Long-term planning and forecasting in Europe

In January 1968, in the light of the Consultative Assembly's recommendations (Recommendation 516) aimed at giving the Work Programme a forward-looking dimension, the Secretary General invited a group of personalities of world-wide reputation to discuss the role they thought the Council of Europe might play in the field of long-term planning and forecasting. Following this meeting, which was attended, among others, by MM. Pietro Ferraro, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Robert Jungk, Johan Galtung and Professor Karl Steinbuch, a number of proposals were formulated with a view to intensifying co-operation between member countries in the field of future research at both governmental and non-governmental level. Such co-operation was intended, inter alia, to lay a scientific foundation for work concerned with the future which might find a place in the activities of the Council of Europe. The first step in this direction would be to compile an inventory of European bodies engaged in long-term planning and forecasting studies and of their activities (research, seminars, publications, etc.).     

Business planning in successful small firms

Strategic planning has been widely publicized during the last decade, but what has been accomplished by this management activity in smaller, high-growth firms? Business plans have been widely recommended for start-up funding, but we have noted additional uses for business plans in pratice. This article reports methods and results of strategic planning and written business plans in high-growth ‘INC. 500’ firms. In spite of a variety of obstacles, over half of the firms conduct strategic planning on a regular basis. Results of this study show that fast-growth firms develop written business plans as a product of strategic planning, mainly by five key management personnel. Written business plans are used more for internal management purposes than for start-up funding. Finally, the completion of strategic planning is positively associated with a firm's profitability. Based on survey and interview data, this article describes a four-phase model to help ensure effective integration of strategic planning processes and the resulting written business plans.     

Business planning in Tanzanian State Enterprises

Business planning in government-owned enterprises in Tanzania is far from optimum. Symptoms of problematic performance such as constrained flow of goods, uncoordinated investments, liquidity constraints and the visible absence of long term objectives are easily identifiable. The problem would have been regarded marginal if the ideological setting and the established policies of the State did not envisage an eventual dominance of all economic activities by those enterprises. And with this in mind the following paper discusses business planning in some dominant Tanzanian enterprises in terms of macro links, system design, conceptual content and, finally, flaws. In order to give credence to research findings, the study was confined to three nationally important state enterprises which contribute significally to overall and sectoral GDP, wage employment and macro development policies. These state enterprises are: the Board of Internal Trade (BIT), the National Development Corporation (NDC) and the National Textile Corporation (TEXCO). The State Trading Corporation (STC), the forerunner of BIT was also included because of the vital role it played in developing and implementing one of the very early business planning models of the country.     

Business planning at Sperry Rand

A minor change in planning procedure which proved to be a vital ingredient in business planning at Sperry Rand is described in this paper. The author argues that the change and other pressures increased commitment to planning throughout the corporation. However he concludes that it is by no means certain that the present trend towards more intensive planning will continue. Nonetheless that the odds appear to be largely in favour of business planning surviving and being highly regarded by management.     

Business planning in the Thomas Cook Group

Following the acquisition of the Thomas Cook Group by Midland Bank in 1972, more systematic budgeting and financial planning was established as an important priority. The medium- to long-term planning function of the Group was strengthened in 1978, and the author argues that substantial progress in this area has been achieved. The methods and procedures employed in the Group's planning are detailed, and the relationships between the planning function and both the requirements of the business and the nature of the industry are emphasised.     

Business planning and employee democracy in Yugoslavia

Conceptions of the role of planning in the socio-economic system have changed in the past 30 years. During the period 1946–1950 the concept of administrative planning was prevalent. From 1954 to 1976 it was planning the main economic proportions; and from 1976 to the present day the concept of self-managing social planning has been prevalent. The efficiency of planning depends in large part on the matching and co-ordination of all participants in the process, and particularly on the participation of workers in self-managing bodies taking planning decisions. Annual plans are to be treated as integral parts of mid-range plans and enterprises are obliged to analyse the implementation of their mid-range plan every year and to develop in detail activities for the next year. The principle of continuous planning is an important feature of self-managing social planning.     

Business planning: The gap between theory and practice

The author maintains that the gap between the theory and the practice of corporate planning is growing. He examines the planning systems currently used and concludes that corporate planning as advocated by the theorists is not being practised in any developed form by large corporations.     

