CORPORATE STRATEGY IN A MEDIUM SIZED COMPANY

There is a growing recognition that long range and strategic planning are essential to the survival and healthy growth of a company, particularly at this time of accelerating technological change, but this recognition highlights problems in the organisation and management of these functions. The largest companies, those of international stature, have the necessary resources to create a self‐contained organisation for long range planning and the approach of such companies to these problems has been well documented. Very little however has been said about medium sized companies; those whose turnover is in the region of tens of millions of pounds rather than hundreds or thousands of millions. For these smaller companies the massive resources to support large staff departments serving line management are not available. The fundamental question is often whether, in such a company, managemsent for the future should be separated from management of the present or whether they should be merged to provide better communication. The whole outlook of the two sizes of company is different, the smaller financial inertia of the medium sized company means that its continued survival is less certain and consequently management must concentrate more on short term decisions because unless the organisation survives there will be no long term future to manage.