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Strategic planning has become increasingly important for setting the direction of firms and developing contingency plans for things like pandemics. It is also very important for institutions of higher education where strategic planning can be part of operating an academic unit, regional accreditation, and programmatic accreditation. However, the process and stages of strategic planning is not well understood. This particularly holds true for institutions of higher education. Processes vary based on resources available and other factors. Some institutions engage high-powered, external consultants while others use more home-grown practices. This study examines the strategic planning process in higher education business units (departments, schools, colleges). An electronic questionnaire was designed based on published studies. Four phases of strategic planning were identified (plan initiation, situation analysis, strategy alternatives and selection, and implementation and control). The findings indicate that strategic planning is conducted fairly consistently but key differences were identified based upon the institutional characteristics (enrollment, faith-based, accrediting body, and level of degree granted).

Purpose: Along with other industries, healthcare is becoming increasingly digitized. Our study explores how the field of academic medicine is preparing for this digital future. Method: Active strategic plans available in English were collected from faculties of medicine in Canada (n = 14), departments in medical schools (n = 17), academic health science centres (n = 23) and associated research institutes (n = 5). In total, 59 strategic plans were subjected to a practice-oriented form of document analysis, informed by the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. Results: On the one hand, digital health is discursively treated as a continuation of the academic medicine vision, with expansions of physician competencies and of research institutes contributions. These imaginaries do not necessarily disrupt the field of academic medicine as currently configured. On the other hand, there is a vision of digital health pursuing a robust sociotechnical future with transformative implications for how care is conducted, what forms of knowledge are prioritized, how patients and patienthood will be understood, and how data work will be distributed. This imaginary may destabilize existing distributions of knowledge and power. Conclusions: Looking through the lens of sociotechnical imaginaries, this study illuminates strategic plans as framing desirable futures, directing attention towards specific ways of understanding problems of healthcare, and mobilizing the resources to knit together social and technical systems in ways that bring these visions to fruition. There are bound to be tensions as these sociotechnical imaginaries are translated into material realities. Many of those tensions and their attempted resolutions will have direct implications for the expectations of health professional graduates, the nature of clinical learning environments, and future relationships with patients. Sociology of digital health and science and technology studies can provide useful insights to guide leaders in academic medicine shaping these digital futures.

In this study I investigated the involvement of top management and teachers in the strategic planning process in 5 district schools located in the Bulawayo Metropolitan Province guided by the Take Stock Analysis (TSA) model. The constructivist/interpretivist paradigm was the qualitative methodology adopted for the study using a case study research method. The participants were 5 education managers and 5 focus groups of 4 teachers, each purposively selected from each school as an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon was sought through face-to-face interviews. Interview data were inductively and thematically analysed while strategic plans provided were inspected using content analysis and supplemented with interview data. The findings were reported following the concept of strategic planning, the formulation, monitoring and evaluation process. The results reveal that some schools used the centralised or decentralised strategic planning process while others hired strategists with minimal involvement from the teachers and the top management of the school. I recommend that stakeholders are actively involved in the entire strategic planning process to enhance ownership and commitment at the operational level. Most importantly, joint periodic evaluations are needed for modification purposes and relevance.

Great organizations have a clear sense of what they want to accomplish and how they are going to get there. For state boards of education, this vision and roadmap are typically articulated in a strategic plan. The best plans are living documents that guide state board actions or multiple years; lesser plans gather dust. What separates the two? The answer lies partly in what the plan includes, partly in the process by which state boards arrive at the plan, and in large measure by what happens after the state board approves the plan.

Appreciative inquiry is a strength-based organisational transformation approach developed in 1987 by David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve. It is based on the idea that organisational change is more effective when the approach focuses on the positive attributes and experiences within an organisation instead of the challenges. Several studies have been conducted on applying appreciative inquiry in the strategic planning process at higher education institutions to discover the impact of appreciative inquiry on organisations and individuals. This study examines how the use of appreciative inquiry in a higher education institution's strategic planning process influenced participants' emotional, social and professional experiences. We found that using appreciative inquiry in the strategic planning process may improve contributor social experiences and attitudes towards an organisation, which could lead to higher retention rates through greater contributor satisfaction levels.