Privatization in eastern Europe

As an adviser to governments and companies in this field, Jeremy Seddon is well placed to comment on privatization schemes. Privatization of industry and commerce in Eastern Europe is a must as a result of the appalling legacy of central planning.Seddon looks at the rationale behind privatization, the obstacles that need to be defeated and some strategies. He believes that the principal method of privatization will be by sale of state-owned businesses either to existing private sector companies, to investors via a stock market or to employees of the business concerned. The consequences of these different types of transactions are of great interest to governments and companies and all “Eastern Europe-watchers”.     

Flexible manufacturing in Europe

Considerable interest has been shown in computer-integrated systems as a means of dealing with some of the competitive challenges facing European manufacturers in the 1990s. In this paper, John Bessant and Bill Haywood review some experience with one example of such technology-flexible manufacturing systems - drawing particularly on research in the UK, the Federal Republic of Germany and Sweden.     

Paradoxes in planning

A paradox may be described as: ‘an idea which seems to conflict with conventional logic’. Strategic planning has acquired such a conventional logic, or set of paradigms, which enables its practitioners to structure and understand their activities. However, some years of being a practitioner has convinced the author that good management and good planning often violate these principles. It is necessary to restate them, or frequently to invert them, to obtain a useful structure for successful planning.     

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.     

Strategic planning in Tanzania

The Tanzania Wood Industry Corporation is one of the very few parastatal organizations that have developed and introduced a strategic corporate planning process. The novelty of the idea, the many operational problems that surround the managers and the lack of adequate training are some of the problems that have retarded the development and introduction of corporate planning in Tanzania. In 1980 the new CEO of TWICO contracted a Finnish management consulting firm to audit the whole corporation and to recommend a better management practice. Systems manuals were then developed and a grassroots based strategic corporate planning process was then introduced. Now in its third year, the impact on management is very encouraging.     

Pitfalls in portfolio planning

This paper presents an analysis and comparison of the Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co., and Arthur D. Little portfolio models and a discussion of the theoretical and operational problems with the general portfolio construct. The models seem to share the goal of optimizing the firm's financial performance and the same fundamental assumptions. The strategies suggested by each model will not always be the same because of differences in the structure of the three models. Also strategic analysis of each unit is necessary to avoid the pitfalls caused by the theoretical and operational problems with the portfolio construct.     

Production planning in practice

The changes and pressures facing the manufacturing and engineering industries today are increasing the importance of effective aggregate manpower and production planning. Several different theoretical optimisation models to tackle this problem have been described in detail in the literature but there have been few applications of them in practice.The reasons for this are many but include: the difficulty in expressing managements' conflicting and mixed objectives in an objective function; the necessity to oversimplify real life systems to enable these methods to be used; the simplistic approach to manpower planning used in these models; the difficulty in gaining managements' acceptance and finally the fact that what management actually wants is a tool to assist them in planning and decision making.What is being used by many managements is a case-study deterministic simulation model. Many companies are adopting this type of model for all types of planning and twelve out of twenty-seven companies visited in a research project described in this paper were using this type of model for aggregate manpower and production planning. It is proving to be an effective management tool and is being readily accepted principally because modern specialised financial modelling languages are enabling these models to be built, understood and used by non-specialist managers.     

Strategies for Europe proposals for science and technology policies industrial innovation in Europe

Europe's performance with respect to industrial innovation is compared to those of USA and Japan. The reasons for Europe's relatively poor performance are examined and related to institutional, cultural and social factors. An appropriate strategy for innovation in European industry is then defined.     

Manpower in corporate planning

In this article, the author seeks to show the importance of giving thorough consideration to manpower in all planning activities, whether long or short term. He also emphasizes that manpower planning lies at the heart of all rational personnel activities, if they are to contribute as they should to the objectives of the organization. He outlines the elements of manpower planning, the main methods of forecasting demand and supply, both within and outside the organization and sets out the main elements of the manpower plan.     

Energy planning in India

The author reviews India's planning for energy requirements in coal, oil, gas and nuclear power and in the fields of solar energy and the extension of forest areas to provide firewood. Coal and natural gas supplies will be increased to reduce oil demand. There will be an accelerated programme of development of bio-gas, an exploration of solar energy potential and extensive afforestation to provide additional energy sources.