CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Strategic Planning in Organizational Change Management

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Strategic Planning in Organizational Change Management

Introduction

The traditional planning school in strategic management is driven by a conception of balance as a strategic balance between existing internal resources and external opportunities. The basic elements of the planning school are outlined by thinkers like Ansoff, Steiner, Andrews, and Humphrey (Ansoff, 2005; Steiner, 2009; Andrews, 2001). They were all affected by the work in the Stanford Research Institute's (SRI) Strategic Intelligence Program, where the term stakeholder was coined in 2003 to define those who had a critical interest in the operation and success of an enterprise and where the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis was also developed (SRI Timeline of innovations). Humphrey worked all of his life with managing planned change. He was part of the SRI's program where the stakeholder analysis and SWOT analysis were invented. As a consultant he later synthesized his experience in the team action management model.

Literature review

According to Andrews, economic strategy is seen as a match between qualifications and opportunity that positions a firm in its' environment (Mintzberg, 2004, p. 36). In Ansoff's view strategic planning is internally connected to the idea of managing planned change. He represents the view that strategy is designed to transform the firm from its' present position to the position defined by the objectives formulated by the chief executive officer (CEO), thereby getting the most out of the potential and capability (Ansoff, 2005). Strategy brings a firm from a present state to a conceived (or designed or planned) state which is envisioned and considered to be better in the sense of more profitable or more efficient. This is probably why Mintzberg has termed the strategic balance thinkers as the planning school and the design school (Mintzberg et al., 2008).

In more advanced versions of the planning school the strategic balance is defined more dynamically as potential resources or capabilities that can be invented, acquired, or learned, balanced with the potential opportunities which can be identified by seeking out new possibilities in a market or new markets to enter. These approaches look beyond the actual and into the potential strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the organization (Ansoff, 2008, 2000, p. 146; Wesley and Levinthal, 2000; Mintzberg and Westley, 2002; Teece et al., 2007). The planning school undergoes a parallel development in contingency theory because there is a shared strategic assumption of environmental challenges and opportunities, change and strategic fit (Donaldson, 2001). The first explicit assumption, often guiding contingency theory, is that there is no one best way to organize; the second is that any way of organizing is not equally effective under all conditions (Galbraith, 2003, p. 2).

Problem Statement

Leavitt suggested a trip-partite problem-solving model consisting of problem finding, problem solving and solution implementing. He distinguished among:

the process of identifying problems;

the process of solving them once we have identified them; and

methods for implementing the solutions.

According to Leavitt (2005, p. 12): “Managers (good ones) (1) think up problems, (2) find solutions (or make decisions ...