In between university level assessments, the BYU Library conducts internal reviews of each library department, describing its value to the library and university, and providing recommendations for improvement. The process used a team of library employees in departments not under review and an external reviewer to conduct the internal review. Using a case-study approach, the development of an internal review system, its meta-evaluation at the end of its first cycle, and the on-going efforts to improve the internal review process are described. Using a graduate level evaluation class followed by a task force, changes were made to the internal review process that has standardized assessment, allowed flexibility for each department, and solidified training for both the department under review and the review team. Each of the findings and recommended changes helped to address the internal review's first-round weaknesses and struggles. The result is a stronger, consistent process that provides additional training and guidance for each internal review. This article is a case study that describes a library wide process used by an academic library to describe the value of each department and to provide feedback for improvement between university reviews. The process engages all library employees as each department is reviewed and helps to create a culture of assessment. This article reviews the history and progress of a LIR to evaluate an academic library's value and to provide data for improvement. The process may be used or adapted by other libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As centers for teaching and learning increasingly offer support and leadership for the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) at their institutions, educational developers need better tools to plan their SoTL programming. This article shares the work of a regional network of educational developers across six institutions in Virginia, who aimed to enhance SoTL offerings within and across their institutions. While SoTL tools and models for individual instructors proliferate, this community of practice noted a gap in support for developers doing more institution-level planning. Through their collaboration, they developed two tools for planning and launching institution-level SoTL programs: the SoTL Strategic Planning Worksheet and the SoTL Program Taxonomy. This article describes the development of these tools and assesses their implications for educational development practice.

INTRODUCTION. The commercial success of innovations in medicine and pharmaceutics depends on the strategic planning of patent protection, with the main elements for consideration being the type of patent protection, the scope of the invention, and the order of obtaining protection documents.AIM. This study aimed to analyse specific aspects of the strategic planning of patent protection for pharmaceutical inventions.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The study applied analysis and comparison methods to patent information. Statistical data were prepared using patent databases, including the Rospatent search platform and Questel.RESULTS. In the Russian Federation, invention patents for methods of treatment and diagnosis are more abundant than pharmaceutical product patents. The most reasonable method for protecting intellectual property rights in the pharmaceutical industry is the stepwise obtaining of different types of protection documents for different objects of patent protection, including inventions, utility models, and industrial designs, as part of one project. The strategy of patent protection for a pharmaceutical invention should consider the type of patent (protection combining the use of patents for inventions, utility models, and industrial designs), the correct determination of the object of patent protection (obtaining a product (substance) patent), and stepwise obtaining and strategic accumulation of different protection documents.CONCLUSION. The described strategy helps to cover the fullest possible range of rights protection options, prevent patent infringement, and extend the patent protection period for an invention.

Effective alignment of institutional processes with digital technologies is imperative for enterprises, including those in healthcare. Unfortunately, in the context of health laboratories, the scope and complexity of existing digital health interventions has not allowed incorporation of all data and information needs for all core functions of the laboratory subsector. Besides, several operational and management issues still hinder the effective management of information on laboratory services at the health facility, sub-national, and national levels in low-income countries such as Uganda. Although approaches that support implementation of digital health interventions exist, there is still limited technical guidance on the strategic planning and implementation of complex systems such as a nation-wide integrated Health Laboratory Information Management System (HLIMS). Therefore, this article demonstrates how the strategic planning process of such systems can be strengthened by adopting the thinking pattern of enterprise architecture, as a holistic approach for aligning business processes with digital technologies. It specifically presents a process for leveraging Enterprise Architecture in Information Systems Strategic Planning (EAISSP). The process was instantiated in Uganda’s health laboratory subsector, by using it to formulate an architecture-oriented information systems strategy; and the strategy then guided the design of a master plan for a national integrated HLIMS and its implementation plan. Although EAISSP was tested in the context of the laboratory subsector, it can be contextualized to support other efforts like developing a national e-health strategy or information systems strategy of an enterprise in another sector.

