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Strategic planning topics take on greater importance, for example, in situations where an organization is affected by management not taking into account elements of future vision. That is why it is always recommended to keep in mind the most relevant topics of strategic management, its principles and general recommendations, which can guide from a "novice" manager to an experienced manager. This article presents a set of reflections on the most common topics in strategic planning, from the point of view of the main authors and specialists on the subject. With this work it is proposed to answer the most typical questions that can be generated in the process of strategic planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Method that supports the overall process of planning, structuring and validating a business strategy. • Integration of qualitative with quantitative tools, making the strategy process robust and holistic. • Tools that consider the subjectivity of the process of construction of strategy maps. • Fuzzy DEMATEL and linear programming to support the design of a strategy map. • Method to explain efficiently, functionally, and easily the route map of a strategy. Abstract Strategy literature has mainly focused on conceptual tools to support stages of the planning and structuring of the strategy within the context of a Balanced Scorecard (BSC). Recently, quantitative tools based on multi-criteria decision-making methods (MCDM) have received more attention; however, studies still have limitations. Such is the case of Fuzzy DEMATEL, which has been proposed in the literature, but not integrated within the whole process of strategy formulation. In addition, studies have presented weaknesses by not considering, for instance, the logical structure of a strategy map. Hence, the main objective of this study is to propose the development of a method that supports the overall process of planning, structuring and validating a business unit strategy while overcoming the limitations of previous works, considering the subjectivity of decision-making in the construction of strategy maps. To fulfil these purposes, this study proposes an extension of the work of Lopez-Ospina et al. (2017) entitled "A method for designing strategy maps using DEMATEL and linear programming", by integrating fuzzy logic and traditional, conceptual and qualitative tools to support the diagnosis and strategy design. The significant contributions of this work is that it overcomes limitations of previous methods by providing: (1) a logic structure of strategy maps; (2) integration of subjectivity within the overall formulation process of the strategy; (3) selection of the most important relationships between strategy objectives to explain efficiently, functionally, and easily the route map of a strategy; and (4) integration of traditional qualitative tools with quantitative tools, making the process robust and holistic. The proposed method was applied to an Official Banking business unit of a Colombian bank, where expert judgment for strategy formulation helps to test the effect of the methodological design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Na era da informação e do conhecimento, a Tecnologia da Informação (TI) tem demonstrado ser cada vez mais uma importante área para as empresas. Por essa razão, o alinhamento da TI com a estratégia tem sido uma constante preocupação de cientistas e executivos. O Balanced Scorecard (BSC) é apresentado na literatura como um instrumento de gestão que possibilita o alinhamento da organização com sua estratégia. Nesse contexto, com o objetivo de analisar os impactos da implantação do BSC nos fatores de alinhamento estratégico da TI com o negócio, sob a perspectiva dos gestores, realizou-se uma pesquisa exploratório-qualitativa, por meio de um estudo de casos múltiplos em empresas que implantaram o BSC e que possuem área de TI. As fontes de evidências foram: entrevistas focais, questionário semi-estruturado, documentos e observação direta. Os fatores do alinhamento da TI foram agrupados em quatro categorias: Social, Organizacional, Planejamento e Comportamental. Os resultados mostram que a implantação do BSC provoca mudanças gerenciais que influenciam nos fatores do alinhamento da TI das quatro categorias, transformando-os em fatores facilitadores do alinhamento e contribuindo positivamente para o alinhamento da TI com o negócio.In the age of information and knowledge, information technology (IT) has revealed to be an increasingly important area for companies. Thus, the alignment between IT and strategy has been a constant worry among scientists and executives. Literature presents the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a management instrument that allows the organization to align with its strategy. In this context, with a view to analyzing the impact of the implantation of BSC on strategic alignment factors of IT with business, from a management perspective, we carried out a qualitative-exploratory research through a multiple case study in companies that implanted BSC and have an IT area. Evidence was collected trough focal interviews, a semistructured questionnaire, documents and direct observation. IT alignment factors were grouped in four categories: Social, Organizational, Planning and Behavioral. The results showed that the implantation of BSC provokes management changes that influence the four categories of IT alignment factors, transforming them into alignment facilitators and also contributing positively to the alignment between IT and the business.

All kind of strategic tasks within an enterprise require a deep understanding of its critical key success factors and their interrelations as well as an in-depth analysis of relevant environmental influences. Due to the openness of the underlying system, there seems to be an indefinite number of unknown variables influencing strategic goals. Cybernetic or systemic planning techniques try to overcome this intricacy by modeling the most important cause-and-effect relations within such a system. Although it seems to be obvious that there are specific influences between business variables, it is mostly impossible to identify the functional dependencies underlying such relations. Hence simulation or evaluation techniques based on such hypothetically assumed models deliver inaccurate results or fail completely. This paper addresses the need for accurate strategy planning models and proposes an approach to prove their cause-andeffect relations by empirical evidence. Based on this foundation an approach for the approximation of the underlying cause-andeffect function by the means of Artificial Neural Networks is developed.

In the age of information and knowledge, information technology (IT) has revealed to be an increasingly important area for companies. Thus, the alignment between IT and strategy has been a constant worry among scientists and executives. Literature presents the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a management instrument that allows the organization to align with its strategy. In this context, with a view to analyzing the impact of the implantation of BSC on strategic alignment factors of IT with business, from a management perspective, we carried out a qualitative-exploratory research through a multiple case study in companies that implanted BSC and have an IT area. Evidence was collected trough focal interviews, a semi-structured questionnaire, documents and direct observation. IT alignment factors were grouped in four categories: Social, Organizational, Planning and Behavioral. The results showed that the implantation of BSC provokes management changes that influence the four categories of IT alignment factors, transforming them into alignment facilitators and also contributing positively to the alignment between IT and the business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]