Chapter 8 Foundations Of Planning Flashcards
Why do managers plan
- Provides direction to managers
- Reduces uncertainty by forcing managers to look ahead
- Minimize waste and redundancy
- Establishes the goal or strategies using in controlling
Planning
Integrate and coordinate work activities
Planning
- Defined organization’s goals
- Establish overall strategies for achieving those goals
- Developed plans for organizational work activities
Classification of plans
- Formal plans : certain rules, certain structured
2. Informal plans: don’t follow a guideline
Planning is called the primary management fuction because..
It establishes the basis for all the other things managers do as they organize, lead and control; it involves goals and plans
Relationships between planning and performance
- Formal planning is associated with positive financial results
- Formal planning increases high performance because it decrease redundancy
- Planning performance is influenced by the time frame (4 years)
Types of plans
Breath:
- strategic: apply to the entire organization and stablish overll goals
- operational: encompass a particular area of the organization.
Time frame:
- long term: more than 3 years
- short term: less than 2 years
Specificity:
- specific: clearly defined and leave no room for interpretation
- directional plan: when uncertainty is high, flexible plans that set out general guidelines
Frequency of use:
- single use: one time plan specifically designed to meet the needs of a unique situation
- standing: ongoing plans that provide guidance for activities performed repeteadly
Types of plans
- Strategic plan - long term- directional- standing
2. Operational plan- short term- specific- single use
Similarities between MBO and TGS
- Tools for planning communication
- Stablish goals
- Results from the bottom to the top
- Control
Traditional goal setting
- Review the organization mision
- Evaluate available resources
- Determine goals
- Write down and comunicate goals
- Review results
“ goals set by top managers flown down through the organization and become sub goals for each organizational area “
Contingency factors
- Level of the organization
- Degree of environmental uncertainty
- Lenght of future commitments
- Stage in the life cycle of the organization
MBO - management by objectives
Setting mutually agreed-upon goals and using those goals to evaluate employee performance
” first negociation, then execution”
Steps in MBO
- Objectives and strategies are formulated
- Objectives are located by divisional and department units
- Collaborately set specific objectives for units
- Actions plans (defining how objectives are to be achieved)
- Specific objectives with all departments members
- The action plan are implemented
- Process is periodically reviewed
- Objectives by performance rewards
Stages in the life cycle
- Formation: long term, strategic, standing, directional
- Growth: short term, single use, specific, operational
- Maturity: long term, oprational, specific, single use
- Decline: strategic, short term, directional, standing
Environmental scanning
Screening information to detect emerging trends
Competitor intelligence
Environmental scanning which is gathering information about competitors that allows managers to anticipate competitor’s actions rather than merecely react to them
Formal plan
- Upper level
- Basis to understand opertional plans
- Reference point to understand the other ones
Conditions:
- apply to the entire organization
- establishes orgnization’s overall goals
- seeks tonposition the organization in terms of the environment
Directional VS specific
- Directional tells me where the goal is
* Specific tells me what the goal is and how to achive it.
Means-ends chain
- Integrated network of goals formed when the hierarchy of organizational goals is clearly defined
- Higher level goals are linked to lower-level goals for their accomplishment
