Long-Range Planning

Long-range planning involves decisions about the organization's over all purposes, objectives, and policies. Some business plans many require several years for completion - for example, the acquisition of desired raw material sources, or obtaining a certain increase in sales. Other areas that require long-range planning center on such things as which activities the firm should undertake, which production schedules should be adopted, expansion plans, financial arrangement for achieving objectives, opportunities which the firm is not now pursuing, resources needed to accomplish present or desired goals, marketing strategies, and evaluation of past decisions.

Planning Defined

          Planning is preparing for the future of the firm by establishing objectives and the methods for achieving them. This is done by setting up clear, flexible, consistent, and objective plans for the entire organization. It is important that established plans be known throughout the organization so that all employees can help to achieve the company's goals.
          A company's plans can be long range or short range. Most plans that require several years to achieve are considered long range, but many companies distinguish between long-range and short-range planning by a two-year date for completion.

Planning

It's impossible for managers to organize, direct, or control people's activities until they have a plan, an idea of what they want to accomplish. For the reason, all other activities in a well-managed company must await the determination of overall plans. Otherwise, one group of employees may work against the purposes of another group. It is necessary, then, that we first consider the planning function of management.

The Four Basic Functions of Management

The most generally accepted list of management functions includes four basic activities:

1.  Planning

2.  Organizing

3.  Directing

4.  Controlling

          This is the list of basic management functions that we shall study. However, some business scholars prefer to extend the list to identify separately such activities as staffing, evaluating, motivating, and communicating. While it's true that managers do these things, we believe they are included in our basic list of only four functions. Besides, we must recognize that the four functions are interdependent parts of the total management job, not "islands" unto themselves. With this in mind, we shall study of the four basic management functions.

Supervisory Management

          The third level of management is supervisory management; it is responsible for specific small segments of the organization. As the term suggests, supervisory management includes managers who have the title of supervisory or foreman. Supervisory managers are directly responsible for assigning jobs to specific people, for measuring and evaluating their performance, and for achieving assigned goals. They carry out the plans and procedures established by middle management by working directly with nonmanagement employees.
          In typical large business firms, management is divided into the three levels described above. It should be clear that authority flows from top management down through the organization. However, if your experience with business has been limited to every small firms, you will recognize that in smaller organizations one person may operate at all three levels of management.
          Now let's see what the levels of managers do to accomplish their assignment.