Identifying and Prioritizing Factors Influencing Success of a Strategic Planning Process : A Study on National Iranian Copper Industries Company

Nowadays, global economic activities are performed by medium and small-sized enterprises (SMEs). All these organizations seek success, knock the socks off rival companies and satisfy their customers' needs in a turbulent environment and a very competitive market. Strategic planning, in case of proper formulation and implementation, is an effective tool which can identify opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses of the organization so that more realistic goals can be set and implemented. National Iranian Copper Industries Company needs to prioritize its strategies due to structural evolutions in order to determine the budget and formulate short-term planning for them. So the present research examines and ranks these factors. Our research method is descriptive-survey and the sampling process is random. Population size is 180 and the sample size of 120 is calculated according to Cochran formula. This research categorized the factors using factor analysis. The results showed that success factors of Strategic Planning for this company were situated in four groups including administrative process, managerial process, inter-organizational culture and extra-organizational factors. Then the indicators were weighted and prioritized by means of Shannon's method and Topsis technique, respectively. Finally conclusions were provided according to the given priorities.


Introduction
The key role of management in the survival of organizations is undeniable.Establishing coordination, balance and interaction among various elements inside and outside the organization, recognizing the current situation of the organization and trying to reach an ideal situation as well as identifying the strengths and weaknesses, threats and opportunities are among the important factors that are realized in the light of strategic management (Smith & Jenkins, 2014).The impact of strategic planning on today's organizations is obvious and the use of it by managers can bring positive, long term outcomes to organizations.The main problem some organizations face is the lack of a strategic plan or failure to develop and implement it (Nemati & Khashei, 2013).
So it is necessary to study and identify the critical success factors and barriers of strategic planning in order to achieve the goals set and implement the planned strategies and programs.If the reasons of why strategies fail in the implementation stage were identified, a greater success in achieving strategic objectives by managers and organizations would be seen.Strategic planning, in case of proper formulation and implementation, is an effective tool in environmental studies which can identify opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses of the organization so that more realistic goals can be set and implemented.National Iranian Copper Industries Company (NICICO) needs to prioritize its strategies due to structural evolutions in order to determine the budget and formulate short-term planning for them.So the present research examines and ranks these factors.Now the question is; why strategic plans aren't implemented successfully or it is difficult to pass the implementation step and what are the reasons?So considering the aforementioned, it is important to discuss the reasons and barriers leading to poor outcomes from strategic planning, of why sometimes strategic plans cannot be implemented successfully and what are critical success factors of strategic planning?Recognizing these factors can be useful in the successful implementation of strategic plans and will contribute to its growth and  ) What are we going to do in the future and why? c) How do we want to go from current to desired situation?There are four stages or phases in this model each one has its own steps consisting of activities and information which include: 1. Organizing the planning process and environmental analysis; 2. Identifying and analyzing strategic issues; 3. Developing strategies and operational strategies; 4. Implementing strategies (Bryson & Alston, 2005, p. 85).

Strategic Planning Approach
To develop a strategic planning, three basic steps can be taken into account based on which the strategic plan is planned and implemented.The three steps include: First step: defining the topic as an organization (where are we now?).Second step: what do we want to be in the future (Where are we going?).
Step Three: developing an approach to reach the goal and implementing it.

Interactions are culturally competent
Strategic planning development has been always a process and development of planning through individual consultation programs with communities.During this process, planners linked the community programs with other communities who were developing or had previous achievements had similar efforts.Contribution to strategic plan development and implementation, identification of the steps required to achieve the indicator results over time, development of options that fit with the community and will achieve the objectives, specific structure, and measurable annual objectives that evidence progress ensure that the objectives will move the indicator outcomes.The role of employees' participation in the process of strategic planning at different levels of organizational hierarchy has been featured by some studies (lederer & salmela, 1996).

