Failures of the corporate business organization in Nigerian a trend that is now becoming a rule rather than the exception in our national life. It has assumed such a phenomenal dimension that now threatens the fabric of national economy. This traffic development has induced fear into the minds of many potential investors (government and individuals) thus discouraging meaningful investments eminent business scholars and practitioners have blamed this ugly development on non-application of strategic planning by these corporate business entities in their management styles. They believe that it was either because the present crop of corporate executives are ignorant of the concept of strategic management or that they lack the required skills to meet with the expectation of strategic planning. This study has, therefore, attempted an up-to-date review of existing literature on strategic planning process, and has also analysed the extent to which this could be used to enhance organizational productivity excerpts from previous work done in this area, questionnaires, interview and personal observations formed the primary sources of data. While periodical from this Nigerian Bottling Company Plc newspapers, journals constituted other sources. Two hypotheses were formulated and put to test using chi-square distribution for analysis one, while analysis two was put to test using product moment co-efficient of correlation and the T-test distribution to prove that the internal and external environment factors surrounding the company have significant influence on its strategic planning and the corporate performance of the company too. This revealing that in real life situations strategic planning and its application have the potential of reviewing that in real life situations strategic planning and its application have the potentials of reviewing and sustaining corporate entities through increased productivity. Therefore top company management should engage only skilled personnel’s who would adopt scientific techniques to plan strategically.
Strategic planning which is process chart involves analyzing the opportunities and threats in the market place, while building the strengths and correcting the weaknesses within the firm, also involves setting goals for specific product marker and for the firm (Bernett and Wilsted (1988) and since it is perceived as a mediating force between the organisation and its environment it has become highly imperative for business organisation to adopt it so as to enhance productivity.
This is sequel to that fact chart business enterprises under the prevailing economic environment of today, have to be up and doing so as to be efficient to survive. High price due to increasing production 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 costs of production, diminishing markets and environmental uncertainties, business organization have had to compete move aggressively with one another to attain acceptable volumes of production, sales and a good marker share2. 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 turbulence in the economic waters of the nation, makes it very doubtful if any modern business organisation of reasonable size can survive this competitive environment without adequate strategic planning. No wonder, therefore, that strategic planning has become increasing important to managers in recent years. And since it defines fundamental goals and objective in specific terms, and determines the means to achieve them as well as provides a basic, long-range framework into which other forms of planning can fit, it can, therefore, be said to have a very strong influence on the survival and growth of an organizational most especially in a volatile environment.
Consequent upon that, business organizations needs plans to be able to predict unforeseen contingencies, minimize production costs, as well as wastage and then be able to grapple 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 marker needs to plan and design strategies such as will ensure first, its survival and when its continued profitability. A firm operating in an oligopolistic market has move critical reason for planning because of the fierceness of the competition in such marker and even the monopolist organization has to continually develop new strategies to maintain its position or else it will soon be faced with competition. A wrong investment decision in today’s business would is likely to entail a huge financial loss. A fundamental and pertinent question arises as to why some organizations are outstandingly successful while others achieve marginal or moderate successes and others fail alarmingly. It is also asked as to what it is about organizations that tend to make some ability of their managers to pull critical levers at important points in the evolutionary development of their companies.
For these managers, the trick is knowing which levers to pull, and when to pull these levers to pull, and when to pull these levers to produce the desire and significant results in term of increased productivity which leads to high profitability of their organizations. We may identify these critical levers as organizational strategies. Strategy and strategic planning in the context of business organizations, refer the major action programmes that are used by organizations to achieve their mission and goals. The focus of all business organisation is viability and profitability. The first requirement of the spirit of organisation is high performance standards for the group as well as for individuals in the organisation. A successful organisation is most often in efficient enterprise one of the major focuses of management by objectives is to have managers set high performance standards for themselves. A manager performs his functions 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 organization’s objectives are achieved. A manager works with and through people and other resources to realize these organisation objectives, Akpala Agwu (1990).
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