The planning we’re concerned with is formal planning; that is, specific goals covering a specific time period are defined and written down and specific plans are developed to make sure those goals are met. There are four reasons why managers should plan: (1) it establishes coordinated efforts, (2) it reduces uncertainty, (3) it reduces overlapping and wasteful activities, and (4) it establishes the goals or standards that are used in controlling work. Although criticisms have been directed at planning, the evidence generally supports the position that organizations benefit from formal planning. 2. Explain what managers do in the strategic management process. Managers develop the organization’s strategies in the strategic management process, which is a six-step process encompassing strategy planning, implementation, and evaluation.
The six steps are as follows: (1) Identify the organization’s current mission, goals, and strategies; (2) Do an external analysis; (3) Do an internal analysis—steps 2 and 3 together are called SWOT analysis; (4) Formulate strategies; (5) Implement strategies; and (6) Evaluate results. The end result of this process is a set of corporate, competitive, and functional strategies that allow the organization to do what it’s in business to do and to achieve its goals. 3. Compare and contrast approaches to goal setting and planning. Most company’s goals are classified as either strategic or financial. We can also look at goals as either stated or real.
The Business plan on Strategic Plan Planning Statements Organization
... planning, strategy selection is what gives the plan life. Strategies answer the question, "What do we need to do to reach our goals ... quality improvements, and the like. Objectives are very specific statements of what the organization wishes to accomplish within the upcoming year, ... planners may be helpful in gathering data and facilitating processes. They must not, however, create the plan. As a ...
In traditional goal setting, goals set by top managers flow down through the organization and become subgoals for each organizational area. Organizations could also use management by objectives, which is a process of setting mutually agreed-upon goals and using those goals to evaluate employee performance. Plans can be described in terms of their breadth, time frame, specificity, and frequency of use. Plans can be developed by a formal planning department or by involving more organizational members in the process. 4. Discuss contemporary issues in planning. One contemporary planning issue is planning in dynamic environments, which usually means developing plans that are specific but flexible.
Also, it’s important to continue planning even when the environment is highly uncertain. Finally, because there’s little time in a dynamic environment for goals and plans to flow down from the top, lower organizational levels should be allowed to set goals and develop plans. Another contemporary planning issue is using environmental scanning to help do a better analysis of the external environment. One form of environmental scanning, competitive intelligence, can be especially helpful in finding out what competitors are doing. [pic] To check your understanding of outcomes 4. 1 – 4. 4, go to mymanagementlab. com and try the chapter questions. UNDERSTANDING THE CHAPTER 1.
Contrast formal with informal planning. Discuss why planning is beneficial. Answer: In informal planning, very little, if anything, is written down. In formal planning, there are written plans at various levels, people are assigned responsibilities, there is a great deal of detail, etc. Formal planning involves specific goals to be achieved within specific timetables. Planning is beneficial because it sets the foundation for all of the other management functions. Planning encompasses defining the organization’s objectives or goals, establishing an overall strategy for achieving those goals, and developing a comprehensive hierarchy of plans to integrate and coordinate activities.
It’s concerned with ends (what is to be done) as well as with means (how it’s to be done).
The Business plan on Strategic Planning Copley Formal Plan
... planning at Copley. An organization can improve its effectiveness if it can forecast its environment, anticipate problems and develop a formal strategic plan ... "first cut" of the strategic plan using the assumptions, the objectives and the guidelines. The divisional staffs ... reaffirmed his intention to emphasize planning at Copley by setting specific goals, allocating resources, measuring progress, and ...
2. Describe in detail the six-step strategic management process. Answer: The strategic management process is made up of six steps: (1) identify the organization’s current mission, objectives, and strategies, (2) analyze the external environment by identifying the opportunities and threats in the environment, (3) analyze the organization’s internal resources by identifying the organization’s strengths and weaknesses, (4) formulate strategies, (8) implement strategies, and (9) evaluate results. 3. What is a SWOT analysis and why is it important to managers?
