What are middle managers expecting from strategic tools? A collection and analysis of state of the art instruments

Abstract

Many strategic tools are available for process managers to develop, document and communicate their long-term business planning. However, middle managers are often facing the challenge to successfully understand and communicate a company's strategy because not always the most suitable instrument for a specific situation is chosen. In the majority of cases, the balanced scorecard is utilised for the strategy documentation and control although a lot more tools are available. This paper provides a collection as well as an in-depth analysis of currently known and widely used strategy instruments. An extensive list of requirements towards strategic tools is used to evaluate how reasonable the usage of these state of the art tools is in process management. The resulting recommendation system identifies the strategy map as well as the success resource deployment as also highly relevant instruments for middle process managers. Moreover, the developed generic system can be used by middle managers to identify the most suitable tool for their purpose and business situation.