ABSTRACT
Failures of the corporate business organizations in
Nigeria are a trend that is becoming a rule rather than the exception in our
national life. This phenomenon that threatens the very fabric of our national
economy has created fear in the minds of many potential investors, government
and individuals thus discouraging meaningful investment. Many scholars and
practitioners blame this on non-application of strategic planning by corporate
business entities in their management styles. Some of this executives are
either ignorant of the concept of the strategic management or apply them
wrongly. This study has, therefore, attempted an up-to-date review of existing
literature on strategic planning process, and has also analyzed the extent to
which this could be used to enhance organizational productivity. The main
objective of the study is to ascertain the impact strategic planning has on the
level of productivity of manufacturing industries with particular reference to
EMENITE Nigeria Ltd and INNOSON Nigeria Ltd both in Enugu State. Some
recommendations on improving and proper implementation of strategic planning to
enhance productivity in an organization have been suggested based on my
findings.
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE … … … … … … … … i
CERTIFICATION … … … … … … … ii
DEDICATION … … … … … … … … iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENT … … … … … … iv
ABSTRACT … … … … … … … … v
TABLE OF CONTENTS … … … … … … vi
LIST OF TABLES … … … … … … … x
CHAPTER ONE
- INTRODUCTION … … … … … … 1
- BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY … … … 1
- STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM … … … 7
- OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY … … … … 9
- RESEARCH QUESTIONS … … … … … 9
- RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS … …. … … 10
- SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY … … … 10
- SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY … 12
- DEFINITION OF TERMS … … … … … 13
REFERENCES … … … … … …. … 17
CHAPTER TWO
2.0 REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE … … 18
2.1 STRATEGIC PLANNING CONCEPT … … … 18
2.2 WHAT IS STRATEGY? … … … … … 18
2.3 STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
DEFINED … … 22
2.4 THE TERM STRATEGIC PLANNING … … … 23
2.5 THE KEY ELEMENTS IN THE STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS … 32
2.6 LEVELS OF STRATEGY … … … … … 35
2.7 CRITERIA FOR EVALUATING A PLAN’S
EFFECTIVENESS 38
2.8 IMPEDIMENTS TO STRATEGIC EXECUTION … 43
2.9 THE CONCEPT OF PRODUCTIVITY … … … 49
2.10 THE MEANING OF PRODUCTIVITY … … … 49
2.11 PRODUCTIVITY PROBLEMS … … … … 52
2.12 DETERMINANTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY 53
2.12.1 THE ENVIRONMENT … … … … … 53
2.12.2 ORGANIZATIONAL
CHARACTERISTICS … … 56
2.12.3 WORK CHARACTERISTICS … … … … 57
2.12.4 INDIVIDUAL
CHARACTERISTICS … … … 59
2.13 FACTORS INFLUENCING PRODUCTIVITY …. 60
2.14 THE IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCTIVITY … …
63
2.15 SUMMARY OF THE REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 65
REFERENCES … … … … … … … 67
CHAPTER THREE
- RESEARCH METHODOLOGY … … … … 71
- INTRODUCTION … … … … … … 71
- SOURCES OF DATA … … … … … 71
- PRIMARY SOURCES … … … … … 71
- SECONDARY SOURCES … … … … … 72
- POPULATION AND SAMPLE SIZE DETERMINATION 72
- INSTRUMENTS USED FOR DATA COLLECTION 74
- QUESTIONNAIRE … … … … … … 74
- INTERVIEW … … … … … … … 74
- OBSERVATIONS … … … … … … 74
- TECHNIQUES USED FOR DATA ANALYSIS … 75
- VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY OF DATA … … 76
REFERENCES … … … … … … 77
CHAPTER FOUR
- DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS …. … 78
- DATA PRESENTATION … … … … … 78
- ANALYSIS OF RESPONSES … … … … 79
- TEST OF HYPOTHESIS … … … … … 93
CHAPTER FIVE
- SUMMARY OF
FINDINGS, RECOMMENDATIONS, CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS: … … 100
- SUMMARY OF FINDINGS … … … … 100
- RECOMMENDATIONS … … … … … 101
- CONCLUSION … … … … … … 102
- SUGGESTIONS … … … … … … 103
REFERENCES … … … … … … 104
BIBLIOGRAPHY
APPENDIX I
QUESTIONNAIRE
LIST OF
TABLES
Table 4.21 Questionnaires Distributed, Returned
and not Returned
79
Table 4.2.2: Do you plan strategically 79
Table 4.2.3: How often do you involve long-range
forecasting and decision making in your planning 80
Table
4.2.4: What is
your company’s planning time horizon? 81
Table 4.2.5: At what level of your organization is
long range planning carried out? 82
Table 4.2.6: How often are your long-range plans
communicated to all levels of your organization? 83
Table 4.2.7: Do
you monitor the implementation of your long-range strategic plans? 84
Table 4.2.8: If yes, how often do you monitor the
implementation 84
Table 4.2.9: How would you rate the adequacy or
effectiveness of your strategic plans?
