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Friday 15 May 2015

PLANNING: MANAGEMENT PROCESS / ELEMENT OF MANAGEMENT



Planning is one of the major activities of Management Process. It is a thinking and decision making process which aims at forecasting the future and determining the course of action to face the future and achieve the pre-determined objectives of the organisation. It is a continuous process.

By planning we mean to determine the finiteness of decision making. Basic questions are raised during the process, which ultimately lead to reach at the amicable solutions. Some of the basic Questions are given below as:

    • What is to be done?
    • Why it is to be done?
    • What will be the outcome?
    • When it is to be done?
    • Where it is to be done?
    • Who is to do it?
    • How it has to be done?
    • When the results would be evaluated?
    • Where and by whom the results would be evaluated?

Hence it should be understood that Planning is a systematic scientific way of arriving at the decision making stage.

Different authors have defined Planning as:

Koontz & O’Donnell, defined it in these simple words as, “Planning is deciding in advance what to do, how to do and who is to do it. Planning bridges the gap where we are to where we want to go. It makes it possible for things to happen”.

Alfred & Beatty, defined it as, “Planning is the thinking process, the organized foresight, the vision based on facts and experience that is required for intelligent action.”

Some of the major activities of Planning in a business or industrial enterprise are as follows:
    • Objectives to be determined,
    • Forecasting,
    • Projects & Programs to be drafted,
    • Policies to be decided,
    • Working Methods to be sorted out,
    • Rules & Regulations to be framed,
    • Budget to be prepared, and so on…….
So Planning is an activity which occurs at present but shows the way for future. Therefore it is a thinking process, based on integrated assumption of facts for an intelligent course of action.  

More aspects of Planning will be discussed in further Blogs.

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