SUMMARY OF CHAPTER SEVEN!

Planning is concerned with lying down orgnizational goals, estblishing the overall strategy of the business and developing further plans. Planning cn prove to be very vitalfor a business due to a couple of resons. These include proviiung direction., reducing uncertainity, minimizing waste and redundancy nd giving positive financil outcomes.
To carry out planning managers need to stick to the two most important factors which are goals and plans.goals are the desired outcomes an organizations wants to achieve whereas plans are the path which will be tken for achieving those goals.there re two types of goals n orgnization might want to achieve: strategic or financial goals are concerned with maximised profits and stated or rel goals re prticing the true essence of the company's mission statement. Similarly, there are also different types of plans:BREADTH: these include strategic plans which are applicable to the entire organiztions and are more generalized. Operational plans specify the details of going about achieving the overall goals.TIME FRAME: These are the long-term plans and the short-term plans. Long-term plans are reffered to s those plans whith a time frame of more than three years. Where as short-term plans are the ones with teh life span of one year or less.SPECIFICITY: Specific plans are clearly defined and they cannot at any point be interpretated. Directional plans have the room of flexibility and work on more generalized guidelines.FREQUENCY OF USE: A single-use plan is specifically designed for a particular situation. Standing plans, on the other hand , are plans that are designed to provide guidance for frequently performed activities.Some managers set goals adopting the traditional approach i-e the top-down. If the hierachy of goals is not clearly defined the goals lose clarity and unity. There is another approach which can be adopted, Management By Objectives (MBO). MBO's help specify goals, encourge prticipative decision mking so that no one is aloofed. They provide definite time period and give performance feedback.When it comes to developing plans, Managers come under the influence of contingency factors and approaches. Contingency factors re the back-up plans. these are important because there might be environmental uncertanity. the commitment concept exclaims that plans should be extended fr enough to meet all the commitments that were made when the plan was first developed.Approaches include seeting up proper planning departments who know all the ins and outs and can plan near to perfection. It also has to do with involving more and more members of the organization in the planning process.