The strategic process
A study was undertaken in the UK by Ginter et al. (1985) to determine whether this academic model had practical applicability. The 4,000 members of the Planning Executive Institute were asked a range of questions to provide a forum for assessing the perceptions of planning and strategic managers in practice. In excess of 1,000 members responded, and the researchers concluded that the model was a good framework for the way strategic planning takes place in the corporate environment. The Ginter et al. (1985) paper described the strategic process as containing eight elements:
vision and mission;
objective setting;
external environmental scanning;
internal environmental scanning;
strategic alternatives (crafting strategy);
strategy selection;
implementation; and
control.
These elements are found consistently in the literature and taught in university business schools and undergraduate programmes. Thompson and Strickland (1998), Hill and Jones (1998), Stahl and Grigsby (1992), Viljoen (1994), all propound similar models in their educational texts. But this model exposes the weakness in the process, that of part 5, the creation or crafting of strategic alternatives, when Hamel (1998, p. 10) states that: