Moira Ja

What Is Planning?

Planning involves defining the organization’s goals, establishing an overall strategy for achieving these goals, and developing a comprehensive set of plans to integrate and coordinate organizational work. Planning is the most essential function of all managerial functions. It is the process by which managers establish goals and define the method by which those goals are to be attained. Planning involves selecting missions and objectives and the actions to achieve them; it requires decision making that is choosing from among alternatives future courses of actions. So planning can be thought of as deciding about a future course of action. It may also be treated as a process of thinking before doing. Planning to manager means thinking about what is to be done, who is going to do it, and how and when he will do it.

According to Weihrich and Knootz " Planning involves selecting missions and objectives and the actions to achieve them"

According to Newman " Planning is deciding in advance what is to be done; a plan is a projected course of action."

As it is clear from the above discussion, plans have two basic components: goals and action statements. Goals represent – the targets and results that managers hope to achieve. Action statements represent the means by which an organization goes to ahead to attain its goals. Planning also involves thinking about past events (retrospectively) and about future opportunities and impending threats (prospectively). Planning enquires about organizational strengths and weakness and involves decision making about desired ways and means to achieve them. There are, however, differences between decision making and planning. Decision can be made without planning but planning cannot be done without making decision.

Purposes of Planning:

– planning is the primary management function that establishes the basis for all other management functions

– planning...