Planning for growth in leading U.S. companies

Abstract

Although profitable growth may seem to be the obvious criterion of success, not all otherwise successful companies endorse a growth philosophy of management. Neither size nor industry necessarily determines a company's profit growth. One thing that often does is its “managementstyle”. In many successful companies, long range planning is a basic part of that management philosophy. Its importance is increasingly recognised as the problems of growth become more complex. A management style is the characteristic way a company operates its business. It is the “way we do things around here”. Though it is difficult to summarize the concept of style for a number of companies, the management style of a particular company is easily observable. Often an outsider can see this more readily than someone inside the company. The focus in this article is American corporate practice as revealed by several survey research projects carried out by Opinion Research Corporation during the last five years.