Abstract

The case for current sophistication in planning techniques should not be oversold. What is most evident to companies is the need for planning; what is still often lacking is adaptation to that need. Many organizations are still striving to rationalize the planning function. Planning is an evolving but still unsettled discipline. Despite recent strides in adapting planning to collective corporate needs, a great deal of what exists remains to be rationalized. There are at present more companies with planning departments than there are companies with planning sense. As the maturity cycle for planning lengthens, experience will help to sort out the efficient solutions from the merely decorative. Professionalization of planners will help institutionalize the activity so that a planner can be more readily recognized as such from his credentials than is possible at the moment. Eventually planning will be as traditional and distinctive a career as finance or marketing, or personnel is today.