Social Responsibility and Strategic Planning - Essay Example

Running Head: Social responsibility and strategic planning Social responsibility and strategic planning Name Course Tutor Date Social responsibility and strategic planning Strategic planning is a formal continuous process for developing goals and implementing actions for positioning the business in the market while still matching the scarce resources with opportunities in the market (Pickton and Wright, 1998). Strategic management has of late been seen as a prerequisite to many business commencements due to the current prevailing conditions that require great attention in all levels of management. For a business to gain a competitive advantage in the market, strong strategic decisions must be laid to counter the market pressure. Strategic planning involves choosing various ways of competing with others that are not necessarily good for all others but particularly profitable for your business given the result that the business would want to achieve. This includes limiting the business to competing in some activities while at the same time avoiding others all together. The business should also be careful about trying to be every thing to everybody because it can jeopardize the success of the business. The whole idea behind strategic planning is forecasting the future of the business to ensure that it remains a going concern for objective achievements. It is also concerned with the formulation of the steps critical for arriving at the set goals. The matching of the resources available with the market opportunities will ensure proper utilization and avoidance of wastage (Pickton and Wright, 1998). Strategic planning is the development of organization’s strategies and in order to achieve this, the management has to question themselves, who is our present situation? What do we need in future? How do we attain? Thus, this tends to be the most important function in any management as; it gives them the idea of what is happening in the organization at present, what they expect in the future and how they will attain their future goals. Strategic planning also enables the management to go through their present mission and try to analyze it to see whether it gives their actual purpose of the organization (Fuchs, et. al., 2000). This also enables the management to come up with better strategies that govern the organization both in and out. This is achieved through carrying out the SWOT analysis on the organization that provides information concerning their strengths, weakness, and opportunities in the market as well as their threat in the market (Fuchs, et. al., 2000). Through this, the management is able to come up with better strategies that will assist them to increase their opportunities in the market and decrease their threats. Effective staff training has been the key concept used during strategic planning. This can be adopted so as to plan effectively for compliance in an organization. Consequently, the management will be able to educate the key people involved in the practice on the required policies as well as laws thus enabling them to come up with more effective documents of control. Other than that, they have to be able to control whatever is going on the ground through monitoring their systems. This will enable them to discover possible problems. Together with this, they have to encourage reporting of problems established without fear of revenge from their fellow providers (Pickton and Wright, 1998). Being a living organism, the agencies have to come up with a more effective means of communication that will enable accessibility of all of its providers. This will enhance the workability of the plan, as they will be able to contact any member in time of need. Planning is the essential role of management from which other functions such as organizing, leading, staffing and controlling within an organization branch from (Erven n.d.). It is mainly concerned with the future impact of today’s decisions. Thus, for any organization to be successful in their programs, they have to poses good planning strategy at the managerial level. Due to this, some of organizations have opted to make use of compliance planning (Fuchs, et. al., 2000). This is whereby two or more organizations produce a document used to guide them in their efforts to work in agreement with various governmental lawful requirements. The modern day approaches to planning differs from the traditional approaches to planning, although the two are mainly distinguished by the resources used to plan and the ideologies employed. The most common approach which has been used for planning over the years consists of six steps namely: situational analysis, alternative planning, evaluation of plans and goals, selection of goals and plans, implementation process and monitoring and control. Situational analysis refers to the process of looking at the available resources, the constraints which will come in the process of planning and summarizing all the information needed to deliver the plan (Fuchs, et. al., 2000). It also involves setting up the mission and objective of the organization which is clear so that it can help the team leaders to have a focus and direction in the organization. Situational analysis in both the traditional and modern methods of planning in that technological resources have been utilized so much in the modern form of planning (Pickton and Wright, 1998). Analyzing the alternative plans and goals involves putting down all the possible plans which will be adopted when others will not be effective, noting the constraints which are associated with each goal and plan and making the entire organization aware of the plan so that they can give their views on it. When the organization has successfully analyzed the goals and plans to be put in place, then evaluation of these goals and plans takes place. This involves scrutinizing every