Investigation into organisational performance using strategic planning and resources: a study of listed companies in Zimbabwe
Abstract
This study sought to investigate the link or relationship between strategic planning, resources
configuration and organisational performance in a developing country context (Zimbabwe).
Most of the research done in this area is based on the developed countries context. The study
undertook to contribute fmiher to the debate on strategic management, the conception that
strong organisational performance is a predictor of strategic planning capability of the top
managers of corporations and how they have capably configured the companies' resources.
The researcher gathered data from 58 companies listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange,
located in Harare and Bulawayo, by means of a questionnaire and an interview protocol. The
major finding of this research was the feedback loop established between organisational performance,
strategic planning and resources configuration capability by top managers. The
top managers of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange listed companies view the financial performance
of their companies as a predictor of their strategic planning and company resources
configuration capability. It was found that variation in the mean organisational performance
accounted for 37.5% of the variation in the mean strategic planning capability. It was also
found that variation in the mean organisational performance accounted for 36.0% of the variation
in the mean strategic resources configuration capability. Furthermore, variation in the
mean formal strategic planning accounted for 37.5% of the variation in the mean financial
ratio growth. Variation in the mean strategic resources configuration accounted for 37.6% of
the variation in the mean financial ratio growth. Furthermore, variation in the mean formal
strategic planning accounted for 31.4% of the variation in the mean company adaptability to
the external environment, while variation in the mean strategic resources configuration accounted
for 37.6% of the variation in the mean company adaptability to external environment.
Furthermore, variation in the mean formal strategic planning accounted for 19.7% of
the variation in the mean retention ability, while variation in the mean strategic resources
configuration accounted for 37.6% of the variation in the mean retention ability. Strategic
resources configurations accounted for the higher variation in the means of all the variables
of the phenomenon under study with an average of 37.0%, affirming the researcher's proposition
that strategic resources are critical components of strategic management that cannot be
relegated to the peripheries of management practices as they are portrayed in past studies and
literature on strategic management. The study propounded, among its findings, a research
theory which was extrapolated from the data collected using the two data-collecting instruments
mentioned earlier on.