Answer: SWOT analysis refers to analyzing the organization’s internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats in order to identify a niche that the organization can exploit. Having completed the SWOT analysis, the organization reassesses its mission and objectives. This process provides the foundation for planning and an accurate assessment of the organization in order to operate and succeed. 4. Organizations that fail to plan are planning to fail. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Explain your position. Answer: Students may agree or disagree. If they agree, they may argue that the discipline of planning provides a framework for thinking through decisions and the future.
Whether students like or criticize planning, it does provide direction, measurements of progress, and a framework for judging the success or failure of a venture. Not everything can be anticipated but a plan is the best starting point. 5. Under what circumstances do you believe MBO would be most useful? Discuss. Answer: MBO is of value for converting overall objectives into specific objectives for organizational units and individual members. MBO makes objectives operational by cascading them down through the organization. Because lower-unit managers jointly participate in setting their own goals, MBO works from the bottom up as well as from the top down. The result is a hierarchy that links objectives at one level to those at the next level.
For the individual employee, MBO provides specific personal performance objectives. 6. Find examples in current business periodicals of each of Porter’s generic strategies. Name the company, describe the strategy being used, and explain why it’s an example of that strategy. Be sure to cite your sources. Answer: Students’ responses should consider the following facts. No firm can successfully perform at an above-average profitability level by trying to be all things to all people. The cost-leadership strategy requires that the organization be the cost leader, the product or service being offered must be perceived as comparable to rivals, or at least acceptable to buyers.
The Essay on Corporate Social Responsibility and Specific Strategy Differences
?Group 7 Exercises (suitable for use with the chapter relating to global competition and competing in foreign markets) 1. Is the international market arena in which your athletic footwear company competes characterized by multicountry competition or global competition? Explain why. We will say that it is global competition, because global competition refers to the situation when products and ...
A differentiation strategy seeks to be unique in its industry in ways that are widely valued by buyers is following. It might emphasize high quality, extraordinary service, innovative design, technological capability, or an unusually positive brand image. The key is that the it can support the additional cost of focusing. 7. “The primary means of sustaining a competitive advantage is to adjust faster to the environment than your competitors do. ” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Explain your position. Answer: Key to this answer is the following facts. Long-term success requires that the advantage be sustainable. It must withstand both the actions of competitors and the evolutionary changes.
Managers need to create barriers that make imitation by competitors difficult or reduce the competitive opportunities. 8. First we had the bird flu. Now, the H1N1 flu pandemic has been in the news recently. How could organizations be prepared for an outbreak of H1N1 flu or some new unknown flu strain or medical crisis? What types of planning would they need to do? Now, take a specific organization (your college or university, your place of employment, or some business organization) and describe all the possible organizational areas that might be impacted and the plans that organization would need to have in place to be prepared. Answer: Student answers will vary.
Preparation however, requires a strategic plan like a pandemic preparedness plan that accounts for contingency plans including absent employees. Monitoring and consulting the CDC and other medical authorities would help. You may need a formal plan for short-term challenges and long-term. Colleges would need to increase medical staff at the health center, attempt to secure additional supplies of vaccines, etc. 9. Do a personal SWOT analysis. Assess your personal strengths and weaknesses (skills, talents, abilities).
Personal Goals As A College Student
I have many personal goals I hope to attain as a college student. Along the path to my degree I will be setting an example for my children, building my own self confidence, and starting a lifetime of strategic learning. My parents are both college graduates. I watched my parents obtain their degrees while I was growing up, and it instilled in me a sense of the importance of a good education. I was ...
What are you good at? What are you not so good at? What do you enjoy doing? Not enjoy doing? Then, identify career opportunities and threats by researching job prospects in the industry you’re interested in. Look at trends and projections.
You might want to check out the information the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides on job prospects. Once you have all this information, write a specific career action plan. Outline five-year career goals and what you need to do to achieve those goals. Answer: Responses will be specific to the respective student. UNDERSTAND YOURSELF What Are My Course Performance Goals? INSTRUMENT Using the following scale, select the answer for each of the 12 statements that best expresses why you study for a course. 1 = Never 2 = Rarely 3 = Sometimes 4 = Often 5 = Always I study because: |1. I want to be praised by my professors and parents. |1 2 3 4 5 | |2.