This article studied and analyzed the reality of the domestic tourism sector in Russia by using the strategic planning approach. First, the current situation of the tourism sector in Russia was studied. Then the concept of domestic tourism and strategic planning was discussed. Then, a group of works and studies by Russian and foreign authors on the reality of the domestic tourism sector and strategic planning were analyzed. Then the environmental profile method was used to identify the internal and external factors affecting the domestic tourism sector and were evaluated based on a group of studies by Russian and foreign authors. A SWOT matrix was created based on the results of the environmental profile method. Based on the intersection of SWOT matrix factor pairs, development strategies for the domestic tourism sector in Russia were formulated. In conclusion, the authors made some recommendations about the measures that the domestic tourism sector needs based on the results, which must be implemented within the proposed strategies. This study can help researchers in literary works and understand the reality of domestic tourism in Russia in light of the new policies and sanctions imposed on Russia.

Abstract This study aimed to explore the effect of enterprise resource planning (ERP), innovation (IN), and strategic planning (SP) on the organizational performance (OP) of large industrial companies in Saudi Arabia, with the mediating role of strategic decision-making (SDM). To this end, data was collected from 358 participants and analyzed using structured equation modeling (SEM) via SmartPLS 4. The findings confirmed that ERP positively affects both SDM and OP. Likewise, IN positively affects SDM but does not directly affect OP. On the contrary, SP positively affects both SDM and OP. These results emphasized the important role of SDM as a mediator. Theoretical implications highlight the integration of ERP, IN, SDM, and SP into a coherent model that explains OP dynamics. In practical terms, organizations can leverage these insights to enhance SDM processes aimed at improving operational processes. Overall, this study contributes to the literature by providing a nuanced understanding of how ERP, IN, SDM, and practices collectively drive operational processes in industrial contexts, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

Strategic planning is the deliberative, disciplined effort to produce decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why. [State] Cooperative Extension invested considerable time and effort in conducting a statewide process to engage internal and external stakeholders and nonusers. The strategic planning steering committee balanced negotiations in defining the process, determining who should be involved, and how to develop goals. The semi-structured interviews with the steering committee members, generated three themes: effectiveness of the team enhanced results; context and process can inhibit stakeholder participation, the steering committee needs a commitment to diverse voices.

This study aimed to scrutinize the implementations based on the strategic planning of Ankara Provincial Directorate of National Education, Turkey. The participants of the study comprised 516 branch managers, chiefs and civil servants in Ankara Provincial Directorate of National Education. The data were collected via a structured questionnaire comprising four parts using five-point Likert-type scale. The first part focused on the identity information, the second part dealt with the strategic planning elements of the Ankara Provincial Directorate of National Education, the third part was on strategic planning for targeted questions, and the last part aimed to collect data on the official system of the directorate of national education in general. The data were analyzed via frequency and percentage, and Kay-square tests. The results were classified in accordance with the titles of the participants and could be stated as follows: Deputy directors, education supervisors, chiefs, and civil servants agreed on the statement "moderate level"; branch managers assumed that the strategic planning as "legal obligations"; civil servants and provincial deputy directors were of the opinion that the strategic plans were not implemented exactly, and branch managers believed that the prepared strategic plans were exactly implemented.

The authors of this article identify the status of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria and propose the use of a classic strategic planning paradigm to mitigate its spread until it may be completely arrested. Vaccines have been developed to combat the disease which current evidence suggests is spread by respiratory droplets among people who are in close contact with each other (WHO, 2020). But this presumed mode of transmission has led to concerns in the scientific and medical communities about the disastrous effects the virus may have on the African continent which has historically lagged the rest of the world in the delivery of quality health care especially for some of the most vulnerable populations like children under 5 years of age. This article provides information regarding the contemporary health care situation in Nigeria for such vulnerable populations, analyzes the current impact of COVID-19, and recommends a successful strategic planning paradigm to address similar catastrophic health experiences in the future.

