Strategic planning for public relations

Public relations is a key activity for most chairmen of public companies and nationalized industries. It is somewhat suprising therefore how few large companies consider developing an explicit public relations strategy as part of their overall business plan. The reason for this may be partly due to the relatively low regard which senior line managers have for public relations managers and partly because there is a lack of understanding of the nature and use of public relations as a tool of strategic management. The purpose of this article is to discuss why and how business planners should pay more attention to developing explicit public relations strategies for their organizations.     

Policy planning for environmental management

This article considers Environmental Management as being made up of three parts: Assessment, Renewable Resource Management, and the Regulation and Control of Pollution.The author argues that the traditional dichotomy of social and physical dimensions of environmental management must be done away with. He believes that the rapidly evolving concept of Policy Planning can provide the mechanisms to deal with the problem of management in this area.     

The public affairs function in American corporations: Development and relations with corporate planning

The increase of social and political turbulence has led to the development of new organizational response mechanisms. Public affairs units are among the most widely adopted forms in U.S. companies. This paper reports findings from a major research study of the public affairs function in American corporations. Analysis of the public affairs function in several hundred firms strongly suggests that a critical stage in the organization's response to environmental change involves the integration of the corporate planning and public affairs perspective. This paper reviews data from the study and discusses the planning/public affairs relationship in terms of survey and case research data.     

Marketing planning and corporate planning

The market planning subset of the corporate planning process has unique difficulties associated with technical, organizational and behavioural problems. A major technical problem is that of getting the company sales forecast right. The paper suggests a check-list for budget reviewers aimed at producing more realism in forecasting (Section II).Organizational problems are discussed in terms of allowing time for full concurrence between budget framers and reviewers (Section III). The little-discussed behavioural problems associated with the interface between line management and marketing staff specialists are outlined in Section IV with some suggestions for overcoming them.     

Futurology and planning

This paper is not intended to be an exhaustive exposition of futurological and predictive studies, but rather an indication of the kinds of approach which institutes devoted to this subject are making, methods used and the ideas which are being developed.     

Integration of process planning and production planning and control in cellular manufacturing

Organisations willing to succeed in global competition have to integrate their internal and external processes. This especially includes planning and production control (PPC) processes. Optimised allocation of the production resources and quick response to demand changes result in lower cost and improvement of production performance. Practitioners and researchers have been trying to achieve these goals using production planning techniques. Although the results are significant, it seems necessary to integrate production operations in order to improve the production performance. The goals, information and decisions taken in production planning and control and process planning are often very different and difficult to integrate in Cellular Manufacturing (CM) environments. Designing an efficient PPC system and integrating it with process planning in a cellular environment is of the same importance. The following paper proposes first a comprehensive framework of integrated process planning and production planning and control in CM. Then, with respect to this framework and utilising the domain knowledge in the area of CM systems, an integrated model based on Integrated Definition Modeling Language is developed. The application of the models has been considered as a case study for a production system in electronics and telecommunication sector in a plant in Iran. The validity and completeness of the proposed model is tested by a panel of experts in the areas of production planning and control in CM environments.     

Strategic planning and inflation

The author of this article argues that inflation is a neglected area in corporate planning despite the events of 1974/1975. The planning problem which companies face because of inflation is defined, while acknowledging that it is difficult to solve. Recent experience has shown that inflation has a direct impact on every major area of business. Thus it is essential that there is a meaningful attempt to handle these problems in planning. The author discusses his approach to grasping this nettle.     

Integrating forecasting and planning

Specialization inhibits or prohibits interdisciplinary communication among diverse areas. It contributes to segmentation, which becomes a serious problem when several of those areas should depend upon knowledge which exists in other fields. Forecasting and Planning are two such areas, and it is the purpose of this article to show how planning can benefit by the proper utilization of existing knowledge in the field of forecasting.     

Systematic planning and re-organization

In the last decade wages and salaries have more than doubled in most industrial countries. The amount of capital behind each person in industry has in many countries increased even more, partly to rationalize and compensate for the higher manpower costs. This high rate of investment made discount rates increase 50 – 100 per cent in most industrialized countries in the same period. On the other hand low-cost countries have steadily been pushing more and better products into the international markets. This increases competition. The strongest competition and challenge, however, may come from new technology, new materials, new products and above all from better management.