Strategic Planning Properties
Strategic planning process is essentially a process of coordination between internal resources and external opportunities.The purpose of this process is looking through a strategic lens and set opportunities the organization benefits them or responds to them.Thus, the strategic planning process is a management process including coordination of organizational capabilities with the existing opportunities.Such opportunities are determined over time and are investigated whether to invest the organizational resources in them or not.Strategic planning involves several advantages including:  Anticipate potential problems before they happen.
 Identify and respond to changes.
 Determine any need required for redefining the organization.
 Provide a good foundation to reach the preset goals.
 Help managers to have a clearer understanding of the organization.
 Make it easier to spot the future market opportunities.
 Provide a purposeful vision of management issues.
 Offer a review framework for implementing the plan and controlling activities.
 Help managers to make major decisions associated with the goals set.
 Allocate the resources and time to the identified opportunities in the most effective way.
 Coordinate the implementation of tactics that complete the plan.
 Minimize the time and resources devoted to incorrect decisions with no long term vision.
 Create standards for internal communications among employees.
 Arrange priorities in terms of chronological order of plans.
 Give the organization competitive advantages.
 Provide a basis for establishing individual responsibility leading to increased motivation.
 Encourage forward thinking.
 Provide incentives for people in the organization to respond the problems and opportunities in a coordinated and integrated way (Sener, 2012).

Formulating and Designing a Strategy
Formulating a strategy is important for adding value to shareholders and to fulfill the needs of stakeholders.At the same time strategy, processes and capability should be interrelated.Formulated strategies can't be implemented without appropriate process and capabilities such as committed employees and written methods (Sari, 2014).In today's complex business environment and increased competition in the existing markets, routine management decisions can't provide a successful path for companies.Previously, management decisions were taken based on annual goals and the needs and demands of shareholders, while in today's complex world of business such decisions make the company far off the success.What is of utmost importance now for managers of all companies is decision-making process and the information needed to make a proper decision that can bring the company close to its objectives.One of the methods and concepts that can be very useful if used properly is strategic management.Strategic management is the art and science of making decisions that will determine the future direction of the organization.This orientation is the basis for many decisions the manager should deal with in the best way (Paul & Richard 2013).
Generally strategic planning consists of three main steps:  formulating a strategy  implementing a strategy  assessing a strategy The three together can lead to numerous and comprehensive results and benefits for strategic planning.As it is clear for everyone, none of these three is of a higher priority than the other.Although formulating a strategy is fundamental, even the best strategies fail if they would not be implemented successfully (Grunig & Kuhn, 2011).The steps of the strategy is shown in Table 2. Assessment of a strategy is important too since strategic planning and organizational analysis and contribution to improving it, is a permanent task which is a circle that must be repeated constantly and finally result in profitability and other corporate purposes.So assessing a strategy is crucial for the next stages, because repeating a mistake can't be compensated at all (Malinda, Sara, & Andrew, 2015: S18).

Performing leadership strategies
Shared understanding of middle management and those at the operational level to the top management is of critical importance to effective implementation (Rapert, Velliquette, & Garretson, 2002).Strategy implementation effort may fail if the strategy does not enjoy support and commitment by the majority of employees and middle management.This may be the case if they were not consulted during the development phase (Heracleous, 2000).
It is clear that a poor or vague strategy formulation process can limit implementation efforts significantly.Good execution cannot overcome the shortcomings of a bad strategy or poor strategic planning effort (Hrebiniak, 2006).Table 3 shows the key variables affecting the implementation of the strategic planning of previous studies.

Factors Affecting Successful Strategy Implementation
According to the research conducted in 2009 according to strategic planning experts' viewpoints, the following factors were identified as the main factors affecting the success of a plan (Stevan, Holmberg, & Cummings, 2009).

