Research Paper on:
Strategic Planning Theories

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
underlying strategic planning, we must rely more on the practice of strategic planning and from this, develop possible theories. We can look at the different strategies or techniques that are  typically incorporated into the strategic planning process and examine the theories underlying these techniques. Because this is a "young" field of study, it does not mean that strategic planning has  not been practiced, probably for thousands of years (The Centre for Information and Organisation Studies, 1999). Strategic planning is about analyzing where any given organization is at present and where  it wants to go in the future (The Centre for Information and Organisation Studies, 1999). While even the best planning cannot guarantee the companys success, it does lead managers to  take a careful look at what is going on in the company, what is going on in the external environment, where the company wants to go and how it will  get there (The Centre for Information and Organisation Studies, 1999). It may be the very fact that strategic planning has been going on informally without the benefit of the name  that there is no given theory that underlies the act of strategic planning processes. Some writers have asserted that strategic planning became popular in the 1980s because companies were  faced with a significant amount of competition in a rapidly changing world. They needed to do something to hold on to their market share and profits. This led to a  rash of literature promoting strategic planning. Some have said that strategic planning evolved out of this chaos but one organization argued that: "Strategic planning is less a process of evolution  than one of revolution. It is a process of inventing new ways of doing business by challenging the old and by focusing the organization on what it can be as