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Indian Planning System – Management Notes – For W.B.C.S. Examination.
Planning is the primary function of management. It is the important process of deciding business objectives and charting out the method to accomplish these goals. This includes decision of what type of activity is to be done, where to be done and how the results to be analyzed.Continue Reading Indian Planning System – Management Notes – For W.B.C.S. Examination.
Theoretical review: Many theorists thoroughly describe the planning process of management function. Koontz and O’Donnel stated that “Planning is deciding in advance what to do, how to do it, when to do it and who is to do it. It bridges the gap from where we are and to where we want to go.
It is an essence of the exercise of foresight. Another management theorist, M.S. Hardly explained “Planning is deciding in advance what is to be done”. It involves the selection of objectives, policies, procedures and programs from among alternatives. Heying and Massie defined “It can be said that planning is first function of the manager in which he has to decide in advance action that is to be done.” It is an intellectual process in which managers must have to use their imaginative mind. Planning is an attempt to foresee the future in order to get high performance.
Plans have numerous benefits. Planning enables managers to think ahead. It leads to development of performance standards. Plan forces management to articulate clear objectives. Planning makes organization to get ready for unexpected developments.
Planning includes various features such as Planning is mainly concerned with looking into future. In planning process, management team has to select suitable course of action under particular business environment. It means there are several ways to achieve objectives. Planning is done at all levels of the organization because managers at all levels are concerned with determination of future course of action. Planning is persistent and constant managerial function.
Nature of planning: planning is a rational approach, open system, flexibility and pervasiveness. It clarifies where one stands, where one wants to go in future and how accomplishes goal. Rationalist denotes a manager chooses suitable way to achieve the stated objectives and rational approach fills the gap between the current status and future status. Planning is an open System approach in which firm is an open system because it accepts inputs from the environment and exports output to environment. Planning accepts an open system approach. Open system approach designates that the gap between current and desired status and the action required overpassing this gap which is influenced by array of environmental economic, legal, political, technological, socio-cultural and competitive factors.
These factors are vibrant and change with time. Therefore managers have to take into account the dynamic features of environment while using open system approach. Another aspect of planning is the flexibility of Planning: it means plan has ability to change direction to take on to changing situations without excessive cost. Many scholars said that the plans must be stretchy to become accustomed to changes in technology, market, finance, personal and organizational factors. However flexibility is possible only within limits, because it involves extra cost. Another feature is pervasiveness of Planning. Planning is persistent and it broadens throughout the organization. Planning is the primary management function and every manager at different level has to do planning within his particular area of activities. Top management is responsible for general objectives and action of the organization. Therefore it must plan what these objectives should be and how to achieve them. Similarly a departmental head has to develop the objectives of his department within the organizational objectives and also the methods to accomplish them.
Significance of Planning
Planning has core value in all organization whether business or non-business, private or public, small or large. The organization which has mindset for future is likely to succeed as compared to one which fails to do so. Planning establishes the objectives and all other functions are performed to achieve the objectives set by the planning process. The company constantly interacts with the external dynamic environment where there is high risk and ambiguity. In this changing dynamic environment where social and economic conditions change quickly, planning assists the manager to adjust with and prepare for altering environment.
Through rational and fact based process for making decisions, manager can lessen market risk and uncertainty. Planning focuses on organizational objectives and course of action to accomplish targeted goal. It facilitates managers to apply and organize all resources of the organization successfully in achieving the objectives. The whole organization is required to embrace identical goals and work together in achieving them. Planning establishes the goal and develops plan to attain them. These goals and plans become the standards against which the actual performance can be measured. Control involves the dimension of actual performance, comparing it with the standards and taking remedial action if there is divergence. Control makes certain that the activity confirms to plans. Hence control can be exercised if there are plans. Planning also enhances organizational effectiveness.
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