Abstract
The purpose of this text has been to analyse and illustrate the way in which corporate strategy decisions should be taken. The explicit belief in writing such a text is that these decisions are important for individual businesses, and thereby for the economy as a whole. Moreover it is argued that the strategic decision-making process analysed here offers a more logical, systematic and effective way of arriving at corporate policy decisions than other less formal or intuitive systems.
When the simplicity and intuitive appeal of strategic planning are combined with its promise to solve the problem of uncertainty facing professional managers, the rapid adoption of the concept is quite understandable. Nevertheless, after a decade or more of experience, it is reasonable to ask whether strategic planning has lived up to its promises and, if not, in what ways it has failed. — R. N. Paul et al., ‘The Reality Gap in Strategic Planning’, Harvard Business Review, May–June 1978, p. 125.
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References
Quoted in Sunday Times, 13 November 1983.
C. Thornton, ‘What’s Wrong with Corporate Management?’, Management News, October 1983, p. 4.
See Sunday Times, 13 May 1984.
Quoted in The Director, December 1983, p. 42.
Financial Times, 18 July 1984.
See W. Kiechel, ‘Corporate Strategists Under Fire’, Fortune, 27 December 1982, pp. 34–9.
Ibid., p. 34.
See R. N. Paul et al., ‘The Reality Gap in Strategic Planning’, Harvard Business Review, May–June 1978, pp. 124–30.
See J. Thackray, ‘The Corporate Strategy Problem’, Management Today, October 1979, pp. 87ff.
See J. K. Galbraith, The New Industrial State (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1967) Ch. 6.
T. J. Peters and R. H. Waterman, In Search of Excellence (New York: Harper & Row, 1982).
Ibid., p. 103.
See The Perils of Trying to Change Corporation Culture’, Financial Times, 14 December 1983.
See ‘Corporate Strategy in the Wilderness’, Financial Times, 29 June 1979.
P. W. Beck, ‘Corporate Planning for an Uncertain Future’, Long Range Planning, August 1982, p. 17.
Financial Times, 29 June 1979.
For a review of this see R. H. Hayes and W. J. Abernathy, ‘Managing Our Way to Economic Decline’, Harvard Business Review, July–August 1980, pp. 67–77.
W. J. Abernathy, K. B. Clark and A. M. Kantrow, Industrial Renaissance: Producing a Competitive Future for America (New York: Basic Books, 1983) p. 11.
Ibid., Ch. 2.
Hayes and Abernathy, ‘Managing Our Way to Economic Decline’, p. 70.
R. N. Paul et al. (note 8) date the subject from the publication of David E. Ewing’s Long Range Planning for Management in 1958.
See the book by Harvey referred to at various points in this text: D. F. Harvey, Business Policy and Strategic Management (Columbus, Ohio: Merrill Publishing, 1982); and also A. A. Thompson and A. J. Strickland, Strategic Management (Plano, Texas: Business Publications, 3rd edn, 1984) as examples of the American literature. The most recent UK text in this field adopts a not dissimilar approach: see G. Johnson and K. Scholes, Exploring Corporate Strategy (London: Prentice Hall, 1984).
F. W. Gluck, ‘Strategic Management for the Eighties’, The McKinsey Quarterly, Summer 1983, p. 14.
See Arthur Young Business Review, Spring 1984, p. 12.
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© 1986 W. Stewart Howe
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Howe, W.S. (1986). Conclusions. In: Corporate Strategy. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18213-8_13
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