Strategic planning and organizational structure - relationship and impact

Abstract

The strategic planning process is a wonderful adaptation mechanism that contemporary organizations seek to achieve with all the environmental changes they live under. This process can be likened to human behaviour through which a person adapts to all the events, people and facts he experiences. Just as a person's behaviour depends on his physical and psychological capabilities and energies, strategic planning also depends on the administrative, organizational and technical components that the organization possesses. This study seeks to diagnose the nature of the relationship between two of the most prominent organizational components: the organizational structure and the strategic planning process. Given the importance of understanding the relationship between these two variables to help support and activate the strategic planning process, this study adopted the descriptive analytical approach in identifying and treating its variables represented by the strategic planning process as an independent variable and the organizational structure defined by three dimensions, which are the degree of centralization, formality, complexity, and the type of automated structure or "Organic" as a dependent variable, based on multiple measures developed following the objectives of the study and the nature of the environment investigated.