determining strategy capability

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0262-1711.htm A comparison of strategic planning practices in companies from the UK and Turkey
Keith W. Glaister
Management School, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

Omer Dincer
Turkish Grand National Assembly, Ankara, Turkey

Strategic planning practices
361
Received 3 May 2006
Revised 18 October 2007
Accepted 25 January 2008

Ekrem Tatoglu
Faculty of Business Administration, Bahcesehir University,
Istanbul, Turkey, and

Mehmet Demirbag
Management School, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the nature and practice of strategic planning in two different environmental contexts, the UK and Turkey.
Design/methodology/approach – Employing a structured mail questionnaire, the study collected data from a sample of UK and Turkish firms. Using a sampling frame of 500 firms from the EXTEL database of UK listed companies, 113 usable responses were received for the UK firms. In total, 135 responses were obtained from the Turkish firms based on a sampling frame of 638 firms derived from the database of the Istanbul Chamber of Industry’s 500 largest Turkish manufacturing companies and the database of companies quoted on the Istanbul Stock Exchange.
Findings – There are a number of significant differences between the strategic planning practices of
Turkish firms and UK firms. Contrary to expectations, it appears that Turkish firms rather than UK firms are more favourably disposed to strategic planning. The exception to this is the adoption and use of a range of tools/techniques of strategic analysis, which are more regularly employed by UK firms than by Turkish firms.
Practical implications – Organisations should be aware that strategy formulation is futile without appropriate strategy implementation and should seek a coherent interface between those responsible for the strategic

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