Introduction
This paper explains the roles and significances of collaboration, cooperation, and coordination in the strategic planning process. It also describes what it might look like if collaboration, cooperation, and coordination were to be integrated into the strategic planning process.
The Roles and Significances of Collaboration, Cooperation, and Coordination during Strategic Planning Processes
A strategic planning process can be viewed as a process of evaluating what an organization wants to undertake to advance its mission over a specified period (O’Leary, Choi & Gerard, 2012). In this regard, the process needs the involvement of various stakeholders. This is the reason collaboration, cooperation, and coordination are required in the planning process (Hassan, 2010).
Therefore, the role of collaboration is to provide an opportunity for stakeholders involved in a planning process to share knowledge, skills, and experiences among themselves to appropriately modify goals and contribute toward the development of an organization (Sibony, 2012; Clarke, 2011). Collaboration requires adequate resources, a culture of effective teamwork, and identified responsibilities (Sibony, 2012; Clarke, 2011). Therefore, collaboration is very important in terms of ensuring that a strategic planning process takes into account the contributions of all the relevant stakeholders (Sibony, 2012; Clarke, 2011).
Cooperation also plays an important role in the planning process (Karnitis & Kucinskis, 2009). It helps partners in a planning process to engage with one another in terms of resources and capabilities; this happens especially to achieve common interests within an organization (Karnitis & Kucinskis, 2009). Cooperation allows for a deliberative approach that is not restricted to a single methodological approach (Karnitis & Kucinskis, 2009). Besides, cooperation enables all the stakeholders participating in a planning process to commit to working with one another and share a vision about the improvement of an organization (Karnitis & Kucinskis, 2009). Therefore, the importance of cooperation during a strategic planning process is demonstrated by the fact that stakeholders who are involved often have a chance to commit themselves to work with one another (Karnitis & Kucinskis, 2009; Nelson, 2008).
Another important component of a strategic planning process is coordination (Allison & Kaye, 2011). The role of coordination is to guarantee that a strategic planning process will not go out of focus; it ensures that the process is only limited to what is required for a successful planning initiative (Allison & Kaye, 2011). Coordination also plays the role of harmonizing the roles that are played by different stakeholders, who are involved in a planning process (Allison & Kaye, 2011). Hence, coordination is important in ensuring that all planning strategies are harmonized; it also ensures that a planning process is done within a specific framework (Daub, 2009).
What it Might Look Like if Collaboration, Cooperation, and Coordination were to be integrated into the Strategic Planning Process
The integration of collaboration into the strategic planning process would result in several achievements. Since collaboration results in the sharing of knowledge among stakeholders, who are involved in a planning process, it would be easy to modify goals and objectives to ensure that they are always in line with a strategic plan (O’Leary, Choi & Gerard, 2012). This would mean that a strategic planning process would require more resources to ensure efficient collaboration among various stakeholders (O’Leary, Choi & Gerard, 2012). Even so, collaboration would ensure that the outcome of a strategic planning process would be a product of all stakeholders’ contributions (O’Leary, Choi & Gerard, 2012).
Integrating cooperation into the strategic planning process would also have some benefits (Karnitis & Kucinskis, 2009). One of such benefits is that competition among stakeholders would be eliminated. When this happens, the planning process would be more efficient than when cooperation would be excluded (Karnitis & Kucinskis, 2009). Moreover, cooperation would ensure the absence of any possible conflict of interest, because every problem would be dealt with as planning processes progress (Karnitis & Kucinskis, 2009). Since cooperation ensures the sharing of resources, if it were to be integrated into a planning process, it would become easy to mobilize the relevant resources for the process (Karnitis & Kucinskis, 2009).
Lastly, integrating coordination into the planning process would ensure that there would be proper channels of communication among the relevant stakeholders; in fact, communication is what links collaboration, cooperation and coordination together (Daub, 2009). Coordination would be important in ensuring that roles would not be duplicated during a strategic planning process (Daub, 2009).
Conclusion
Collaboration, cooperation, and coordination are very germane to the successful development and implementation of strategic plans (Daub, 2009). These components help in ensuring efficient and expedited strategic planning and implementation processes (Daub, 2009).
References
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