Here are five steps which will help make your firm's long-range plans pay off. They are described by a writer with practical experience in the field who takes the mystery and statistical double talk out of the subject and presents LRP as the useful, moneysaving tool for business decision making that it is.
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References
1.
For example, other reasons given are: Our business is too cyclical. Our customers do not know their plans, so how can we know ours? Long-range planning is too vague. Not enough time exists for short-range planning, let alone long-range planning. We cannot afford specialists needed to do the job. It costs more than it is worth.
2.
For other definitions see SteinerGeorge A., “What Do We Know About Using Long-Range Plans?”, California Management Review, Fall, 1959; DruckerPeter F., “Long-Range Planning, Challenge to Management Science,”Management Science, April, 1959; PayneBruceKennedyJames H., “Making Long-Range Planning Work,”The Management Review, February, 1959; and NewmanWilliam H.SummerCharles E.Jr., The Process of Management (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1961), pp. 430–436.
3.
See SummerCharles E.Jr., “The Future Role of the Corporate Planner,”California Management Review, Winter, 1961.
“Long-Range Planning Pays Off,”Business Record, October, 1956.
6.
SordBurnard H.WelschGlenn A., Business Budgeting (New York, Controllership Foundation, 1958).
7.
For other operational planning sequences see EwingDavid W., Long-Range Planning for Management (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1958); HillWilliam E., “Planning for Profits: A Four-Stage Method,”California Management Review, Spring 1959, which is a method much like that presented here; PayneBruceKennedyJames H., “Making Long-Range Planning Work,”The Management Review, February, 1959; Westinghouse Planning Guide, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, 1959; Guide to Profit Improvement Program, American Brake Shoe Company, 1959; and LucasArthur W.LivingstonWilliam G., “Long-Range Planning and the Capital Appropriations Program,” in Financial Planning for Greater Profits, American Management Association Report No. 44, 1960. For a detailed analytical planning sequence see Le BretonPreston P.HenningDale A., Planning Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1961).
8.
BesseRalph M., “Company Planning Must Be Planned!”Dun's Review, April, 1957.
9.
See note 7.
10.
See, for example, ThompsonStewart, Management Creeds and Philosophies, Research Study No. 32, American Management Association, New York, 1958; EellsRichard, The Meaning of Modern Business, Chapter 6, “Corporate Goals” (New York, Columbia University Press, 1960); DruckerPeter, The Practice of Management, Chapter 7, “The Objectives of a Business” (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1954); and TerryGeorge R., Principles of Management, Chapter 9, “Management Objectives and Ethics” (Homewood, Illinois, Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1956).
11.
From SchwartzCharles R., “The Return-on-Investment Concept as a Tool for Decision Making” in Improving the Caliber of Company Management, General Management Series, No. 183, American Management Association, 1956, p. 46.
12.
MainesN. R., Why Companies Grow (Palo Alto, California, Stanford Research Institute, 1957), p. 4.
13.
BreechErnest R., “Planning the Basic Strategy of a Large Business” in Planning the Future Strategy of Your Business, ed. BurskEdward C.FennDan H. (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1956), p. 17.
14.
WoodruffA. M.AlexanderT. G., Success and Failure in Small Manufacturing (Pittsburgh, Pa., University of Pittsburgh Press, 1958), pp. 48 and 100.
15.
(New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1956), p. 82.