This development leads to a profit-squeeze for the static company. It gives smaller margins for slow and wrong decisions, and demands a dynamic forward-looking management that understands how to organize, how to develop and involve individual human resources, and how to draw up and use objectives, goals, plans, and programmes, both for present and future growth and progress.

In this article, which is based on management and consultant experience, the focus is put on the need of developing and using as management tools systematic planning and reorganization.     

Reunite management and planning

In many companies the planning function has been removed from the mainstream of corporate life. Planning (and planners) have been isolated from the locus of decision- making power and insulated from information vital to the planning process. The outcome has been the generation of irrelevant plans and a proliferation of impotent planners. The author argues for a reintegration of technical expertise and managerial power, a reunion of planning and decision-making processes.     

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.     

Computers and financial planning

This article discusses the principal application areas of models in the financial planning field together with the main reasons for adopting this approach. The various techniques available are compared with special emphasis on the now widespread ‘financial modelling systems’. Finally, an indication is given as to future developments.     

Concurrent consideration of product design,process planning and production planning activities

In manufacturing engineering, product design, process planning and production planning activities are often considered independently. However, in order to effectively respond to changes in business situations, such as changes in demand forecast, product mix and technology, it is desirable to consider them concurrently. For this purpose, a large-scale linear programming model has been developed. The model considers minimization of the sum of processing cost, late shipment cost and inventory holding cost as the objective, and concurrently selects product designs, and generates process plans and production plans. The number of columns in the formulation can be large and, hence, an efficient column generation scheme is developed to solve the model. The model and solution procedure are illustrated with examples.     

Tailor-made planning: Making planning fit the firm

This selective and limited application of the contingency approach to planning is intended to show that the process is a highly flexible set of activities which can be adapted and tailored to the organization's requirements. At each stage of the planning process the manager has a set of choices which enable him to make the best possible fit between the process and the organization. He is not a passive recipient of a pre-ordained sequence of rigidly invariable activities. He is in the position of being able to select specific solutions to specific problems so that the planning process and structure form the best possible fit for the organization in its environment.     

Pre-investment planning

Effective control of a firm's future depends upon sound pre-investment planning before further commitments are made. Therefore, the firm's situation has to be strategically characterized. In this article the author develops a strategic approach towards preplanning of investments. This approach can be helpful in suggesting a relevant investment policy. In this respect attention will be paid to acceptance criteria, financing considerations and types of commitment.     

Human relations in industry

In developed societies, good human relations become of crucial importance as people demand treatment as individuals. However, many in management positions pay only lip service to the implications of this need. The main reasons for this are that good human relations are very expensive in terms of both money and management effort and require fundamental revision of many inherited attitudes. They require appropriate organizational provision, good working conditions and amenities together with broad-ranging welfare facilities. Perhaps more important than these, however, are the intangible factors of caring and involvement by management and workers. Such principles have reached a high and successful stage of development in the author's company. Examples from several companies highlight the value of such hygiene conditions in diminishing disputes and facilitating essential change.Leadership is crucial both in management and trades unions but effective leadership is only possible against a background of good human relations.     

Corporate planning and Corporate Collapse

In this article John Argenti describes what he found during a year's investigation into company failure that he undertook for a recently published book ‘Corporate Collapse’. At first it was difficult to see any pattern but certain conclusions gradually emerged as he discussed the causes and symptoms of failure with more and more people.

Many of the lessons are of particular significance for bankers, shareholders, accountants and others but John Argenti believes there are a number of extremely important lessons for corporate planners as well—especially as ‘defective response to change’ turns out to be one of the prime causes of failure in mature companies.     

Development and planning of infrastructure

This paper offers a survey of the wide field in infrastructure, a bird's eye view of some of the major problems arising, and some controversial remarks. The aim is to point to the very great importance of the planning and development of infrastructure which decide now how against the background of continued scientific and technological development the environment should be kept or brought under some sort of intelligent control so that the quality of living is steadily enhanced.