Review of Literature
A research was conducted to identify the critical success factors of business process management.In this study, the most important factor in the business process management is considered fitting with known environmental factors (Peter, 2010).A research was carried out titled as planning features for automotive products development using AHP-FUZZY technique; in this study attributes of customer satisfaction were identified as the most important factor in planning for automotive products development (Bimal & Alper, 2010).In a study conducted, the critical success factors of strategic planning were found as manager partnership, emphasis on creating databases, follow-up after defining strategies, balancing between budgets and planning in the implementation of the strategy (Hensey, 1991).In a study three success factors of strategic planning were pointed out, including identifying realistic goals, identifying needs to achieve goals and providing time and personnel to implement the strategic plan (Johnson, 2007).Kaplan and Norton (2005) pointed out that 95% of employees neither aware nor understand strategies of the organization.Johnson (2004) also believes that 66% of organizations' strategies are not applicable.In many cases, due to weak strategy and the ideas behind them many valuable strategies face the problem and failures in the implementation stage.In fact the main challenges in strategic management is implementing the strategy rather than developing it.Quinn (1981), Peters and Waterman (1982) and Cowherd and Luchs (1988) believe that critical success factors of the strategy include organizational structure, organizational culture, information and communication technology and reporting systems, incentives and rewards, providing adequate resources, decision-making process, effective communication, training, ability and skills.A few other researchers also examined the factors influencing successful implementation of strategies.
In a research conducted by Phillips and Moutinho (2014), a proper strategic planning for developing tourism industry as a foundation needs high investment, long term framework.This requires formulating a strategy for shaping the opportunities for competitive advantage and offering a direction for shareholders.Important decision-makings need to involve multiple-purpose shareholders.Strategic planning can contribute by collaborative method.

Method
Since the research data was collected and analyzed in a specified time period and the results changes over time weren't taken into account, time horizon of the study is a single sectional.The strategy of the research is eventually causal.Since in descriptive research the characteristics of the study population can be evaluated through surveys, the present research is a descriptive, survey research and because the researcher is present in real-life situations of the organization so the research is considered among field studies.

Research Questions
What are the critical success factors of strategic planning in National Iranian Copper Industries Company?

Statistical Population
Sarcheshmeh Copper Mines Joint Stock Co of Kerman was formed in 1972 and later in 1976 it was renamed as National Iranian Copper Industries Company to involve all copper mines operations throughout the country.Since 2002 and with the establishment of Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development & Renovation organization, National Iranian Copper Industries Company was introduced as one of its headquarters and continued its activities within the framework of the Commercial Code by changing the Constitution.Company activities include exploration and exploitation of cooper mines, production of high-grade products of copper ore and copper metal and their distribution and sales, partnership and participation in investment projects related to the copper industry and carrying out all operations and financial transactions and trade and services that directly or indirectly related to any of the issues described above both internal and external.This company has numerous responsibilities to do including extraction and utilization of copper mines, production of copper concentrates and manufacturing copper products such as cathodes, slabs, billets and 8mm wire rods.Sarcheshmeh and Miduk mines in Kerman province and Sunegoon mine in eastern Azarbaiejan province are of the most significant copper mines in the country.The statistical population of the study was senior experts and senior managers of National Iranian Copper Industries Company.Population size is 180 and sample size is equal to 120 using Cochran Formula.

Measurement Instrument
A questionnaire was used to measure the variables of the research.Therefore, a number of key factors were collected to set the questions of the questionnaire through conducting a series of interviews with experts beside a deep review of Literature.

Validity and Reliability
Before using the measuring instrument, they should be adjusted under validity and reliability tests.The validity of the study was reviewed initially by collecting the views of experts and counseling professors and several management experts; the questionnaire was finalized by removing some of the questions and the reforms performed.To ensure the reliability of the measuring instrument, Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used with the result of 0.930 which demonstrates good reliability of the measuring instrument because according to Notably, Nunnally and BernStein (1994) alpha coefficient more than 70% indicates good reliability (Chang & Chieng, 2006).
Since the researcher himself requested applicants to fill in the questionnaire, it was expected that about 80% of questionnaires were of correct information and applicable.Of 150 questionnaires 120(80%) were able to be used and 30 were excluded.So response rate was good and covered sample size completely.

Data Analysis
In order to analyze the statistical data of the present study, first data resulted from the existing documents available in the company were examined.Also, since the researcher have used questionnaires to collect other information so, in order to analyze data, first data was extracted from the questionnaires and set in the general information table or mother table.Then all data and information were analyzed using computers and the statistical software SPSS 19 in descriptive and inferential methods.So first demographic variables and representative indices of the research variables were described then data was analyzed and the hypotheses were tested.

