Research Paper on:
Business Management and Strategic Planning

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
component of the process of strategic management that is so necessary to todays organizations. Competition in business has never been more intense, and the level of intensity only increases.  Time has shortened as the world has shrunk in size, virtually eliminating any luxury of misstep that may have existed in the past. In todays business environment, it  is necessary to identify opportunities, plan how to best take advantage of them and then implement those plans. The purpose here is to assess the planning phase of this  strategic management process. Definitions The strategic management process leads the organization through "development, modification or change in the organizations strategies" (Coulter, 2002; p.  9). The process involves situation analysis, strategy formulation, strategy implementation and finally, strategy evaluation (Coulter, 2002). Strategic planning is that part of the process that includes aspects of  both strategy formulation and implementation. One method of determining what strategic planning is, is to delineate what it is not. It may  involve operational effectiveness planning, long-range planning and other forms of planning in its implementation phase, but it is not in itself any one of these other forms. Operational effectiveness  planning entails seeking to become more efficient in operations, most often with the joint goals of increasing quality while concurrently reducing expenses. Long-range  planning belongs to the implementation phase of strategic management. Once strategy is formulated and stated, long-range planning seeks to identify the organizations needs many months or even years into  the future, for the purpose of beginning to put into place those components that will be needed to achieve stated plans. As example, the organization whose strategic plan calls