Time Horizons Management within Corporate Strategies

Abstract

For any planning, especially for strategic planning, time is a fundamental issue. The units of time were the necessary foundation in order to classify the different categories of enterprise planning: strategic, tactical as well as operational planning. Through established tradition, strategies have been linked to long time horizons. This approach has faced new challenges in recent decades. For a start, one of the specific challenges for this approach was the so-called turbulent environment. The second fails to stop the problems in the effort to identify successful strategies in practice. The failure of the strategies led to a constant process of attempts to improve the current management as well as the doctrines of strategic management. The final challenge refers to the new potential represented by the informational techniques as well as to the beginning of the theories of real-time management and hyperelastic company. In the context of the above, the question of the existence of a practical basis to support the company's long-term strategy is clearly outlined. The main objective of this paper is to present the conclusions of research and studies on a time scale in corporate strategies. The main empirical data include written reports on the strategies of global companies. For the beginning, the specific approaches for the time horizons are examined, realized by the different schools with reputation in the strategic planning of the time horizons. In the next part of the study, the main factors that shape the time unit scale of strategies are recognized. The increasing complexity of strategic objectives is one of the most important factors. Concepts of polychronic and monochronous strategies are recommended based on both research and studies. The last part of this paper investigates the ways of assimilating long time horizons in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In the circumstances of the strategies accessible to these enterprises, the time horizons for SMEs are examined.

Keywords

• time horizons
• strategic planning
• small and medium-sized enterprises (smes)
• corporate strategy