Shannon Entropy Method
In multi-criteria decision-making problems and in particular multi-attribute decision-making problems, having and knowing the relative weights of indices is an effective and required step in the problem-solving process.Among determination methods of index weight, the use of experts responses, LINMAP method, least squares method, eigenvector technique, Shannon's entropy can be mentioned (Ming, 2008).In the present research, Shannon's entropy method as one of the most famous weighing methods was employed for weighing indices.
First, we calculate a value denoted by E: The two vi Step 4: cal The distan of choice i Step 5: ca formula: It is seen th It is clear t Step 6: ran

Results
This sectio ranks.

Factor Analysis Test
The main purpose of using factor analysis is reducing data size and determining the most important variables affecting the formation of phenomena.When researchers face with a large number of variables, they seek to reduce the number of variables and form a new structure for them in order to analyze data more accurately and obtain more scientific and operational results.So, factor analysis method is used.Factor analysis attempts to identify the main variables or factors to explain the pattern of correlations between the observed variables.

Bartlett Test
Bartlett's test sig value less than 0.05 indicates that factor analysis is a suitable model to identify the structure.KMO value is 0.854 and since it is close to one, is sufficient for factor analysis.The presence of similar organizations for benchmarking Coordination between internal resources and external opportunities 4

Discussion
Too wide perspective in the strategic planning process and senior manager's awareness of planning knowledge and change management in the strategic planning process as well as their knowledge of the importance of strategic planning and team participation of employees in strategic planning process are considered among the important and effective success factors of strategic planning.In this study, factors were categorized using factor analysis.In this study, factors were categorized using factor analysis The results showed success factors in the company are located in four groups: the first group, the administrative process, including, change management and proper evaluation of environmental strategic planning process, the database and is too bureaucratic decision-making and diversification.The second group management, that factors such as the participation of senior managers, to replace inefficient managers and strategy for the company on opportunities for competitive advantage The third group of senior managers' knowledge of science and the importance of culture within the organization that require planning and organizational commitment to the strategic planning process and includes the reception staff.The fourth group of external factors such as financing through attracting investment and benefiting from external environmental factors and coordination between internal resources and external opportunities were placed in subgroups.Briefing sessions for managers to identify the importance, scope, objectives and approaches of strategic planning can also contribute to the success of this program.Holding such meetings can increase senior managers' awareness of the subject and ensure their commitment to this project leading to allocation of sufficient organizational resources and overcoming the barriers.Establishing committees consisting of key executives would highlight their presence in the successful implementation of strategic planning leading to a uniform strategic planning project team by providing an opportunity for training those involved in strategic planning on inter-organizational operations and processes.Oversight role played by senior managers as key members of strategic planning project will lead to the realization of goals and solve potential conflicts.Official announcement of strategic planning by the highest corporate authority to all heads of divisions might capture their commitment so they allocate sufficient organizational and financial resources facilitating the achievement of the project goals and reveals its importance among employees.
Bryson and Alston strategic planning model: in 2005 Bryson and Alston suggested their model for strategic planning and management of organizations.The model is actually the extended model of their 1995 model.Bryson and Alston strategic planning model generally addresses three questions: a) who and what are we and what are we doing and why? b Ward policy, negative strategic planning model, Kornj and Lavenj strategic planning system and Daitmn, Mintzberg, Dait, Hill, Piglez, Roger, David, Piers and Robinson, Violin and Hunger, Efa, Bryson and Alston & Blue Ocean models.Due to the large number of models only Bryson and Alston models will be explained.

Table 2 .
Steps of implementing strategies

Table 6 .
Bartlett test Rotation sums of Squared Loadings: indicate eigenvalues of extracted factors with rotation.In this table four factors are more than one.These four factors account for 95.366% of variability of variables.Rotated Component Matrix a: indicates component or rotated factor matrix, including factor loadings of each variable in the four remaining factors.The higher the absolute value of these factors, the more significant role the respective factor will play in total change of the desired variable.
 Initial Eigenvalues: related to eigenvalues and determine factors their eigenvalues are greater than one and factors less than one are excluded from the analysis.ExtractionSums of Squared Loadings: related to eignevalues without rotation.