85
Table 4.2.10: Do you think there are threats in your environment that can adversely affect your ability to plan strategically 86
Table 4.2.11: If yes above, what are the
threats? 87
Table 4.2.12: To what extent have you been able to adapt to the challenges of your internal and external business environment 88
Table 4.2.13: To what degree do inherent organizational weakness frustrate your efforts to carry out long-range planning? 89
Table 4.2.14: How often do you match your operating
and strategic plans with your intended
corporate result? 90
Table 4.2.15: To what extent have you been
achieving a comfortable profit margin in the past five years? 91
Table 4.2.16: Do internal and external environmental factors surrounding the organization affect its strategic planning significant? 92
Table
4.2.17: Is there
positive relationship between strategic planning and the corporate
performance of the organization? 93
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND
OF THE STUDY
Strategic planning is the process of
determining the major (bedrock) objectives of an organization and the policies and
strategies that will govern the acquisition, use and disposition of resources
to achieve those objectives. Steiner, et al in Imaga, E.U.L (2001).
Strategic planning is a process tat
involves analyzing opportunities and threats in the market place, while
building the strength and correcting the weakness within firms also involves
setting goals for specific product market and firm Bernet and Wilsted (1988).
Since it is perceived as a mediating
force between organization and its environment, it has become highly imperative
for business organizations to adopt it so as to be efficient to survive. High
prices due to increasing products costs coupled with severe liquidity squeeze
necessitated by the dwindling external value of our national currency, have had
a serious dampening effect on consumer demand.
Having been faced, therefore with a
high cost of production, diminishing market and environmental uncertainties,
business organizations have had to compete more aggressively with one another
to attain acceptable volumes of production, sales and a good market share.
Suffice it to say, therefore that the complexity of today’s business coupled
with the turbulence in the economic waters of the nation, makes it very
doubtful if any modern business organization of reasonable size can survive this competitive environment
without adequate strategic planning. No wonder, therefore that strategic
planning has become increasingly important to manager in recent years. And
since it defines the fundamental goals and objectives in specific terms, and
determines the means to achieve them, as well as provides basic, long range framework
into which other firms of planning can fit, it can, therefore, be said to have
a very strong influence on the survival and growth of an organization, most
especially in a volatile environment.
Consequence upon that, business
organizations make plan to able to
predict unforeseen contingencies, minimize production costs as well as wastages
and then be able to grape with competitions in a programmed manner, which is
the essence of strategic planning. All business
organizations need to plan ahead whatever the kind of market, competitive,
oligopolistic or monopolistic in which they operate. An organization operating
in a competitive market needs to plan and design strategies such as will ensure
first, its survival, and its continued profitability. A firm operating in an
oligopolistic market has more critical reasons for planning because of the
fierceness of the competition in such markets, and even the monopolistic
organization has to continually device new strategies to maintain its position
or else it will be faced with competition. A wrong investment decision in
today’s business world is likely to entail a huge financial loss.
A fundamental and pertinent question
arises as to why some organizations are outstanding successful and while others
achieve marginal or moderate success others fail alarmingly. It has been
emphasized that most corporate success are as a result of the ability of their
mangers to put critical levers to produce the desired and significant results in terms of increased productivity which leads
to high profitability of their organizations. We may identity these critical
levers as organizational strategies. Strategy and strategic planning in the
context of business organizations, refers to major actions, programme that are
used by organizations to achieve their mission and goals. The focus of all
business organizations is viability and profitability. The first requirement –of
the spirit of organization is high performance standards for t—-he group as
well as for individual organization. A successful organization is most often an
efficient enterprise; one of the major focuses of management by objective is to
have managers set high performance standards for themselves. A manager performs
his function by allocation and integration of human and economic resources
through the process of planning, organizing, directing and controlling for the
purpose of producing outputs (goods and services) desired by its customers, so
that the organizations objectives are achieved. A manager work with, and
through people and other resources to realize these organizations objective,
Akpala Agwu (1990)
As modern business activities widen,
environmental scanning and planning become difficult and more relevant. Today’s
business conditions have continued to change so fast to emphasize a growing
need for continuous business intelligence activities and strategic planning as
the only option to anticipate future problems and opportunities. Strategic
planning provides all employees with clear goals and directions to the future
of the organization. It also provides a standard against which future
performance can be compared and all these make it complicated in many highly
technical firms that are subjected to the “law of acceleration” which suggest
an increasing rate of changes.
Since strategic planning aims at
finding how a company competes successfully within its environment, it is
therefore said to be based on the principle of “comparative competitive
Advantage” necessary for survival and growth under competitive conditions. A
firm cannot survive or grow unless it maintains one or more comparative competitive
advantage which provides the basic rationale by which customers will prefer
that firm to others. Unfortunately, though, Nigeria presents a strong picture
of a turbulent and unpredictable environment for organizations to thrift
particularly the manufacturing sector. This is due mainly to constant changes
in political and economic conditions in the country. The effect of this on the
manufacturing sector is quite stupendous. This is especially so when one
considers the fact that majority of our manufacturing industries today provide
below capacity. Specifically speaking, for manufacturing industries operating
in today’s volatile business environment, the needs for strategic planning seems
too obvious need for strategic planning seems too obvious and imperative to
require mentioning. The fortunes of our economy and the manufacturing sector
appear inextricably interwoven, and so development within the overall, economy
will inevitably have direct impacts on the environment. Similarly the
operational efficiency of this sector or other wise in bringing to fruition the
social and economic yearnings of the nation has direct impact on the economy.
It is against this background that this study intends to access the effects
of strategic planning on the productivity of the Emenite Nigeria Limited and
Innoson Manufacturing Company Limited. It
is hoped that this study will in the long run afford the rare opportunity of
understanding and appreciating the significance of strategic planning in
today’s organizational restructuring planning, and improvement.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
THE EFFECTS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING ON ORGANIZATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY: (A STUDY OF EMENITE NIGERIA LIMITED AND INNOSON NIGERIA LIMITED ENUGU)
