Planning involves deciding in advance what actions need to be taken to achieve organizational goals. It includes defining goals, developing strategies, and creating formal, long-term plans to coordinate work across an organization. There are different types of planning like informal short-term planning and formal long-term planning. Plans can be single-use, standing, or budgets. While planning brings benefits like reducing decision burden and ensuring consistency, it also has limitations such as inflexibility and becoming outdated over time. The planning process involves analyzing the environment, defining missions and objectives, forecasting assumptions, evaluating alternatives, and implementing and reviewing plans.
2. DEFINITION
Koontz and O’Donnell
“ Planning is deciding in advance
what is to be done. When a manager
plans, he projects a course of action
and basing of decisions on purpose,
knowledge and considered estimates”.
3. OTHER DEFINITIONS
Louis A. Allen
“ Defines a plan “ is a trap laid to
capture the future”
W.H. Newman
“ Planning is deciding in advance
what is to be done”
5. What Is Planning?
Planning
◦ A primary functional managerial activity that involves:
Defining the organization’s goals
Establishing an overall strategy for achieving those goals
Developing a comprehensive set of plans to integrate
and coordinate organizational work.
◦ Types of planning
Informal: not written down, short-term focus; specific to
an organizational unit.
Formal: written, specific, and long-term focus, involves
shared goals for the organization.
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6. Kinds of Operational Plans
Plans that cover unique,
Single-Use Plans
one-time-only events
Plans used repeatedly to handle
frequently recurring events.
Standing Plans
Three kinds are: policies, procedures,
and rules and regulations.
Quantitative planning to decide how
Budgets to allocate money to accomplish
company goals
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7. Limitations of planning
Inaccurate
Internal inflexibilities
Policy and procedural inflexibilities
External inflexibilities
* Political climate
* Trade unions
* Technological changes
Time Consuming and Costly
Personal factors
8. Steps in planning
Analysis of environment
Definition of enterprise mission
Determination of objectives
Forecasting the planning premises
Evaluation of alternatives
Implementation and review
9. Advantages
Minimize the burden of decision making
Lead simplification of work flow and
eliminating unnecessary steps
Ensure uniformity and consistency of
action
They are developed after careful
analysis of various operations which are
necessary for bringing co-ordination in
the organization.
They are aid to communication
Serves as a medium of control.
10. Limitations
They bring out rigidity in the
performance of operations
Lays down the fixed way of doing a
particular job and thus a more
effective way of doing may not given
proper attention
They are to be reviewed and updated
constantly because they become
obsolete with the change in the nature
of business operations.