Strategic planning and organizational values: links to alignment

Abstract

Organizational values have been known to partially define organizational culture and to serve as a bonding mechanism between workers. In the recent past, values served as a critical component of the organization's perspective regarding strategic direction, mission determination and visioning. With the onset of numerous shortterm focused management practices, the core organizational values that contributed to organizational purpose were segregated from the business strategic planning process. However, recently re-emerging is a move to ground strategic planning processes again in core organizational values because both strategy and values are seen as defining an organization's purpose in an integrated manner that allows for differentiation. This article outlines these developments, provides reasons for the recent re-surfacing of organizational values, and argues from both a strategic business perspective and a human resources perspective the need to reestablish a meaningful linkage between business strategy and organizational values. The strategic business planning literature is overviewed herein, but is focused toward its particular association with organizational values and the HR/HRD impacts thereon.