plan which has been put in place so as to find out the constrains and the benefits of each, debating with the committee on what plans should be adopted basing on the future of the company and issue which might affect the organization like rise in technology and the management changes. Selection of goals and plans takes place after this has been done. This involves putting in place the right plans which will be of benefit to the organization (Dess, et. al., 2005). This step is reached at after a thorough discussion with several arms of the organization like the stakeholders, the management, the employees and outsiders who might also be concerned with the future of the business. Implementation process normally follows the selection of the plans and goals to be executed. This is the real execution process which involves the actual application of goals and plans which have been selected, alerting every department of the changes and physically making changes within each department. When this has successfully been done, monitoring and control process follows. This involves going back and looking at how successful the entire process has been. The entire process is reviewed critically by looking at the weight which each of the plans and goals follow. If there has been a weakness at some point then the process can be reviewed and changes made (Dess, et. al., 2005). This process of planning is very essential in the organization because it’s concerned with looking at options which are available within the community and are geared at making the organization achieve its goals. Having this critical information will ensure that a long term process of achieving the eventual goal of the organization is achieved. This can also make the entire organization to have a wide range of where and how to provide their services to the entire customers. Ensuring that all the processes of planning are followed, ensures that the organization suffers less stress since all the dealings with money has been put in place effectively. This process of planning is also very important because it makes the entire organization to be independent in its actions and therefore make the organization meet its overall objectives and goals (Dess, et. al., 2005). Managers of businesses are faced today with several issues that relate to moral and ethical decision making so as to provide the standard goods that are required by the customers. Social responsibility is the ability of the business to perform duties which are aimed at ensuring the community are satisfied with. Social responsibility implies that businesses need to be heavily grounded with ethics and should be able to make the best decisions that are geared towards the success of the business. Social responsibility covers a great deal of aspects in the business ranging from the ethical to the moral decision making processes which needs to be observed within the business (Donaldson and Werhane, 1983). Social responsibility and entails professional ethics, providing a safe working environment for the workers, developing policies that are non discriminatory, ensuring that there are rights of fair wage for every employee and observation of the environmental ethics. The modern approach to planning is much more likely to encourage social responsibility in organizations than the traditional methods because of several factors. One is that most business today would wish to compete effectively and emerge to be the best in the market. So as to do so, they need to address the marketing ethical issues. This area implies that the company needs to observe the rules that have been set place by the marketing forces like selling products at some fixed price so that it does not create unnecessary competition in the market (Donaldson and Werhane, 1983). Selling of high margin products implies that the business is trying to gain a great market share at the expense of the other businesses losing. This is unethical issue. The other area of concern that the business needs to observe is ethical practices towards the products. It’s very important for any business to have some measures on how they need to protect and provide a safe product to the society at large (Donaldson and Werhane, 1983). Ethical issues involving the product involves selling legal goods, providing safe products to the society, testing products for total quality management, assuming the quantity of goods that need to be provided and wasteful and unnecessary packaging. The society today is much conversant about the nature of the products that they expect in the market and the legality of products which they need to buy. Businesses today therefore seek to establish their business in a manner in which their products have been checked by the total quality management before they disseminate these products to their customers (Donaldson and Werhane, 1983). Through this, the businesses are able to gain a competitive edge over the other organizations. Organizations today are further expected to provide safe products to their clients because clients are quite aware of the right products to take. This applies especially if the organization is producing food products. the management of the organization should follow the social responsibility principles like offering safe products. References: Donaldson, T. and Werhane, P. (1983). Ethical issues in business: a philosophical approach. New York: Prentice-Hall Rainey, W. (1998).The process of planning, Harper College: committee of Institutional Planning, War College Kirsch, D. and Goldfarb, B. The responsibility of business plans in the decision making Process, Strategic Management Journal, vol. 18, Issue 6, Date: May 2009, Pages: 47-91 Pickton, D. and Wright, S. Strategic Change: What's SWOT in strategic planning? Journal of strategic change management, 1998, vol. 7, Issue 2, April 1998, Pages: 27-34 Drew, S. 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