I want to be noticed by my friends. |1 2 3 4 5 | |3. I don’t want my classmates to make fun of me. |1 2 3 4 5 | |4. I don’t want to be disliked by a professor. |1 2 3 4 5 | |5. I want people to see how smart I am. |1 2 3 4 5 | |6. I wish to get better grades than my peers. |1 2 3 4 5 | |7. I want to get good grades. |1 2 3 4 5 | |8. I want to be proud of getting good grades. |1 2 3 4 5 | |9. I don’t want to fail final exams. |1 2 3 4 5 | |10. I wish to be admitted to graduate school. |1 2 3 4 5 | |11. I want to get a good job in the future. |1 2 3 4 5 | |12.
I want to attain status in the future. |1 2 3 4 5 | SCORING KEY Total up the number of 4 and 5 responses. This will be between zero and 12. ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION What drives you to study? What goals are you trying to achieve? This questionnaire measures goal orientation as related to your course work. There are no “right” goals. But having clear goals can help you better understand your studying behavior. If you had no responses in the 4 or 5 categories, your course performance is likely to suffer because you have no strong reasons for studying. This suggests a need for you to reassess your goals and consider what you want from your course work.
The Essay on Business Law. Specific Performance
Business Law: Unit 6 Assignment 1 Specific Performance In the realm of contract law there are many ways of addressing breach of contract. The purpose of this paper is to analyze four separate scenarios and decide if the remedy of specific performance would be applicable to any of them. Specific performance is, “An extraordinary equitable remedy that compels a party to execute a contract according ...
If you had a number of responses in the 4 or 5 categories, you appear to have specific goals that will motivate you to study and achieve high performance. Overview Goal-setting theory states that intentions—expressed as goals—can be a major source of work motivation. We can say, with a considerable degree of confidence that specific goals lead to increased performance; that difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher performance than easy goals; and that feedback leads to higher performance than no feedback. Specific hard goals produce a higher level of output than a generalized goal of “do your best. ” The specificity of the goal itself acts as an internal stimulus.
For instance, when a trucker commits to making eighteen round-trip hauls between Baltimore and Washington, D. C. , each week, this intention gives him a specific objective to reach for. We can say that, all things being equal, the trucker with a specific goal will outperform his counterpart who operates either with no goals or with the generalized goal of “do your best. ” If factors such as ability and acceptance of the goals are held constant, we can also state that the more difficult the goals, the higher the level of performance. Of course, it is logical to assume that easier goals are more likely to be accepted. However, once an employee accepts a hard task, he or she will exert a high level of effort to try to reach it.
People will do better when they get feedback on how well they are progressing toward their goals because feedback helps to identify discrepancies between what they have done and what they want to do; that is, feedback acts to guide behavior. However, not all feedback is equally potent. Self-generated feedback—for which the employee is able to monitor his or her own progress—has been shown to be a more powerful motivator than externally generated feedback. Teaching Notes If employees have the opportunity to participate in the setting of their own goals, will they try harder? The evidence is mixed regarding the superiority of participation over assigned goals.
In some cases, goals that have been set participatively have elicited superior performance; in other cases, individuals have performed best when assigned goals by their boss. A major advantage of participation may be in increasing acceptance of the goal itself. Studies testing goal-setting theory have demonstrated the superiority of specific, challenging goals, with feedback, as motivating forces. Therefore, if students actively participate in this process and commit to it, the research would predict that they would do better than their counterparts who do not do it. Exercises 1. Success Takes More Than Luck! Have the students prepare a document laying out what their specific course goals are.
The Essay on Specific Performance
Specific performance can be used as a remedy in certain cases of breach of contract. I’ll explain in a bit exactly what specific performance is as well as give an example of what type of case(s) it can be applied to. As you’ll see the doctrine of specific performance can be a very fair remedy in many cases and is one of the most common remedies used by courts. There are two different types of ...
