برنامه ریزی استراتژیک در محیط های ناپایدار

This article draws from a multinational survey of 886 firms to show that as environmental instability increases so does planning. However, certain planning dimensions are more strongly associated with environmental instability: in particular generative planning and transactive planning. The two other planning dimensions – Symbolic and Rational Planning – are more strongly associated with firm size than with environmental instability. Planning dimensions might therefore serve different purposes. The implications for managers and academicians, and a case study illustrating how they are being implemented at General Electric in the US, conclude the article.

Ask managers about the state of their competitive environment and most will confirm that product life cycles are shortening, technology is changing faster and faster, customers are becoming more demanding and competition is intensifying. Simply put, environments are not getting more stable or any easier to compete in, and therefore an important question is how should planning adjust in the face of these more challenging contexts? This article sheds light on this question. Strategic planning is decomposed into four dimensions and the effect of environmental instability on each is tested. To identify factors other than environment that explain differences in firm-level planning we also find that planning duration, planning decentralisation and firm size can have an impact. How each planning dimension correlates with firm performance is also explored, and the article concludes with implications for managers and suggestions for further research. Finally, to provide insights into how some of our findings are being implemented, we report on some recent changes at General Electric (GE), one of the world's best-managed companies. Our findings are important to managers for many reasons. We show that planning increases as environmental instability grows. However, we also show that factors within management's control (the extent of time that planning has been underway and the decentralisation of planning) are stronger at explaining increases in planning than external environmental conditions. Further, two planning dimensions in particular are strongly associated with environmental instability (Generative and Transactive Planning), indicating that of the four dimensions these are the most sensitive to environmental instability. In addition, Firm Size more strongly associates with the other two planning dimensions (Symbolic and Rational Planning), suggesting that these dimensions are better at providing structure and stability as firms grow than they are as tools to deal with environmental instability. Planning dimensions might thus serve different purposes. Finally, we find that three planning dimensions associate with improved performance. Unexpectedly Symbolic Planning does not. Some early clarification is warranted. We do not investigate planning capabilities per se directly but only whether planning increases/decreases as environmental instability, planning decentralisation, firm size etc. change, and then whether better performance is associated with increases in planning levels. Though the positive planning/performance correlations do indicate superior performance is associated with higher planning levels, whether the planning of our sample firms correspond to the highest standards of planning is not evaluated. Nevertheless, that an improvement in the levels of three planning dimensions associates with enhanced organisational performance suggests these are behaviours adopted by high-performing firms in unstable environments, regardless of the absolute levels of planning noted among our sample.

Our findings shine a new and more complete light on strategic planning and its accumulation, and emphasise the multidimensionality of the planning deployed in unstable environments. They also emphasise that planning does have the potential to produce positive performance effects, and as environments are unlikely to become more stable anytime soon, at the very least three of the planning dimensions we describe provide a useful template for managers to benchmark the planning of organisations under their purview. Our findings also indicate in general (and discounting our findings relating to Symbolic Planning) that planning is a value-adding activity for firms to pursue, contrary to the condemnation of formal planning by some theorists over the past decade or so. In the face of unstable environments, incremental over formal planning, and especially the generative content of plans, are the dimensions of most importance. How inclusive and decentralised planning is, and how adaptable and flexible plans prove to be, and more notably the extent to which plans stimulate product, service or process innovation, are the planning behaviours organisations most rely on to deal with environmental instability. Importantly, these are also the dimensions that most strongly associate with superior organisational performance. Finally, our description of the changes implemented at GE under Jeff Immelt provides a tangible, on the ground example of how one prominent organisation has moved to upgrade its planning in the context of 21st Century global competition. In today's fast-changing competitive markets planning at this level of granularity is vital, as our findings clearly indicate that in such conditions all should move to increase their imagination at work!