STRATEGIC PLANNING AND ORGANISATIONAL PERFORMANCE IN NIGERIA MANUFACTURING FIRMS

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the Study Strategic planning is backbone support to strategic management and it is a major in the conduct of strategic management. According to Wagner (2016), the importance of strategic planning can be explained from four points of view including environmental scanning, strategy formulation, the linking goals to budgets and strategic-g as a process. The strategic planning process begins with the setting of organizational goals. The linkage between strategic planning and organizational performance needs analysis to get a better understanding of how strategic planning is applied in practice to improve performance. For strategic planning to be effective and useful, there must be commitment and involvement across all levels of the organization to overcome inherent problems such as; rivalry among departments, projects, resistance to change, resource requirement, resources allocation and so on (Grant, 2016). The strategic initiatives and directions set up by firm management in the form of mission and vision statements and targets for cost-saving, debt/equity ratios embodied as argued by Grant (2016) "a framework of constraints and that bounded and directed strategic choices." Strategic planning has been embraced by business enterprises, the public and private sectors as an important avenue that can be utilized to lead effective organization. Strategic planning is the first phase in the strategic management process and sets the basis for the other phases (Strategy implementation, evaluation and control).