Foundation of South Australia as a Nineteenth-Century Strategic Planning Process and How it Might Compare with Current Planning Practice

ABSTRACT

This article does three things. It reconstructs the narrative about the foundation of South Australia in the 1830s as a strategic planning process. It then deconstructs that analysis to explore the issues it addresses and the outcomes. Finally, it reviews the South Australian experience to see if there are valid comparisons to be made with current practice and what lessons it might offer in that regard. In doing that it briefly reviews one present methodology of strategic planning most akin to that followed in South Australia, and one strategic planning exercise that could learn from it.     

Tioxide: Computerization—The key to the future in financial planning

As the capability of new computer systems becomes increasingly sophisticated, so does the application of computer techniques to financial and strategic planning become more relevant to management. Planning and practically all forms of decision-making are concerned with the future, which necessarily is uncertain and therefore difficult to plan for. Forecasting methods, however, can suggest trends and it is possible to reduce the number of possible futures to a manageable number, in effect, creating scenarios. But the viewing of multiple scenarios in a manual accounting system is impractical, given the sheer volume of work, and this is where the facilities offered by computerization can assist decision-making greatly. The case study illustrated here concerns a multinational company with production facilities in seven different countries, using a sophisticated financial software packege for strategic and financial planning applications. The article traces the development of Tioxide's association with a financial modelling package, Planmaster, from initial use on a time-sharing basis to the changes in hardware manufacture which made it possible to run what is essentially a mainframe program on the desk-top microcomputer of the planning department.     

Understanding the Economic Costs and Benefits of Catastrophes and Their Aftermath: A Review and Suggestions for the U.S. Federal Government

The number and magnitude of devastating natural and human events make it imperative that we actively and systematically estimate the costs and benefits of policy decisions in affected localities, regions, states, and nations. Such strategic risk management preparedness efforts should forecast well into the future and include scenarios with and without enhanced engineered structures; with reduced vulnerability through land-use planning and design; with the impact of resiliency and mitigation; with evacuation and relocation; and with the costs and benefits of recovery and restoration. We describe different kinds of regional economic models that can be used in these preparedness planning efforts, explore critical data needs, and advocate a shared federal-state-local strategic planning effort to accomplish the objective.