Knowledge that Transforms

Environmental information is very important to strategic management. Human sources are among the most commonly used sources of information and among them, boundary people, such as salesman, hold a privileged position. One dimension which measures the quality of a strategic response is its speed of implementation. Recognizing this, to ensure a good (fast) strategic response, fast communication of information is imperative. This article focuses on factors which influence the speed of communication of environmental information. It is based on an exploratory research which has been carried out on a sample of salesmen of an industrial company. Management policies regarding the use of the sales force as an efficient source of strategic information are proposed in conclusion.

The decade of the seventies has seen a dramatic surge in the acceptance and adoption of long range planning systems by U.S. firms. This paper examines the planning experiences of 86 Fortune 1000 companies, many of them with formal planning systems ten years of age or more. Data collected in this study suggests that planning systems move through different phases in a development cycle. The ability to cope with planning problems, the satisfaction of planning participants, and the extent to which companies formulate explicit policies to recognize managerial contributions to long range planning activities are associated with the age of a company's formal planning system and its phase of planning system development. Mature system companies do a better job in coping with planning problems, are more satisfied with their planning systems, and are more likely to recognize managerial contributions to long range planning.

The study dealt with the degree of formal planning undertaken by the commercial banking industry during 1969, 1972, 1975, and 1978. The study found that the Guttman scaling method can be used to develop a corporate planning scale. An outline of the steps in the construction of a Guttman planning scale is presented. Future research into the relationship between formal planning efforts and organizational performance might incorporate this approach.

Two accepted concepts of management literature are (a) increasing diversification as companies progress through ‘stages of growth’, and (b) the responsibility of the corporate level for diversification‐type planning. The thrust of this research note is to provide an empirical test of these independently developed concepts; that is, a test that focuses on the relationship between corporate‐level planning and diversity.

On 1st October 1980 the untimely death of Patrick Haggerty, former chairman and chief executive officer of Texas Instruments, occurred. Patrick Haggerty was a founding member of the editorial board of this journal and in the formative years of the Texas Instruments Company made a major contribution to the practice of strategic management, in addition to shaping the destiny of a great and progressive corporation. As a mark of our respect and in memoriam the editors are proud to publish one of Mr Haggerty's last lectures given to NASA at Houston, Texas on 13th February 1980 in which he outlines briefly the history and philosophy which led to the development of many of the systems of strategic management at Texas Instruments, which have shaped policy within this highly innovative organization.

In view of the increasing demands on managers and the corresponding scarcity of managers of high quality, management planning and development begins to emerge as one of the most important management techniques. In this paper, the authors advocate a procedure which incorporates the establishment of dynamic function profiles (based on the future function requirements) and dynamic manager profiles (based on the likely and desired development of the managers). The future gap in the quality and quantity of the company's management is found by comparing the two sets of profiles. The description of this gap is the basis for recruitments and other MPD actions. The procedure is closely synchronized with the strategic planning procedure and can therefore be considered as part of the strategic management concept. Experiences with the procedure in a multinational company show that it can be successful provided that the system is open to the managers and non‐bureaucratic. Furthermore, it should not affect the normal powers of line managers with respect to their team formation. Despite all the attention it attracts, management planning and development (MPD) is still an underutilized management tool in many companies. Procedures are often either lacking or too bureaucratic. Reasons for this are the inherent limitations to planning with human beings and, on the other hand, the availability of a safety net in the form of a market of managers.

This paper attempts to bridge the divide between rational/analytical and behavioural/political conceptions of strategic decision making. The linkages and interactions between these approaches to the making of strategic decisions are explored in the context of a specific decision arena—strategic energy management.