This book challenges the universal applicability of strategic management concepts. It argues that it is necessary to pay attention to contextual facets of the environment, in particular to societal culture. It also depicts the current planning situation in the banking industry. The culture-boundness of strategy formulation and implementation is challenged and advocated trough discussing planning systems, processes, and heuristics, and contextual influences both an a theoretical basis and with empirical research. The book is based an my doctoral dissertation, which was completed at the Marketing and Banking Departments of the Vienna University of Economics under the auspices of Fritz Scheuch and Gustav Raab. Their teaching, constructive criticism, and encouragement provided the intellectual stimulation for bringing this dissertation to completion. This applies equally to several professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Harry Triandis and Anant Negandhi introduced me to cross-cultural research and inter national management. Howard Themas, Marjorie Lyles, and Irene Duhaime helped me to crystallize thoughts. Hanns-Martin Schönfeld, Seymour Sudman and Gerald Salancik challenged my thoughts about organizational behavior and methodology. Richard Watson, Univer sity of Georgia, and Louis Flores of Northern Illinois University were very helpful in providing address material for Australia and Latin America, as well as through assistance with translations. Norihiro Suzuki of Int'l Christian University, Tokyo, and Hiro Matsusaki of Tokyo University helped with Japanese translations.

This unique book is positioned at the crossroads of strategic management and international business. Based on an in-depth literature review, the author empirically assesses the widely shared, implicit assumption that strategic management processes can be globally applied in a standardized, i.e., culture-free, manner. So far, a variety of tools have also been recommended but without incorporating cultural differences. As many organizations observe that this ethnocentric view is more an illusion than reality, strategic management research has started to focus on the cultural sensitivity of its theories, tools, and processes to provide practitioners in a multicultural setting with adequate know-how and tools. To foster long-term decision-making despite uncertainty, scenario planning is frequently applied by practitioners. Up until today, scenario planning has however gained little attention from the academic community. Through this book, the author presents a newly developed framework for strategic management that combines the cultural value scale to test the cultural sensitivity of the long-term planning tool called “scenario planning.” The different process steps of scenario planning have been individually examined for their sensitivity toward the cultural dimensions of uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation. The investigation is based on a unique, global set of management consultants working for a leading professional service firm. The results of this research show the cultural sensitivity of scenario planning, with different degrees of the process steps and the tested cultural dimensions.

Going beyond the traditional application of strategic planning, this book also addresses issues for the nonprofit sector and global aspects of strategic planning.

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.