Appreciative inquiry is a strength-based organisational transformation approach developed in 1987 by David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve. It is based on the idea that organisational change is more effective when the approach focuses on the positive attributes and experiences within an organisation instead of the challenges. Several studies have been conducted on applying appreciative inquiry in the strategic planning process at higher education institutions to discover the impact of appreciative inquiry on organisations and individuals. This study examines how the use of appreciative inquiry in a higher education institution's strategic planning process influenced participants' emotional, social and professional experiences. We found that using appreciative inquiry in the strategic planning process may improve contributor social experiences and attitudes towards an organisation, which could lead to higher retention rates through greater contributor satisfaction levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is aimed at analyzing trends of gender equity in admission and graduation, during the twenty years (2000-2020) of higher education (HE) strategic planning in Mozambique, to ascertain the extent to which gender equity is being achieved. I also examined a possible association between admission and graduation rates. To address these trends, I adopted a basic research design with three characteristics: quantitative, descriptive, and correlational. The sample consisted of the entire population of students, from public and private higher education institutes. The main conclusions are: (1) male students outnumber female ones, in admission and graduation although in 2011 and 2018 female students outnumbered slightly male ones. This means that the system fails to promote gender equity in both dimensions; and (2) there is a statistically significance (at [less than or equal to] 0.05) and strong relationship between admission and graduation, meaning that the normal flow of students is under the risk of system congestion since graduation rates are about 63.7% of new admission. The study recommends legal effort to rule gender equity achievements as well to revise admission policy to make it more sensitive to gender equity.

Strategic plans are more participatory, more responsive, more integrated and more empowering when compared to the traditional plans. It has been nearly 20 years since the Financial Management and Control Law in Turkey required public institutions, including municipalities, to prepare strategic plans and to apply strategic management techniques. It has been observed that most of the metropolitan municipalities in Turkey just conduct surveys in the preparation process of strategic plans without organising workshops with the participation of various stakeholders. It seems that through surveys the legal requirement of ensuring the participation of stakeholders in the preparation process is met. It is considered that the local authorities in Turkey need to revise their approach to the strategic planning process in terms of good principles of governance, especially participation.

Purpose: Higher education institutions (HEIs) must take on a leadership role in building a sustainable world, given their responsibility for preparing future professionals and leaders worldwide and considering the role they provide to society. To accomplish this goal, HEIs need to holistically embody sustainability in everything they develop. This study aims to help HEIs in this purpose by developing a method to integrate sustainability into the strategic planning process in these institutions. Design/methodology/approach: In the first stage, the method was developed based on papers selected through a systematic literature review. The proposed method was then applied in a Brazilian HEI to validate and adjust it. Findings: A method that adopts a participatory process to integrate sustainability into HEIs' strategic planning was proposed. Practical implications: This study provides university leaders with a simple and practical method to aid with elaborating on strategic plans for holistic sustainability integration. Originality/value: This study uniquely applied a framework called "HEIs sustainability action archetypes" as the foundation for selecting sustainable objectives, goals and actions to be integrated into these institutions' strategic planning.

In the education system in Trinidad and Tobago, only 60% of students are achieving mastery in literacy and numeracy as documented by national tests. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore principals' experiences leading strategic planning designed to increase achievement in literacy and numeracy in eight high-performing primary schools in Trinidad and Tobago. Fullan's change process theory provided the framework for the study. Data were collected from interviews with eight principals. Data analysis included coding, categorizing, and identifying themes. Findings indicated that principals plan, implement, and monitor the facilitation of change processes through in-depth strategies in teaching and learning with a continuous focus on literacy and numeracy. Findings also revealed that there is continuous professional development to support teachers and transform their capacity in practice. The extension and confirmation of knowledge were validated by the change process theory that change process at the campus level of the school must include strategies for improving the school. Findings may be used to evaluate strategic planning quality and assessment practices in low-performing schools in Trinidad and Tobago, and to improve principals' capacity for effective strategic planning.

