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31 - Strategic planning as practice

from Part V - Substantive Topic Areas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2015

By
Ann Langley  and
Maria Lusiani
Edited by
Damon Golsorkhi ,
Linda Rouleau ,
David Seidl  and
Eero Vaara
Ann Langley
Affiliation:
University of Bradford, United Kingdom
Maria Lusiani
Affiliation:
University of Venice
Damon Golsorkhi
Affiliation:
Grenoble School of Management
Linda Rouleau
Affiliation:
HEC Montréal
David Seidl
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Eero Vaara
Affiliation:
Svenska Handelshögskolan, Helsinki
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Summary

Strategic planning is an archetypal strategy tool or practice that has been at the core of strategy scholarship since the emergence of strategic management as a structured academic field. While some have questioned its value (Mintzberg 1994), its prevalence has persisted over the years (Ocasio and Joseph 2008; Rigby and Bilodeau 2013). After a brief review of earlier literature, this chapter will examine recent research on strategic planning viewed as a social practice. The chapter aims to consolidate emerging knowledge on the nature of strategic planning, and to examine how, why and with what consequences it is used in organizations.

Before proceeding, it is important to consider what is meant by the notion of strategic planning. Anthony (1965: 16) has defined it as ‘the process of deciding on the objectives of the organization, on changes in these objectives, on the resources used to obtain these objectives and on the policies that are to govern the use and disposition of these resources’. Later definitions have tended to insist more clearly on the nature of the process involved, however, describing it as ‘explicit’ (Armstrong 1982: 198), ‘formalized’ (Mintzberg 1994: 12) or involving ‘deliberative disciplined effort’ (Bryson 2011). There is, therefore, an implication that strategic planning is not something that chief executives do informally in their heads, but that it involves a form of systematic and explicit analysis and that ‘strategic planning’ produces an ‘articulated product’ (Mintzberg 1994: 12), in the form of texts or ‘strategic plans’. Wolf and Floyd (forthcoming) define strategic planning as ‘a more or less formalized, periodic process that provides a structured approach to strategy formulation, implementation, and control’. This definition adds two other dimensions not necessarily present in all definitions but potentially significant (Wolf and Floyd forthcoming): strategy planning is here described as ‘periodic’ and as encompassing not simply strategy formulation but also ‘implementation and control’.

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Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice , pp. 547 - 563
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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