With all the time and resources that American manufacturing companies
spend on strategic planning, why has their competitive position been
deteriorating? Certainly not because the idea of doing such planning is
itself misguided. Nor because the managers involved are not up to the
task. Drawing on his long experience with the nuts and bolts of
operations deep inside American and foreign companies, the author
proposes a different answer. Perhaps the problem lies in how managers
typically approach the work of planning: first by selecting objectives
or ends, then by defining the strategies or ways of accomplishing them,
and lastly by developing the necessary resources or means. A hard look
at what the new industrial competition requires might suggest, instead,
an approach to planning based on a means-ways-ends sequence. [ABSTRACT
FROM PUBLISHER]