ORGANIZATION RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Organization Resource Management

Organization Resource Management

Introduction

Piercy (1992, p. 117) argues that “the conventional route to putting together all the disparate bits and pieces [of marketing] - marketing strategies, marketing programmes, and marketing information - is via marketing planning”. He continues, however, to berate this often formalized, conceptual view claiming that in practice, managers do not make these links between the planning process, analysis, strategy or programmes, and will not do so. Empirical work with numerous international business-to-business organizations indicates that, left to their own devices, Piercy is likely to be correct in his assertion, but that managed and controlled within a formalized ongoing programme, managers will indeed pass through these essential stages of marketing analysis, strategy formulation and development of associated marketing programmes to facilitate their determined strategies. Without careful organization and preplanning, however, it is unlikely that a marketing planning programme will be effective: acknowledgement must be given to essential organizational, cultural and people prerequisites, as well as to the anticipated scope of the marketing planning activity.

The need to facilitate implementation

Piercy (1992) focuses on the need to facilitate implementation, outlining the lack of attention devoted to the implementation in practice of both marketing strategies and marketing mix programmes. He believes, and is supported by the recent keynote paper by Zinkham and Pereira (1994), that inadequate attention is given to producing plans which address implementation. This is equally true in the published marketing literature and for experts putting together training and consultancy programmes (Pasco, 1992). Piercy (1992, p. 244) states that “implementation is strategy”, and that chief executives should “reject out-of-hand any marketing plan of any kind which does not come with a detailed and realistic implementation strategy”. Well-structured, sequential programmes can ensure that implementation plans are realistic and actionable.

Piercy (1992) argues that too much focus is given to techniques and formal methods in marketing strategy and management research, rather than ensuring ideas are implemented and managers' actions genuinely progress. While grasping the tools and concepts is acknowledged to be important, commitment and ownership of marketing recommendations matter more. One of the fundamental weaknesses in most marketing initiatives is the failure to recognize the role of personnel and management practices and the neglect of incorporating associated actions into marketing implementation strategies. Corporate culture, management style, information flows, organizational structures and participation, “are treated either as facilitating mechanisms or as mere context, to be set aside as trivial compared to the real business of complex analysis and plan-writing” (Piercy, 1994, p. 232). In fact, these organizational people issues are part of the process of marketing planning. How marketing planning is seen to be a process and how that process is in fact managed are crucial concerns which must be tackled specifically when determining implementation plans for marketing strategies and marketing programmes (Pearson and Proctor, 1994).

The conclusion by Piercy and leading exponents of marketing planning including Jain (1990), Greenley (1986) and McDonald (1989, and 2nd ed., 1995) is that marketing planning must be managed (Lehmann and Winner, ...