Strategic Planning and Management Choices - Assignment Example

The paper "Strategic Planning and Management Choices " is an outstanding example of a management assignment. This chapter presents a detailed discussion of the study's findings presented in the preceding Chapters 6 and 7, organised into two main areas: First, a detailed examination of the results as they apply to each of the six research questions presented in Chapter 1; second, a further in-depth discussion of the results of the tests conducted to explore the relationships between the perceived effectiveness of strategic management tools, types of strategic management tools, and firm types. These discussions will synthesize the relationships and mutual effects of strategic planning and management choices and factors influencing organisational characteristics, focusing primarily on the outcomes of the tests of two hypotheses; namely, that particular types of strategic management tools can be associated with perceived effectiveness, and that particular types of firms can be associated with perceived effectiveness of SMTs.

To begin the in-depth discussion of the results, however, this chapter first presents an overview of the results in the context of the theoretical framework and conceptualisation of the firm presented in Chapter 3. To briefly review, the theoretical framework conceives of the firm as the combination of the strategic management process – which is composed of the components of firm goals and objectives, managers, and the management methodology which includes the selection and use of strategic management tools – and firm performance outcomes. In this study, the main focus is on the strategic management methodology in the context of how it is influenced by managers’ characteristics, and by inference – in the sense that managers serve as avatars for their firms – the overall characteristics of the firms.

8.2 Overview of Results

To properly frame the study, a theoretical framework to describe “the firm” as an entity was developed and presented in Chapter 3:

Fig. 5: Framework of the Study