ABSTRACT
Most of the output of long-range planning groups was found to be more in the nature of scheduling current programs with long leadtimes, rather than in the development of true long-range business plans—courses of action to deal with the future. The failure of so much of business long-range planning efforts to come to grips with the key problems facing the organization and/or its industry may be the inevitable result of what can be termed a major planning "dogma". Although the decentralization of planning has merit as a general proposition, some negative side effects may have been overlooked. If long-range planning is to avoid complete preoccupation with technique and methodology, the planning process must take up the major substantive problems and challenges facing the company and its industry, and not avoid them because they do not fit neatly into the format. In the case of the large, science-oriented corporations, there seems to be an increasing availability of such basic problems.