They should bring this to class and be prepared to discuss in small groups what these goals are. Optional: set up a future meeting of the small group to see how well each member is progressing toward his or her course goals. Learning Objective(s): To illustrate the effectiveness of goal setting. Preparation/Time Allotment: Give the students about a week to prepare the goals. Then, give them about 30-minutes in small groups to discuss what their goals are, and how they are going to achieve them. Advantages/Disadvantages/Potential Problems: The effectiveness of this exercise will vary depending upon the degree to which the students actually accept the goals.
Use this as a teaching tool to relate it to real world goals. Just because something is on paper, that does not mean that performance will automatically go up. It is just clear from the research that specific, challenging goals increase performance more than if goals had not been set. You might also point out that simply setting goals does not guarantee success, but rather, it increases chances of success, and will most likely increase performance. 2. Have Goals Worked? In a class discussion, talk about the power of goals and objectives in one’s life. Have students relate times when they have set a goal and achieved it. Why did they achieve it? How did goal setting help in this achievement?
How will they use this in the future? Learning Objective(s): To illustrate the power of goal setting across multiple life activities. Preparation/Time Allotment: This should be about a 20-minute discussion. Advantages/Disadvantages/Potential Problems: Students do not necessarily have had to write something down in order to call it a goal. They should be able to recall times in their lives in which they set goals, even if they were not on paper. Have them recall athletic events that they participated in, weight loss goals, or even material goals from their youth. Note the power that visualizing something specific has on the achievement of outcomes. FYIA ( For Your Immediate Attention) | |People Power | |Alpha Team members | |From: Eric Smallwood, Alpha Team Leader | |Subject: Goals for developing new training module | |We’ve been chosen to develop People Power’s new Internet training module. The overall goal is to come up with a training module that helps | |people learn how to research information on the Internet.
What are two or three specific goals for each of the three stages of the project: | |(1) researching our customers’ needs, (2) researching the Internet for specific information sources and techniques we want to teach in our | |training modules, and (3) designing and writing the actual training modules? | |Case Application | |Managing the Magic | |The difficult business climate in 2008 and 2009 challenged Disney financially. |As one of the world’s largest entertainment and media companies, Disney has had a long record of successes. | |Although Disney is a U. S. -based company, its businesses span the globe with operations in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin | |America. The president of Walt Disney International says, “We believe there is vast growth to come out of this market, despite the near-term | |economic turmoil. ” | |When Bob Iger was named CEO in 2005, analysts believed that the Disney brand had become dated. The perception: too much Disney product in the | |marketplace lacking the quality people expected. Iger said, “That combination, lack of quality and too much product—was really deadly. At | |that time also, the Disney brand was more tied to its history than it was to being contemporary and innovative.
And, there was this sense that| |Disney’s target audience was young and that its products couldn’t possibly be of interest to older kids. Iger, who views himself as the | |steward of the entire Disney brand, immediately recognized the importance of leveraging the company’s vast media content on different | |platforms. His strategic approach—the Disney Difference—had been working well until the economy slowed. Now, Iger and his management team will| |have to use all the strategic tools they have to guide the company and keep the magic coming. |Discussion Questions | |What is the Disney Difference and how will it affect the company’s corporate, competitive, and functional strategies? | |Answer: The Disney Difference was the strategic approach or plan for the company, utilizing the Disney brand and its vast media on different | |platforms. This approach or blueprint will guide Disney on all fronts. Even though the economy is tight, so the plan and strategies may need| |revised, the core mission remains the same. The quality and creative content of the Disney’s trademark will help them during this downturn. | |What challenges do you think Disney might face in doing business in Russia?
How could Iger and his top management team use planning to best | |prepare for those challenges? | |Answer: Disney will face cultural differences in Russia, so they must adapt with innovative platforms. Iger and the top management team must | |do their homework and due diligence before expanding into this country. An extensive strategic and business plan with specific goals will | |help this expansion succeed. | |With the announced expansion of Disney’s Hong Kong Disneyland, what goals might the company set? What type of planning will be necessary? | |Answer: Disney will set economic and financial goals for a return on their massive investment. Since the
