| dc.description.abstract | The management technique of corporate strategic planning
can be defined as, a formal process of developing objectives
for the company and its component parts, evolving alternate
strategies to achieve these objectives, doing this against a
background of systematic appraisal of internal strengths,
weaknesses, environmental changes and finally translating
strategy into detailed operational plans and seeing to it that
these plans are carried out.
Most strategic decisions will commit the organisation on a
long-term basis. This is the raison d' etre of strategic
planning. Corporate strategic planning aims at integrating and
coordinating the operations of several autonomous and semi autonomous
divisions to ensure that different parts of the
organisation are not working at cross-purposes.
To-day, corporate strategic planning is gaining momentum and
its effectiveness is being heralded by a large number of
organisations especially in the western countries. What about
the status of this management technique in the Kenyan companies?
The study is meant to find out its state of development in the
selected Kenyan companies , why it is being developed, how far
it has been implemented, its effectiveness, factors affecting
it and its likely future developments.
'The environment in which the Kenyan companies exist and with
which they interact is increasing in complexity, and the rate of
change is accelerating. .It is becoming difficulty for the Kenyan
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executivies to evaluate the Impact on a company of some of the
environmental changes. Thus the need to determine the company
,objectives and to select the strategy most likely to achieve
them is greater than ever in Kenyan firms.
The general view of the state of' corporate strategic
planning in the Kenyan companies studied is that the subsidiaries
of the multi-nationals have well developed and organised planning
departments. As for the purely Kenyan companiesor those in
.which the governmen thas majority shares, the corporate planning
departments are still young, and most of them were started
because the companies had been making losses. The executives
in these companies realise that more efforts are required to
Improve their corporate planning.
In the majority of companies surveyed, the starting point for
the development of Corporate planning is an awareness of the
planning concept and its application to solve the client needs
of the company, However,because planning presents new
possibilities for dealing with change, it is seen differently by
different people and maybe required to satisfy a variety of needs.
Several factors were found to be affecting the present state
of development of corporate strategic planning. First, the
involvement of the board of directors was found to be very
important. It ensures that there is no separation between
planning and decision-making. Their involvement also provide the
visible evidence of the importance attached to planning and so
encourages the rest of the-company to accord it the attention
it deserves. Secondly, the role played by the chief executive
is quite important. It was found out that though the active
support and involvement of the chief executive, corporate
.strategic planning could never-get off the ground, The third
important factor affecting the development of corporate strategic
plannings that of line management Corporate planning cannot
be imposed, it will only work if line management want it.
It must heavily involve line management if it is to stand any
chance of acceptance.
As to the possible future developments, it was felt that
more companies will likely embrace corporate strategic planning,
and the use of computers and sophisticated management science
techniques on a large scale is envisaged.
Corporate strategic planing entails a lot of hard work,
difficulties are bound to be encountered, but as survey companies
unanimously pointed out, the final rewards justify the effort
expended. | en |
