Bernard Taylor

New dimensions in Corporate Planning

1. Planning as a Central Control System This view has its origins in systems thinking and cybernetics, which suggests that management should have a comprehensive planning end information system covering the total enterprise. It is the most commonly held idea of planning and has proved a most useful contribution to management, but research indicates that this approach to planning is likely to fail if used alone.

Strategies for planning

Abstract In recent years there has been a good deal of discussion amongst planning specialists and academics about the gap which exists between the theory of planning as set out in journals and textbooks, and the practice of planning in private and public organizations. Planners are continually complaining about the resistance to planning by top management and operating managers in divisions and departments. In this article the author aims to produce a reconciliation between theory and practice and to discuss what alternative strategies are open to planners in devising planning systems for their organizations. He suggests that the problem has its origin in the fact that corporate planning theory was first developed by management scientists as a total systems approach. Corporate planners have failed to sell an integrated planning system either as programme budgeting or as corporate planning. Research suggests that a management team can only adopt and implement a comprehensive planning system in very special circumstances, e.g. when the organizations survival is threatened, a new management team has been appointed and the staff of the organization are ready to accept radical change. In normal circumstances the planner is wrong to advocate a ‘root and branch’ solution. He must diagnose the planning needs of the organization and his objective must be not merely to establish a particular planning procedure but rather to discover how he can best improve the quality of management decisions. Recent studies on strategy formation indicate that the introduction of a formal planning procedure is only a partial answer to the problem of improving the quality of management decisions. The paper reviews various approaches to planning and considers how they relate to organizations with different strategic problems, with differing organization structures and various management styles.

Managing the process of corporate development

Abstract In this article, the author reviews current thinking and practice on Corporate Development. He argues that: 1. Organizations evolve in a sporadic way through the drive of an entrepreneur, in response to opportunities presented by new products and expanding markets, and to defend themselves against the threat of competition or government action. 2. It is therefore a considerable task for senior management to evolve a coherent corporate philosophy, a range of policies for each functional area which are consistent with each other, and a broad strategy which matches the resources of the enterprise to the oppurtunities in the environment. 3. Management approaches to Corporate Development are typically concerned not with the development of the total organization but with a particular part or aspect of the business, e.g. product or market development, organization development, supplier and dealer development, or capital budgeting. However, practitioners, consultants and researchers are in the process of building a substantial body of theory and practice in the field of corporate development which should help managers to suit their leadership styles, their product and market strategies, their organization structures and management systems to the stage of development in the various parts of a business. He explains how the theory has evolved and how it is being applied in practice.

Strategic planning for resources

Abstract In the field or purchasing and supply, 1973 was a year to be remembered. A world-wide boom in industrialised countries produced record prices in markets for food, raw materials and manufactured goods. Rates of inflation in the U.S.A., Western Europe and Japan began to approach South American levels. The value of the dollar, the pound and other major currencies fluctuated dramatically, and the stock market experienced falls comparable to those which occurred during the slump in the thirties. Finally, 1973 was the year of the oil embargo, when oil prices were almost doubled and oil supplies to the West were cut by 15–20%, resulting in the rationing of oil and other commodities in Western Europe. By any standards, this was a momentous year. It is conceivable that supply markets will never be quite the same again. The traditional form of multi-national business, integrated from supply to consumer markets, is fast disappearing as the companies formed in developing countries to secure the supply of oil, food and raw materials are being taken over by the host governments. Indeed it may be that after the traumatic experiences of this year, negotiations for food and key raw materials will be increasingly carried out by governments rather than by private companies. To cope with shortages and higher prices in food, fuels and essential raw materials, government bodies and public and private enterprises will have to develop new capabilities. Western governments have responded quickly by setting up Ministers and Ministries for Energy and by establishing huge budgets for research into the exploration and exploitation of alternative fuels. The large oil companies have declared that they are in the “energy business” and have bought interests in nuclear power and coal. But what does the energy and resource crisis mean for the average firm? It seems that in the 1970s we are experiencing a level of competition for supplies similar to the competition for consumer markets which first produced “Marketing” in the late fifties and early sixties.

Conflict of values— the central strategy problem

Abstract There is growing evidence that the central strategy question for business is no longer ‘what business are you in?’ but‘why are you in business?’ The traditional answers to this question—‘to make profits’, ‘to grow’ and ‘to give an adequate return to the shareholder’, are all being questioned. In their place others are being suggested—‘to provide satisfying jobs’, ‘to help solve social problems’, ‘to assist in urban and regional development’. In this article, Bernard Taylor suggests that the conflict between business goals and social goals has become the central strategy problem. Business enterprises like other organizations tend to develop their own distinctive sub-cultures with their own value systems which may differ markedly from the values accepted in society generally. The more effective the selection, training and reward systems, the more these business values will be reinforced. But this can lead to difficulties when society begins to reject business values in favour of other social goals; particularly at a time when the power and autonomy of management is being challenged and Corporate Planning is being transformed from an internal dialogue between managers at headquarters and managers in divisions into an open debate involving public servants, employees and self-appointed representatives of community interests.

Lord Robens on Leadership

Leadership is an unfashionable word nowadays because it seems to suggest management by an elite, and there is a tendency to talk about employee participation and the greater involvement of the management group as a whole. However, there is no doubt that the personality of a chief executive can have an enormous impact on an organisation. The purpose of this series of interviews is to approach a number of senior managers and administrators, who have made distinctive contributions to their organisations by their particular styles of leadership, in an attempt to determine what are the requirements of the leader in the modern world and to what extent we must revise our traditional views about the role of the leader.