David Hussey: Strategic Planning And The Nature Of Strategic Management

The reasoning of Grant (2008) highlights the distinction and the main point behind it: The reason why strategic management has been separated from the long term planning and the corporate planning category is partly to allow strategy to be separated from planning and that strategy formation should be emphasized as a management function. If strategy formation is viewed as a part of the management process, it is easier to understand how important role strategy plays within the organization (Grant, 2008, p. 482.). This already leads us to another issue, namely to the nature of the strategy formation process. As regardless whether a formal or informal solution is in the focus, it never comprises of one single decision. It includes both the pre-decision

those main steps through which the planner assists in planning..." In his proposal (Hussey, 1983, pp. 50-51) provides an elaborate job responsibility for the planner, who directly reports to the CEO, and whose main responsibility is to "assist the executive management in the systematic planning of the corporate future". He provides further details in 14 items, then covers the educational requirement: „should have higher education … however no need to be an expert in a particular area”. It is an especially interesting feature that "should act decisively and should not shy away from making unpopular suggestions". The author in addition provides details regarding the content of the planning guide. Summing it all up; an internationally acclaimed expert - the book titled The truth about corporate planning – International Research into the Planning edited by him, presenting the corporate planning practice of different countries was published by the famous Pergamon Press (Hussey, 1983) - in 1979, in the United Kingdom shows a rather strong commitment towards formalized planning and a supporting planner with not a specialized planner qualification, but otherwise with high level of knowledge. Almost at the same time when the planning system is spread, debates are started regarding the formalization (formalizability) and the related organizational frames, strongly

For his tough tone I refer to the publication of De Guerney (1974), with the title "Planning the birth of professional planners" who views planners as " a person not responsible for anything, who wants to meddle into everything and who is blamed for planning for the sake of planning and not in order to solve problems". We might think - let me add rightfully - that the theoretical paradigms and the practical experiences of the phases we might put attribute to the 70's, 80's, 90's in the evolution of planning, strategic planning and the subsequent strategic management steps have outgrown and became free of these disputes. Meaning that the referred decades considered as the prime era of strategy formation clarified the limits in formalizability of thinking about the future, the management requirements, technology and organizational framework of strategy implementation. The fact that Mintzberg (1994) wrote (had a reason to write) his high impact book about the rise and fall of strategic planning, which was essentially a severe criticism of formalization proves the exact opposite. As in this book, Mintzberg discusses its "arbitrary formalization, stranglehold" of strategic planning process also expressing criticism of planners. This latter opinion is reflected in an even more pronounced form in his book "Strategic safari" written with his co-authors (Mintzberg et al., 1998), which can be viewed as the summary of the "heyday" already mentioned or even