Strategic planning and performance: Extending the debate

This article extends the debate regarding the relationship between strategic planning and performance. It addresses criticism of previous empirical studies that have largely investigated direct and bi-variate relationships, producing equivocal results. The current study investigates the mediating effects of four types of flexibility on the strategic planning and performance relationship. Flexibility is defined as the extent to which new and alternative decisions are generated and considered in strategic planning, allowing for positive organizational change and adaptation to environmental turbulence. Through investigating simultaneous equations in a structural equation model, we find that two types of flexibility mediate the relationship between strategic planning and financial performance, while the other two types mediate the relationship between strategic planning and non-financial performance. The results are new empirical insights that have not been previously reported.     

A Comparison of Slack Resources in High and Low Performing British Companies

Theory predicts that slack resources provide the means for achieving flexibility in developing strategy options. The outcome of generating and investing slack resources to achieve flexibility should be improved company performance. There is also a prediction that low performing companies are likely to have lower levels of slack than high performing companies, and therefore are likely to have less potential for achieving flexibility to impact on performance. However, as the literature features several inadequacies a comparative study of high and low performing British companies was carried out to address these inadequacies. While multiple measures of slack were found to be predictors of company performance in high performing companies, they seemingly have negligible impact on performance in low performing companies. Also, only certain types of slack resources are seemingly more prominent in high performers than in low performers. The results provide a development and refinement of the previous limited knowledge about slack resources.     

FORMS OF MARKET ORIENTATION IN UK COMPANIES

Despite the importance of market orientation in the marketing and strategic management literature, it has been the subject of few conceptual and empirical studies. Also, the latter have addressed only the degree of market orientation and not its nature or form. the empirical study reported in this article focuses on the form of market orientation. Five different forms of market orientation were identified, along with three factors that discriminate between them. Although there are some performance differences between the forms of market orientation, the market environments that they are associated with are not significantly different. As well as providing additional empirical evidence, the results provide empirical support to, and extensions of, the conceptualization of market orientation given in the literature.     

Multiple Stakeholder Orientation in UK Companies and the Implications for Company Performance

Orientation to the diverse interests of stakeholder groups is central to strategic planning, and failure to address the interests of multiple stakeholder groups may be detrimental to company performance. However, some companies may be unable to address all these interests, owing to a scarcity of resources, and the impact of multiple stakeholder orientation may be influenced by the environment. Despite calls by leading writers in the literature, there is no empirical evidence about the potential association of orientation to multiple stakeholders with company performance. The results of a study of UK companies designed to elucidate this association are reported in this paper. Although the results give some support to the proposition that orientation to multiple stakeholders is positively associated with performance, such associations are contingent on the external environment, as they are moderated by competitive hostility, after controlling for the intervening effects of market growth.     

Applications of the behavioural homogeneity evaluation framework: The predictive ability of consumer involvement for international food market segmentation

Abstract

This article proposes a framework of alternative international marketing strategies, based on the evaluation of intra- and inter-cultural behavioural homogeneity for market segmentation. The framework developed in this study provides a generic structure to behavioural homogeneity, proposing consumer involvement as a construct with unique predictive ability for international marketing strategy decisions. A model-based segmentation process, using structural equation models, is implemented to illustrate the application of the framework.     

Thriving on Turbulence

Although there is widespread evidence of links between market orientation and company performance, there is debate over whether the market environment moderates the market orientation-performance relationship. Until now empirical evidence has been limited to the USA, UK and Ghana. This study is based on a large multi-industry sample of firms from New Zealand, a more turbulent country-economy. The results show that although environment can have a direct (and often negative) effect on performance, it can also have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between market orientation and performance. This suggests that more market-oriented firms may actually thrive in more turbulent environments.     

Effectiveness in marketing planning

This paper is concerned with the assessment of effectiveness, despite the problems involved in its determination. The conventional approach to assessment is considered first. This is based upon a determination of the success of the planning in achieving its objectives. However, the problem here is that it does not consider the actual nature of the planning. A multidimensional approach is then considered, which attempts to overcome this problem, by measuring effectiveness within the planning system. The paper concludes that there are two types of effectiveness to be measured. However, although it recognizes the value of the conventional approach, the multidimensional approach is only seen to be useful in being an indicator to certain factors.