The present study aimed to identify the reality of strategic planning practice by the leaders of the Faculty of Education, Damietta University from the perspective of faculty members. Therefore, it adopted the descriptive approach based on a survey of (63) faculty members. It applied a five-domain questionnaire. Results revealed the weak practice of strategic planning from the perspective of the participants. "Future challenges" domain was ranked first and rated "high" with a weighted average of (3.62) and a percentage of (72.38%). "Preparation for strategic planning" domain was ranked second and rated "moderate" with a weighted average of (3.14) and a percentage of (62.74%). The 3rd, 4th, and 5th domains regarding "quadratic strategic analysis, implementation of the strategic plan, and evaluation and strategic oversight" were ranked low. Their weighted averages were rated (2.28-2.50) with a percentage of (49.91%-64.24%).

This study aimed at finding out the reality of strategic planning in the faculties of educational sciences in Jordanian private universities. A questionnaire was distributed to the study population of (84) faculty members. A total of (67) questionnaires were retrieved, seven of which were excluded. The results of analysis of the remaining (60) questionnaires indicated that the level of strategic planning in Jordanian private universities was high. Also, the level of achieving academic excellence in Jordanian private universities was high. Furthermore, there was a positive significant correlational relationship at (a [less than or equal to] 0.05) between the level of the reality of strategic planning and the level of achieving academic excellence in Jordanian private universities. The recommendations of this study included providing rewards to distinguished teaching staff at Jordanian private universities and the commendation of their efforts.

The objective of the paper was to provide an overview of strategic planning and how a Strategic Plan (SP) can be developed and implemented effectively in Higher Education Institution (HEIs) in developing countries for continuous quality improvement. Related literature was reviewed and analysed using the narrative synthesis approach. It was established from the review that a SP serves as a framework for determining the quality path a HEI should chart to achieve its desired future. Advantages of strategic planning include; providing opportunity for relevant constituencies to participate in institutional governance, synchronising plans towards achieving institutional goals; prioritising for efficient allocation of resources, and engaging stakeholders for collective ownership of institutional agenda. SPs are developed based on internal and external environmental scan for institutional strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; and aligned with institutional mission, vision, values, and goals. Issues for consideration in strategic planning may include academic (teaching, research, and extension) matters, institutional governance, finance, infrastructure, Information and Communication Technology, human resource, institutional advancement and internationalisation. Challenges in planning and implementation of SPs in HEIs in developing countries include resource constraints, inadequate expertise and commitment, as well as resistance to change. For effective implementation of a SP, there should be an implementation plan that details who should do what at what time and with which resources. Successful strategic planning and implementation of the Plan depend on commitment of and collaboration among qualified planners, implementers, monitors, evaluators and other relevant stakeholders.

Based on the importance of strategic planning and its impact on various administrative variables such as institutional excellence, the goal of this study is to explore the current status of these variables and the relationship of correlation and impact between them in one of the higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia. The study adopted a descriptive-analytical methodology and used a questionnaire as a data collection tool to ensure its validity and reliability. It was distributed to a random sample of 101 faculty members at Hafr Al-Batin University in Saudi Arabia. The study found that despite the moderate reality of both strategic planning and institutional excellence at the university, the results showed a strong positive relationship between these variables at a significance level of 0.01, three of the four dimensions of strategic planning had a significant impact on institutional excellence. The study provides a useful reference for higher education institutions regarding the current status of strategic planning and institutional excellence, as well as the relationship and impact between them. It also offers valuable data for decision-makers to improve the state of strategic planning in these institutions. The results can potentially help enhance strategic planning practices in Saudi universities and, on a broader scale, in other parts of the Middle East and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]