STRATEGIC PLANNING AND CONTROL IN A COMPETITIVE ECONOMY, EFFECTIVE CUSTOMERS ACHIEVEMENTS AND THE COMPANY’S PRODUCTIVITY
ABSTRACT
This research project attempts to synthesize the new strategic planning and control thoughts into a framework that will be helpful to strategy managers to harmonize the objectives and resources of a firm with the available business opportunities. Owing to ignorance many firms do not apply strategic planning and control. They thus have been denied of the benefits they would have derived from the adoption of strategic planning and control. Even among some firms who appear to recognize the concept, little do they embrace the idea with requisite enthusiasm to increase profitability.
The idea of strategic planning and control in the enhancement of growth of a firm cannot be over emphasized. It serves as a compass to an organization especially in a competitive economy such as ours.
The research work is therefore aimed at finding out the impact which strategic planning and control plays or ought to play in the growth and survival of a firm. Seven-up bottling company Plc, Uyo plant is used as the case study.
The project is organized into five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction which gives insight into the background of the problem as well as the research problems, also it presented the statement of the problems, objectives of the study, the hypothesis, significance of the study as well as definition of terms.
On another hand, chapter two dealt with the preview of related literatures, which formed the backbone of the study. the research extensively reviewed various related books, journals from which facts and opinions of renowned authors were drawn.
Chapter three simply explained the research methodology to enable the reader appreciate the design and stages taken in making the findings.
The results of the findings were tabulated and presented in chapter four. Brief explanation were made for every table. In addition chi-square statistical tool was used to test the hypothesis.
Chapter five contains the discussion of results, summary of major findings, conclusion, recommendation, as well as the summary. It is important to remark that benefits of strategic planning for the survival and growth of a firm were highlighted.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Managements direction setting task involves developing a mission, setting objectives, and farming a strategy. Early on in the direction – setting process, managers need to farm a vision of where to lead the organization and to answer the question, “where our business is and what will it be? A well-conceived mission statement helps channel organizational efforts along the course management has charted and builds a strong sense of organizational identity. Effective visions are clear, challenging, and inspiring they prepare a firm for future, and they make sense in the market place. A well-conceived, well-said mission statement serves as a beacon of long term direction and creates employee buy-in.
The second direction-selling step is to establish strategic and financial objectives convert the mission statement in a specific performance targets (Andrews Kenneth R. 1987:2-5), the agreed on objectives need to be challenging but achievable and they need to spell out precisely how much by when. In other words, objectives should be measurable and should involve deadlines for achievement and must be needed at all organizational levels. The third direction-setting step entails farming strategies to achieve the objectives set in each area of the organization.
According to Kelly C. Aaron (1983:46-48). A corporate strategy is needed to achieve corporate level objectives; business strategies are needed to achieve business – unit performance objectives; functional strategies are need to achieve the performance targets set for each functional department; and operating- level strategies are needed to achieve the objectives set in each operating and geographic unit. In effect, an organization’s strategic plan is a collection of unified and interlocking strategies and different strategic issues are addressed at each level of managerial strategy-making. All the direction – setting steps are all elements of strategic planning.
Strategic planning according to Gluck, Federick (1999:5) is the establishment of organization’s goals and objective and the utilization of the strategic elements for the attainment of the organization’s goals. However, YIP George S. 1992:3 points that strategic planning consists of a set of underlying process that are intended to create or manipulate a situation to create a more favourable outcome for a firm in which case every on-going business must include short-range, medium range and or long-range for its survival. This then means that strategic planning is the process of deciding in the present what to do in the future, which requires that an organization reconcile its resources with its objectives and the attendant course of actions that are open to it. Typically, the strategy-making task is more top-down than bottom-up. Lower-level strategy supports and complements higher-level strategy and contributes to the achievement of the higher-level, company wide objectives.
Strategy is shaped by both outside and inside considerations. The major external considerations are societal, political, regulatory and community factors; – industry attractiveness and the company market opportunities and threats. The primary internal considerations are company strengths, weakness, and competitive capabilities manager’s personal ambitions philosophies, and ethics; and the company culture and share values.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Strategic planning and control which is done on a company wide bases is always a difficult task. This is because past and recent research studies have made it clear that there is an increase internal and external uncertainty due to emerging opportunities and threats, lack of awareness of needs and of the facilities released issues and environmental complexity and lack of direction.
Many organizations spend most of their time realizing and re-acting to im-expected changes and problems instead of anticipating and preparing for them (Henry 1999). This he called crisis management. Organization caught off guard may spend a great deal if time and energy playing catch up. They use up their energy coping with immediate problems with little energy left to anticipate and prepare for the next challenges. This vicious cycle locks many organizations into a reactive position.
This research study is to access the impact of strategic planning on organizational performance, which at the long run enhances organizational survival. It is a continuous and systematic process where people make decision about intended future outcome, how these outcomes are to be accomplished and how success is to be measured and evaluated. On how organizations should capitalized on their strengths over come their weakness take advantage of opportunities and defend against threats to the organizations, explains the difficulties encountered by strategy managers in strategic planning and control. However, the researcher is interested in finding out the impact which strategic planning and control has in the survival and growth of a firm in a competitive economy.
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
In a liberalized and competitive economy such as ours, consumer awareness is on the increase that they consumer are becoming very selective in their choice of goods and services they purchase.
This study is therefore aimed at helping firms especially seven-up bottling company Plc know how to effectively apply or adopt strategic planning and control in a competitive economy in order to satisfy the yawning of their customers and achieve the company’s objectives. For these reasons the study is designed to achieve the following objectives.
- To examine the impact of strategic planning and control in the survival and growth of a firm.
- To examine how strategic planning and control can be implemented