Given the multiple calls on top excutive time and the increasingly complex and disparate makeup of most large diversified companies today, top management involvement in the strategic planning process in too often limited to little more than the basic allocation of corporate resources among previously selected options. This situation, the author suggests, is for from ideal; it is time to reassess top management's role in and generally orchestrating the diverse human elements of the planning process so as to steer it on a course between advocacy and consensus toward the best possible strategy for the corporation as a whole.
PPB, MBO and ZBB have each been implemented in the U.S. Federal government, ostensibly as means for facilitating planning and control in agencies and programmes. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of these techniques as management tools, political strategies and ritualistic symbols using concepts discussed in the organizational theory, planning and control, and policy science literatures. Two basic conclusions emerge from the evaluation. First, PPB, MBO and ZBB may inappropriately encourage the use of an analytical, computational decision strategy, and a cost/benefit method of performance assessment at a level within the organization and in environmental settings which call for an inspirational decision strategy and social test performance assessment. As a result, environmental variety may not be matched by an organizational response which is equally variable. Secondly, PPB, MBO and ZBB may have been used more as political strategies and ritualistic symbols for controlling and directing controversy by both the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. Federal government and less as management tools for improving decision making within the U.S. Federal bureaucracy. These management tools give the appearance of rationality in the formulation of public policy which is consistent with man's need for confidence building and conflict avoidance in running the affairs of state.
The main purpose of this paper is to set out a number of ideas on business policy and corporate strategy which underlie a larger research project. It arises in part from a University Seminar in Industrial Economics which for many years provided a forum for academics and businessmen to discuss the growth and organization of particular firms: in part from the upsurge of interest in teaching business policy: and in part from a growing preoccupation, especially among business historians, with the decision‐making processes within firms. These have wide implications for the understanding of the nature of entrepreneurship and strategy in the modern business corporation.
Indigenous elites provide the crucial linkages between their domestic societies and the international economic order. The study attempts a measurement of the weight or salience of five personal variables to the process of attitude formation toward multinational firms among host Arab society elites. These variables are: (1) nationalism, (2) internationalism, (3) economic ideology, (4) confidence, and (5) satisfaction in direct personal contact. It is hypothesized that these variables will have influence upon an elite's attitude toward multinational firms. The result of the empirical study points out that an elite internationalism orientation, economic ideology preference, and satisfaction in direct personal contact with multinational firms will positively influence attitudes towards multinational firms (MNFs).
Despite weak empirical support for its effectiveness, the dialectical inquiry system (DIS) has been recommended to improve the strategic decision‐making process. This study compares the effectiveness of the DIS to alternative techniques. Thirty‐two organizational planners from the United Way of America were randomly assigned to a DIS and three other planning conditions. All planners submitted a planning report for a common case situation. Results suggest that, in general, the quality of the reports from planners in the DIS condition was inferior to the quality of reports submitted by subjects in the other conditions. For example, reports submitted by planners in a devil's advocate condition were judged to reflect a significantly more appropriate degree of risk than reports submitted by DIS planners. These results suggest that further investigation of the DIS is necessary before the validity of the technique is assumed.
State‐owned enterprises, referred to as “government owned business corporations” in this paper, are a common phenomenon in Canada, are increasing in number, and are contributing substantially to the economy. The environment for these corporations is examined to establish the principal components and to identify two dominating trends in public policy, privatization and commercialization. The paper suggests that these trends, plus management's desire for flexibility, are resulting in the formulation of autonomy strategies designed to increase management's decision making capability relating to operating and strategic management with less government interference. A final section integrates the environment and autonomy strategies discussions to develop a typology for classifying the behaviour of government owned business corporations. The paper concludes that managers of government owned business corporations in Canada are formulating and implementing autonomy strategies because of environmental factors, public policies, and management's desire for independence.
This paper is an analysis and evaluation of a cross‐section of current research in the policy area. The data used as representative of current policy research are the 51 papers submitted for possible presentation at the 1979 Business Policy and Planning Division Meeting in Atlanta, and the evaluations of these papers by blind reviewers. The areas covered by the papers are compared to the recommendations found in Schendel and Hofer (1979). The research methodologies used are also enumerated. The quality of the papers, as perceived by the blind reviewers, is presented by category—conceptual, empirical, and teaching.
This paper examines the strategic and structural development of the 100 largest Japanese manufacturing enterprises between 1950 and 1970. Unlike other studies of Japanese business the author focuses not only on some of the key differences between Western and Japanese firms such as the emergence of widely diversified industrial groups, but also on similarities. Using the model developed originally by Channon the author traces the development of diversification in Japan and the emergence of the multidivisional forms of organization which as in the West prove to be the major strategic and structural forms in Japan by 1970.
This paper focuses on European government‐controlled enterprises (GCEs) which are normal commercial undertakings (e.g. Renault, ENI, British Leyland, Salzgitter) as opposed to public monopolies (e.g. electric or telephone companies). It asks why such companies do or do not go international and what is distinctive about their international strategy and why.