| CP Front Page | Corporate Planning: Course Outline (PGDM) | D. P. Dash, PhD |
Objectives
This course focuses on processes to facilitate strategic thinking and trigger strategic initiatives within an organisation. This is especially relevant in an environment where various technological and social changes are urging organisations to be concerned about their own future. The course will prepare students to help organisations initiate (or strengthen their) future-oriented management activities aimed at ensuring sustained performance over time. The course will provide alternative frameworks for doing this. Some of these frameworks will emphasise the need to prepare an organisation for the inevitable future. Some other frameworks will emphasise the need to prepare an organisation to face the uncertainties associated with the future. Yet other frameworks will emphasise the need for an organisation to shape or create its own desired future. The course will explore some possible difficulties and the forces of obstruction to an effective future-oriented management practice. Ways of overcoming these will be discussed. Operational issues involved in planning for different types of organisation functioning in different practical domains will also be elaborated. The course should enthuse students to adopt a holistic view of the organisation, and develop the required orientation to initiate future-oriented management activities.
Course Contents
| Module | References | Contents |
Module 1
Planning Concepts | Ackoff, 1981 (Ch.3: Our changing concept of planning, pp. 51-76)
Makridakis, 1990 (Ch. 6: Business Firms and Managers in the 21st Century, pp. 103-120; Ch.7: Planning for the Future, pp. 121-141)
De Geus, 1997 (Ch.2: The memory of the future, pp.30-47; Ch.3: Tools for foresight, pp. 48-69) | Understanding the key issues in a future-oriented management practice; purposes of business planning; planning frameworks (forecast-based planning, scenario planning, strategic planning, interactive planning); planning approaches (reactivism, inactivism, preactivism, interativism); types of planning (operational, tactical, strategic, normative); proximal and distal benefits of planning; planning as learning; planning as strategic conversation. |
Module 2
Forecast
-based Planning | Makridakis, 1990 (Ch. 3: Predicting the Future: Myths and Reality, pp. 49-68; Ch. 4: Identifying Megapatterns: Trends vs. Cycles, pp.69-89; Ch. 5: The Emerging and Long-term Future, pp. 90-101) | Forecast accuracy; short-term, medium-term, and long-term predictions; cyclical changes; long-term equilibrium; the role of technological and societal changes in shaping the distant and the faraway future. |
Module 3
Scenario Planning
| Schnaars, 1989 (Ch. 11: Strategic Alternatives to Forecasting, pp. 161-185)
Ringland, 1998 (Ch.1 – Ch.5; Ch. 7 – Ch. 8)
Case Study:
Scenario Planning at British Airways—A Case Study (Ringland, 1998, pp. 261-279.) | Forecasting and uncertainty; alternatives to forecasting; use of scenarios in planning; effects of using scenarios; how scenarios can transform a business; methods of developing scenarios; methods of presenting scenarios; linking scenarios to strategic planning; scenarios for learning. |
Module 4
Strategic Planning | Steiner, 1979 (Ch.8 – Ch.12)
Mintzberg, H. (1994). The fall and rise of strategic planning. Harvard Business Review, January/February. Pp. 107-114. | Situation audit; developing purpose, mission, and objectives; formulating programmes of action; pitfalls of strategic planning; emergence of new paradigms of strategic management. |
Module 5
Interactive Planning | Ackoff (1994) (Ch.1: The Emerging Concept of an Enterprise, pp.3-35; Ch.2: The Enterprise and its Stakeholders, pp.36-66)
Ackoff, 1981 (Ch.4 – Ch.11, pp.79-250)
Exercise:
Exercises in preparing reference scenarios and idealised designs (examples in Ackoff, 1981, Appendix I and II, pp. 251-286. | Principles and the 5 phases of the Interactive Planning cycle: (i) Formulating the mess, (ii) Ends Planning, (iii) Means Planning, (iv) Resource Planning, and (v) Implementation and Control. |
Module 6
Planning as Strategic Conversation | van der Heijden, 1996
Flood and Jackson, 1991 (Ch.6: Strategic Assumptions Surfacing and Testing)
Case Study:
Strategic Conversations as the Means for Organizational Change (Structural Dynamics Research Corporation) | Conversation for action and conversation for possibility; planning as strategic conversation; models for organising strategic conversations; notion of languaging. |
Module 7
Difficulties in Planning | Makridakis, 1990 (Ch.11: Avoiding or delaying failure, pp. 203-226; Ch.12: Achieving and sustaining success, pp. 227-249)
Mintzberg, H. (1993). The pitfalls of strategic planning, California Management Review, 36(1). Pp. 32-47.
Steiner, 1979 (Ch.18: Dangers to avoid in strategic planning, pp.287-298) | Factors that contribute to long-term success and failure; Obstruction to an effective future-oriented management practice; pitfalls of planning. |
Evaluation Criteria
Two quizzes: 40%; Assignment: 20%; End-term Examination: 40%
Assignment: Choose two topics related to corporate planning--one covered in the course and another not covered in the course; create a blog with two main entries, one on each topic. Create your blog by August 24, 2008, so that the blog addresses can be uploaded in the Bulletin Board page by that date. The assignment will be evaluated for relevance of the topics chosen, clarity and comprehensiveness of your blog entries, and the potential appeal of your work to an audience of senior managers. Avoid plagiarism. Deadline for the assignment: September 9, 2008.
Reference Books
ACKOFF, R. L. (1994). The Democratic Corporation.
ACKOFF, R. L. (1981). Creating the Corporate Future.
FLOOD, R. L., & JACKSON, M. C. (1991). Creative Problem Solving: Total Systems Intervention.
GEUS, A. DE. (1997). The Living Company: Growth, Learning, and Longevity in Business.
HAMEL, G., & PRAHALAD, C. K. (1994). Competing for the Future.
HEIJDEN, K. VAN DER. (1996). Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation.
MAKRIDAKIS, S. G. (1990). Forecasting, Planning, and Strategy for the 21st Century.
NAISBITT, J., & ABURDENCE, P. (1990). Megatrends 2000.
RAMASWAMY, V. S., & NAMAKUMARI, S. (1999). Strategic Planning, Formulation of Corporate Strategy: The Indian Context.
RINGLAND, G. (1998). Scenario Planning: Managing for the Future.
SCHNAARS, S. P. (1989). Megamistakes: Forecasting and the Myth of Rapid Technological Change.
STEINER, G. A. (1979). Strategic Planning: What Every Manager Must Know.
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